Taking Care of Your Parents: My Own Story

My brothers and I continue to try to make Mom’s life comfortable. We can’t always seem to find the right ‘mix’ between comfort and safety. We want her to use a walker and she has finally begun using one from time to time.

”Except when I take the dog for a walk,” she says. “I hold the leash and he holds me up.” We’re not exactly thrilled with that response.

We now have someone in her house seven days a week. She wasn’t exactly thrilled with us when we insisted on seven days a week. It was less than two years ago when we began sending […]

“Your mother fell,” was how the phone call started. When you hear that, and you know that your 88-year-old mother is not as sturdy as she once was, you are concerned.
As my brothers and I and our extended families try to make the best decisions for Mom, we have also been trying to remember her consistent request to us: “Please let me stay in my own house.” So we struggle between safety and her peace of mind. At some point, safety wins out over Mother’s own peace of mind. But where is that line?
Too often, the line is […]

My brothers and I continue to “help” our aging mother. Many of you have followed our journey and know that we have been doing our best to wrestle with the senior issues.

Her house is clean. . .more than not. She does her best, and has help three days a week. Mom eats really well. . .when one of us is there. She interacts with us when we visit. She’s trying to maintain her life style, but her frailty shows through.

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If you have hired a professional caregiver, as my brothers and I have for our mom, then you have another voice, another variable in the mix. If your caregiver is a part time helper, then you have someone who sees your elderly parent in snippets of time. Like looking briefly through a window. If your caregiver is a twenty-four hour a day caregiver, then you have a whole different set of concerns. This brief blog cannot cover both — only the part time caregiver is addressed here.

Our caregiver, I’ll call her Donna, sees Mom twice a week for a […]

Mom is doing well, having a caregiver come into her house to visit with her once a week. The idea, of course, is to have the care-giver there to do the things that are hard for Mom to do on her own. Pulling the bed clothes, doing larger cleaning projects, cooking meals that involve more than the microwave, etc.

Mom now knows that Saturday is the day when Sharon (not her real name) arrives. So Mom tries to make sure the house is clean before she gets there. On one hand, it misses the point. On the other hand, however, it’s […]

Taking care of our mom has been my brothers’ and my priority for months now. The question has been how to do it. Mom gets around on her own, though not as quickly as she once did. She takes care of herself, but not with the ease that accompanied her in more youthful days. So how do we help when we know she isn’t crazy about the idea of seeking help or asking for help?

If you’ve followed our journey at all, you know that we have tried having an in-home caregiver visit Mom at her house. In fact, we’ve tried […]