I am a baby boomer, and I have read and heard all the predictions about how we will care for aging loved ones. (and how many of us will need the same care from fewer off-spring.) I never realized how fast that would happen nor did I realize the emotions it would create in me and in my family.
My mother and her sister Grace had loved together since my siblings and I were young. We moved in with my grandparents and my aunts Grace and Catherine when my father dies, leaving my mother with four children under the age of 6. Through the odyssey of those years together, we saw my Aunt Catherine develop Parkinson's and die of complications from that. My mother and Grace handled most of the care taking for Catherine. My mother was 70 when Catherine died and Grace was 62. It is hard for me to think about those ages, as Grace was just four years older than I am now.
They experienced a great period in the late 1990s when they sold their large home and built an open-concept smaller home which my mom thought of as her "cottage." Mom stayed fairly healthy till 2010 when her congestive heart failure and osteoporosis affected everything. Her energy was sapped. She was hospitalized for a period and spent time in a rehab facility. By May of 2011 we knew she was weak. She fell at the doctor's office and this set off everything. She fell again at home on May 12 of that year, and soon after we enrolled her in hospice because she wanted so much to be at home. In our frenzy to keep my mother well and at home, my husband took early retirement from his teaching position. I so appreciated this wonderful gesture on his part. (later I realized the folly of this.)
Just days after my husband took over my mother's care, she had the first of three strokes. VNA Hospice was vital to us in her care and provided my mother and my husband with support and daily visits. This included physical therapy which helped my mother to ambulate to take care of hygiene.
As week after, Grace tripped on the cord to my mother's hospital bed and broke her left hip. She needed a partial hip replacement and was in the hospital for ten days. When she returned home, my husband had two patients. My siblings and my daughter assisted my husband with the care; I came on nights and weekends as I could.
My mother had some good days where she ate, laughed, and enjoyed her family. She also had more strokes and trips to the emergency room where they could do nothing for her. The last stroke was on July 8 at about 9:00 in the morning. She had already been up and had had breakfast. But suddenly she was not responsive. By late Monday evening, after four days of discomfort and writhing, she passed.
It was after the services were over, that we realized that Grace, newly diagnosed with Parkinson's and recovering from hip surgery, would need help forever.
This was the beginning of the change in Grace's life and ours.
