Does one owe it to their parents to take care of them in old age?

[Seppia]

Thoughts and prayers from my wife and I to you and family.

[Sclass]

I am sorry for your loss. Your struggles were both moving and informative. Hopefully she was cremated so there wasn't a fight over casket costs like when my grandmother died. My cheap-ass mother won and they buried my grandmother in this plain wooden box with no padding whatsoever. When the back-ho dumped it the ground, you could hear Nana rattling around in there like a big set of dice.

Yes I had her cremated. My siblings thankfully didn’t want anything to do with it as usual. They didn’t show up. They asked if I was planning a service. No. Funerals are for the living and I don’t care much for the survivors except for her loving staff.

Dad showed up three days later. He and my brother lurked the house and did some creative .txt ignoring like “there is no reception here” even though I saw them reading my messages on the homes cctv System as I sent them. They avoided me for two days and finally I cornered them. They asked where the body was. I said it was being cremated. Dad said he would like a lock of mom’s hair.

I dutifully drove him to the mortuary. In the parking lot I said, “I’ve changed my mind. You’ve taken enough from her.” I felt guilty telling him no as he pouted. But, I realized on the drive in that it was just sick to take the remaining wisps of her hair before she went in the furnace. She was nearly bald. I recall seeing locks of his mistresses hair in his belongings. Used to make mom jealous. He had a fetish for such keepsakes. Gross. I felt bad it took me ten minutes to decide to refuse.

We met up with my brother. He insisted he change the locks on the home. I said I’d do it with smart locks. He and my dad protested that they need to get in. My nephew is starting college nearby and they’ll need a place to stay when visiting. “But Sclass we need to get in.” Right all of a sudden they’re interested now mom Is gone. I said I’d do it and email them the combination. They said the needed keys. They came up with every reason to install locks themselves. I said I’d just replace them in a day. They said that’s ok.

Then the bomb. Over dinner my brother looks over to my dad, totally ignoring my presence and asks, “ what will we be doing with the remainder of mom’s money?” Wow. Just wow. Didn’t dare ask me. I calmly explained that I would be collecting it after I certified the death. His head turned towards me and his eyes narrowed. Seriously? This stuff brings out the worst in people. He’s known for years I’ve managed her finances yet he turns to my dad when asking for his share.

I came back to the place yesterday and found their balled up tissues, pizza boxes, empty drink bottles and dirty dishes all over the place. I guess they think we still have a maid service.

Sister didn’t even show up.

At least I’m done.

Lots of lessons in this journey. I’d say I only know now, a week after her passing, that my decision to look after her was the right thing to do. I wondered what life would be if I’d run away like my siblings before her death. It was just me and her nurses by her side at the last breath. Priceless. To answer the OP: I don’t know if I owed it to her but I’m happy I stepped up and fought my dad for her care.

I went from years of screaming in the shower “just die already!” to a totally different place where I’m at peace with my decisions.

I also know who my family is. I also learned to be careful what I sign on for.

I fell into my dad’s carefully laid trap. He knew I’d step up. He knew I was retired so he could save a lot using me as the care manager.

Now I know he never really cared about mom. He just cared about the senior member of his harem and his home in Los Angeles that he’d lose if he let me institutionalize my mom. So he blocked DPOAs. He commingled assets and guarded them with his lawyer. I was just an extension of mom.

We warred and played chicken with each other for years. I finally took over a small stock account that I used to pay half of her expenses while he paid the other half. This was delicate because he’d welsh on me whenever he felt like I wasn’t pulling hard enough for him. I’d come up with his half sometimes out of my own funds since mom’s investment accounts had fixed distributions. It really sucked. Doing business with a 84 yo child.

So I sat with mom’s physicians over the years and they told me what a great job I was doing. “She’d have died years ago in skilled nursing homes.” I had mixed feelings when I heard this. So my thought is if you don’t destroy your assets caring for your aging parent you can step back and the state has your back. You parent will die quickly of a respiratory infection in a group care facility. It isn’t the worst thing. Believe me, I tried it the opposite way.

Same answer to what happens when boomers who didn’t save enough need senior care. They’ll die in a Medicaid funded facility. Private pay and Medicaid lie side by side according to my mom’s caregivers. Not so bad. Do you really want to stretch things out another five years or more as an invalid?

Because of my dad’s asset commingling (or should I say my mom’s refusal to complete her divorce) I basically got backed into a corner. At the end of the day I didn’t lose much except my time and sanity. The first years of my ERE 43-50 spent chasing around gurneys in big hospitals and supervising caregivers as they stole time and physical items.

And if all goes well with the asset transfer I’ll get a few dollars. However it won’t change my life at all. It’s just a number now.

The house is still up in the air. People are asking who it belongs to now. I just say ask dad.

I don’t really care to own the property (every idiot keeps saying “but isn’t it worth millions?”). What I care about is continuing to maintain it as my crap family uses it as a hotel in Los Angeles and me as a concierge. I went back yesterday and found full wastebaskets, dirty dishes, pee stains on the toilet seats. I’m going to have to think over very carefully how I’m going to engage myself. The money is kind of meaningless given my chosen lifestyle. So I need to be careful about flubbing my new escape opportunity. Greed is powerful.

So being able to pay for care is fraught with thorns. Nothing is perfect.

More later as I process more.

[Campitor]

@Sclass

You have my respect. You acted nobly under hard conditions. You took responsibility where so many would have forsaken it. I hope you get that light at the end of the tunnel you richly deserve.

[Jason]

Under normal circumstances, I'd just say something like "Man, Sclass, your father is like the Platonic ideal of a douche." But that shit with the hair, that's a bit chilling, especially with all this new Ted Bundy nostalgia we got going on.

There was no service with my father for the same reasons. When they are gone, they are gone and if you have nothing vested with the survivors, just haul ass and go back to your own life.

[prognastat]

Sorry to hear it had to go that way. At least you can be sure you don't want anything further to do with them after this and to just move on.

[Peanut]

Ah, my condolences to you, Sclass. May she rest in peace.

You have an amazing soul.

[thrifty++]

Sorry to hear about all this Sclass.
My god what a saint you have been.

I am now in a similar situation so it has been confronting to read this.

[Clarice]

Not to be morbid, but can you expand on what you mean by dying from a respiratory infection in a group care facility possibly being better than dying at home?

@Augustus:

This is not morbid. This is a reasonable question to ask. When you are at a nursing home you have a higher chance of getting pneumonia (a respiratory infection) and dying from it than when you are at your own home. There are multiple reasons for that - exposure to sick people, being taken care of, therefore, needing to move less, therefore, being less physically active, poor institutional nutrition - to name a few. The death from pneumonia is a relatively easy death (pneumonia -> sepsis ->loss of consciousness -> loss of lungs function as they fill with fluid ->death in a couple of days).
However, these are probabilities, not certainties. You will probably have to play by ear with your mom. It is very hard to solve problems that do not exist yet.

[CS]

I dunno. It could also be a function of neglect, or loss of close loved ones. My grandmother lived for ~40 years in a nursing home type facility. She died within months of her husband dying. The fact that Sclass was there for her, in so many ways, could have been the difference, not the setting.

[Sclass]

Thanks for clarifying that Clarice.

What I learned while looking into institutional care for my mom is that a lot of these places are kind of a proxy for euthanasia. I didn’t quite get it at first but here was my take. You bring your parent there when you just cannot handle it anymore. They tell you a nice story about how good their care is but in reality the care is poor. Most people feel guilty about it but at that point you make yourself succumb to the spokesperson’s reassuring pitch so you can live with the guilt.

When the cognitive impaired person gets there they are confused and disoriented. They want to go home. They fight back. Cry. Bother others. Get bothered by others. Then the meds are administered. Lorazepram is a common example. Once that happens getting pneumonia and dying from it isn’t all that painful. At home with hospice my mom was medicated as well. She just lived several years longer than her peers in a harsher communal nursing facility. She fought off respiratory infections several times with the help of antibiotics however when she went on to hospice for a terminal heart problem, no more antibiotics shots were administered. This left her open to any infection her caregivers brought in.

Honestly I’m not sure what she died from. She got weak. Had trouble breathing for a week. She was breathing on oxygen for a few days straight. Soon her oxygen levels didn’t stay up and the hospice people said she had a few hours. A few hours later she took her last breath.

So I guess what I was getting at is you can die in a few days from complications from pneumonia or you can go on for years bedridden at home with 27/7 one on one care till death. The nurses held back on the morphine till the very end because they said that is a slippery slope and she’d die faster if they dosed her. I think her team stretched out her life one more week this way. I was vigilant at the time because there is a fine line between stretching somebody’s life out or not medicating pain. Luckily she didn’t need morphine till the very end.

Either way it is dark. But death is a release. People are scared of being broke and helpless. Death is a way out. Hospice makes it easier. Lousy care makes it faster.

These were the kind of trade offs I had to struggle with the last few years. This is what I mean when I say having money just creates different problems. You have choices and you don’t let the system choose for you. I struggled with wondering if I was spending enough while fearing mom might out live the funds and put us in a tight spot. Not really too tight, I’d just have to take her someplace cheaper which would speed things up. I had a lot of sleepless nights where I’d run through these outcomes.

I know it sounds cold but there’s always a path forward. It’s like everything in this society. There is a price point for everyone.

[McTrex]

My condolences Sclass, I hope you can find a good way forward from here.

[7Wannabe5]

My father died at home at the age of 67 due to untreatable pneumonia subsequent to lung cancer. The hospice team left us the morphine to administer. It was a relatively quick, gentle way to go.

I am tempted to just take myself out at a given, pre-decided age, like one of my favorite characters, Maude in "Harold and Maude." Otherwise, I think it might be a good plan to just choose to abstain from all medical care/treatment past a certain age and make do with a stash of morphine. Instead of one of those terrible Life Alert bands, I could keep a vial of concentrate around my neck. It would just be like the time I accidentally camped very close to alligator preserve, and I just told myself to go to sleep anyways. My kids might be upset with my choice for a little while, but then they would be better off.

[Mister Imperceptible]

Some years ago my grandmother had to make a decision to let my grandfather pass. He had been in and out of the hospital for years. She said that the suffering was too much and that at some point quality of life is more important than quantity. But my grandfather was still cognizant at the end, and he said “I just want to live a little bit longer.” My grandfather was a Marine, served in the Vietnam War, he was a warrior. He was willing to fight thru whatever suffering he had to endure to continue living. But many of us would call that “existing,” not living. Easy to say when you are not at the receiving end of that decision. My grandmother knew this and made an executive decision for him. One of my aunts will no longer talk to my grandmother on account of this.

It’s dreadful business.

[Jason]

But death is a release.

Hence, the use of prison imagery in Gospel music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Shall_Be_Released

Best advice I ever had on this topic is to ask the question, "Are you prolonging life or postponing death?" Often cuts to the quick.

[Clarice]

I think it might be a good plan to just choose to abstain from all medical care/treatment past a certain age and make do with a stash of morphine. Instead of one of those terrible Life Alert bands,

+1