issues with elderly parents

About Three Weeks


I don’t know if the hospice nurse was pressed for this time frame or she told just mom, but I got a semi-frantic call from DNOS.

“Did you talk to Mom?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know? And you are coming?”

“It was a couple of hours ago and she sounded awful. Dad didn’t sound too good either, but neither of them mentioned my coming now. Why?”

“The hospice nurse told them it will be about three weeks. Mom is wiring money to C.B. I think she should just buy him the ticket though.”

Let’s step back from this conversation for a moment to note that even though she is panicking in a mild way, she still remembers, and comments, on C.B.’s tendency to not use money sent to him for its intended purpose. And I won’t argue with her assumption. If anyone could eff up the opportunity to make amends with his dying father, it would be C.B.

I point out to her that it is much harder to buy an airline ticket for someone these days because mistakes are hard to fix. It will be better to just send money. I don’t remind her that C.B. will only bring more tension to a situation already fraught and if he doesn’t get home in time, it will make things easier for the rest of us.

“So are you telling me I need to come this weekend?”

“I don’t know. Mom said she was going to call you.”

And so the lines of communication begin their inevitable breakdown. Mom and DNOS are not on the same page.

“Well, Auntie and Cousin are visiting today. They are probably still in the middle of the visit. She’ll probably call me later. I’ll talk to her regardless of whether she calls me or I have to call her.”

I then went on to explain that any decision needs to wait until after Dad sees the doctor tomorrow. The doctor appointment on Wednesday revealed that fluid is indeed building up again and Dad mentioned to the nurse today he is feeling pressure on his chest. The likely scenario is that the doctor will suggest draining the build up or simply letting the cancer run its course. Whatever Dad decides. This will decide things for me too.

DNOS didn’t have much to say after that especially when I pointed out to her that I couldn’t come and hang out for weeks on end. I have a husband and child and even though they would survive without me, it is too long to be away given the stressful nature of everything. Rob, BabyD and I are still raw from our earlier losses. We worry too much about each other as it is. Throw distance in and the recipe is ripe for disaster.

This was not what DNOS expected to hear. She also did not expect me to ask her if she was really prepared for what is coming. It’s not easy to watch someone die. Dad’s death is not a hypothetical in the far future thing. It’s here.

Later I spoke with my mother, she had questioned the hospice intake nurse about the time frame. Wednesday Dad’s doctor took him off all his medications including the blood thinner which has essentially kept him from having any further strokes these last two and a half years. That has been running through her mind and today it occurred to her that this was done because Dad didn’t have much time left. Time that could be measured by weeks instead of months.

Mom was surprised though to hear about DNOS’s call to me. I was not surprised to learn that communication from now on was going to resemble a game of telephone.

The bottom line is that I don’t need to go right now.

But that time is coming much sooner than I had originally guessed and I guessed shorter than three months to begin with.

Shit? Meet Fan.


The cosmos just knows when you are burdened to the point of mental dizziness, loaded up like a wagon cart heading for the promised land which just happens to lie a couple thousand miles off – past the prairies, over the Rockies and across the desert. It also knows that the only thing you are likely to find is a junior wife position in the Lion’s House.

Things stack up. A little bit at a time, but eventually there is nowhere left to pile. Kind of like the inside of MIL#1’s double wide. An Oprah intervention in the making.

For the last week my younger brother, CB, has been calling to vent his spleen and general mental unhingedness on me. While I continue to feel quite badly for him, I am not unaware that he needs me more as a go between than as shoulder. He gets nowhere with our parents when he is in one of his “moods” and though it seems to me that he is no longer effing his life up on purpose, it is really effed up, and he is going to need some cash to start righting it. Cash, by the way, is not something that a 42 year old high school drop-out armed with just a GED and a couple of decades worth of working under the table contracting is going to be able to come up with easily in the economy today.

Because Dad has been ill and largely unable to hold up his end of a conversation, I have been reduced to leaning a bit on Mom. Have I ever mentioned that she is not a crisis manager? Pressure and Mom mix like oil and water.

I know I am heartless, but I believe that despite what they have given monetarily to CB in the past – they still owe him a bit more. The sum he needs to escape Marin and retreat to Tahoe to “get a grip” is pocket change to the parental units. My position is pay him. It will ease the situation for a while, and we could all use that.

However, another wrinkle – that sly universe again – came into play when Dad’s doctors hospitalized him yesterday. Pneumonia and fluid on a lung. Serious in an 81 year old man with pulmonary disease.

My conversation with CB yesterday went something like:

Me: Dad’s in the hospital. Mom will talk with him about the money when all the testing is over, and they know what is going on.

CB: Okay, so when do you think that will be? Because I need the money by the 1st.

Yeah, CB is a bit ego-centric, but as Rob reminded me – aren’t we all – in this life for ourselves kind of thing? Unless you are Mother Teresa that is. Oops, bad example. Or maybe an apt one because as self-less as we are all capable of being, what ultimately makes us happy, content or whatever, is having a life that is stable with people who care about – even love – us.

I googled the whole “fluid on the lung” thing last night then. It was not cheery.

  • infection
  • the beginnings of congestive heart failure
  • cancer

Dad’s lung doctor doesn’t think it has anything to do with his existing lung issues or the pneumonia. This leaves us with two ugly scenarios.

Mom called me after they siphoned off two litres of bloody fluid. She told me – without my bringing up the subject – that she simply could not deal with CB or his request. To which I replied,

“So just send him the check then.”

Because the way I see it, she will worry and feel bad if she doesn’t, and since money isn’t an issue for her – why not use it to buy a little peace and happiness for herself and CB?

And me. Let’s not forget about me in all this.

Later in the afternoon, DNOS calls and tells me not to bring up CB again.

“I didn’t,” I tell her. “Mom brought it up.”

“Oh.” Clearly she had wanted to be bossy and now couldn’t, “Well, Mom had one of her freak-out’s about it.”

I go on to explain my theory and plan. DNOS reluctantly gets on board and agrees to make sure that the money goes out this week and then says,

“I really don’t care about CB anymore. I would be upset if he…expired…but I just don’t care about him.”

And I get that. I have a list of people I should care about more than I do too.

My gut tells me I need to be prepared to hop on a plane and go soon. I know I will have to go without Rob. He and BabyD will remain here until Dad dies. I will have to do the hospice thing again on my own and being the rock and go-to on top of it. I don’t know if I am up to this or not, but life doesn’t need our permission for anything it decides to do. There is no point looking for a whale belly to ride out the storm.

Bad timing and life. Go figure.