~FIN~ goodbye Mom

My mom died June 7, 2015.  Her cancer had briefly gotten a bit better in April around her 70th birthday, but then it came "roaring" (per oncologist) back over just a week, while she was undergoing chemotherapy.  The last month of her life, she couldn't eat anymore and threw up constantly.  The cancer strangled her digestive system, effectively shutting it off.
She fainted on Memorial Day, falling and breaking her jaw and several of her teeth.  She came home from the hospital after that on TPN, IV nutrition.  An old friend of mine agreed to take my mom's elderly dog for the rest of his life so he lives with her in Rhode Island now.  He was just too much work for someone so ill.
She was on the TPN only a few days.  Finally the doctors had hit upon the right combination of drugs to keep her from constantly vomiting.  On that last day, my husband and I were there at 2 p.m. and she was eating some Italian ice.  She said she felt a bit weak but she had her cane.  She was hardly throwing up.  She had a doctor's appointment in 2 days, to talk about putting in a feeding tube and a gastric drain (she was throwing up stomach bile, as it couldn't drain into her strangled intestines).
I came back at 7 p.m. to hook up the IV nutrition and found her dead--she had been in the middle of putting on her pajamas.  From what I saw and what the paramedics who responded to my 911 call said, it seems like it was a sudden, instant, catastrophic event.  Stroke, heart attack, blood clot?  She did hit her head, but there was almost no blood.  The medical examiner signed off without having to autopsy her so we'll never know for sure.
She was buried with my father's ashes, next to her parents and her mother's parents.

---

The eulogy I wrote:
When I was little, sometimes my parents would leave me at my grandparents’ house for the weekend. There, I’d get to sleep on a camp bed in the living room and the ghost of Mrs. Winters would tuck me in. The reason I slept in the living room is because that’s where the picture of my mom was. I’d be okay with my grandparents, until I saw that picture. Then I would realize my mom wasn’t there with me, and I would cry and cry and hug the frame. That’s how I feel now, every time I open Facebook and there’s my mom’s picture on my wall. The child of 40 years ago, that still lives in me, reacts: My mommy isn’t here! I want my mommy! Only now, there is no telephone to where she has gone. No reassurances that she’ll be here tomorrow and everything is okay. Because she won’t be here tomorrow and right now everything is not okay. 
My mom had her moments, but mostly she was generous and kind. She adopted my friends as surrogate children. One of my friends asked her to make a very difficult cross stitch piece. It took her four months and all she asked for was that my friend buy the colors of embroidery floss she didn’t already have in her vast stash. Her house is filled with quilts of all sizes and colors, items she painted, embroidery, and more. She loved her little dog fiercely, even when his advancing age made him difficult to care for, and it broke her heart to send him to his new, final, forever home two weeks ago (where my friend is spoiling him and loving him for the rest of his life). Her cat was always with her in her last days, on her lap or curled up on the other end of the couch, just watching her. He lives with me now. 
My father’s long illness was horrible for all of us, but she cared for him with dignity as long as she was able and mourned him fiercely when he finally left us forever. My grandma was a difficult woman, but my mom lived with her for years before her death and made sure she had everything she needed. 
And somehow, in between caring for two sick people and making hundreds of quilts and cross-stitch pieces and painted pots, she read voraciously, swapping books with me and visiting the library almost daily as part of her long walks—up to ten miles a day when the weather was good. People would say, “I think I saw your mom walking…” somewhere across town and I’d say “Yup, probably.” She made many friends during those walks, people who also walked, and would join her on one leg of her journey. 
That’s what we all are, in the end. We all walk alone, from birth to death, but people join us along the way. My mom’s path has diverged from ours, but who is to say that it won’t connect again, somewhere on the other side of time? 
This is from King Edward VII’s eulogy: 
Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

---

I keep wanting to tell her things, so I started a Tumblr where I can record the random things I want her to know.

My mom has cancer

My mom has stage-4 ovarian cancer.  I have no time to devote to this blog as it's taking all I have, and more, to give her the care she needs.  She's not terminal at this point; the doctor believes she can live 5 years, but she first has to survive chemo, surgery, and more chemo, which is going to be a battle into next spring. 

I will never take down these pages as long as I believe that my dad's story helps others.  He's been gone almost 7 years and I miss him every day, but I'm glad he's not here to see my mom so very ill.

Hug your parents and tell them you love them.

If you need to reach me, you can e-mail geverabert at either yahoo or gmail.

Thanks for reading.

--Bert

Alzheimer's Aunt?

This is the part of my blog where I lie to you.  Not because I want to, but because I have to protect this person's identity (and not that I want to do that either--I'm all about the brutal honesty).  I'm going to call her my aunt so by process of elimination you know she is probably not my aunt.  We shall call her AA for Alzheimer's Aunt to occasionally save space.
Let's set the stage.
About year ago, Alzheimer's Aunt collapsed at work.  Apparently because she had high blood pressure.  The doctor told her to "avoid stress" so she took that to mean "avoid going to work" and tried to take a 5 month leave of absence...when she was about to retire.  Her place of work did not take that well, and she ended up having to retire immediately.   She was the only person surprised by this.
Now I will take you back, down bumpy ugly memory lane.  My dad retired early too (in hindsight because of his very early stage Alzheimer's) and then once he no longer had the mental stimulation of work, he went downhill very fast.
So Alzheimer's Aunt stopped working.  She stayed home, alone, all day in her house.  She is a hoarder.  If you've seen any of the hoarder shows on A&E or TLC, you know what to expect from that.  Her house has mold in it too.
And, just like my dad in his early, pre-diagnosis days, Alzheimer's Aunt got stranger and stranger.  She started to randomly vomit while eating.  And she didn't run to the bathroom like anyone would if they vomited at the table, she'd just grab a napkin and puke into it.  And it wasn't delicately coughing up a bit of food that went down wrong or tasted bad, spitting it discreetly into a fold of the napkin.
This was full on vomit, it stunk, and pretty much if you were at the table with her, your appetite was ruined.   But if you said anything, like "wow that's gross"  you were the bad guy.  (You, in this case, obviously meaning me.)  This happened at Thanksgiving, it happened at Christmas, it happened in restaurants. (And if you are grossed out reading this, imagine how much grosser it is in person.)
Finally I spoke to my cousin after Alzheimer's Aunt and I were out together and AA vomited all over the table in a restaurant.  AA swears the doctor knows about the vomiting.  Cousin calls, doctor has no clue, but nothing is done to investigate why a grown woman in her 60s suddenly feels the need to puke everywhere like it's no big deal.
All this time, she hasn't been driving, because she's "dizzy" and then she started walking with a cane for the same reason.  The family is basically her slaves when she needs a ride, while her car sits in her driveway unused.  She is supposed to exercise but she's too dizzy to walk, plus the cane.  She lives in a hoard and she can't walk.  And later on (below) she can't see either.
She is also having hygiene issues.  I know you won't believe me, but once she was dirtier than my grandma used to be.  Lank greasy hair, smelly dirty clothes, all sorts of unpleasant bodily odors.  At least my grandma changed her clothes.
One memorable day we had to rush Alzheimer's Aunt to the ER because she was "dizzy" and "couldn't breathe" and she won't call 911 because they will report her hoard to the fire marshal.  Nine hours at Yale ER then and the ER doc says (not to my surprise) that it's a SIDE EFFECT from her BP medicine.
This spring, she said she lost her reading glasses and couldn't read anymore.  We took her to a drug store and she bought a selection of those cheap reading glasses.  But they didn't work for her.  She made an appointment at an eye doctor to get new reading glasses.   The doctor gave her a full exam because she hasn't been in many years and found out she has cataracts.  She walked into the place wanting new glasses and walked out saying "I'm blind."
Now she was blind, dizzy, couldn't walk, and couldn't breathe.  Living in a hoard.  Try to keep track.  I know I'm condensing a year into a single post.
At one point, she did drive somewhere, because of not having a phone (see below) and my cousin witnessed her literally bouncing off parked cars going 5 miles an hour.
The cataract surgeries were both very successful.  And yet she still claimed not to be able to see. (Remember, she went to the eye doctor's initially because she lost her glasses, not because she was having vision problems.  Once the doctor said "cataracts" she went blind instantly.)  The doctor made her new glasses.  She went to get them and claimed she couldn't see the enormous print the doctor held in front of her. It seemed much more likely to us that she couldn't read.
She lost her house phone and her cell phone in the hoard.  After much searching, a variety of cordless and corded house phones were located, all dismantled and broken, with exploded batteries.  The one seemingly functional corded phone did not work, no dial tone, no matter where it was plugged in.  The cell phone charger was finally found behind the stove and a place of honor made for the cell phone and its charger, where it was to live at all times except when being used or when she left the house and took it with her.
She can't read (or can't see), remember.  The ensuing conversation goes something like this:
"Did you pay your phone bill? There's no dial tone anywhere in the house."
"I pay my bills."
"When did you pay it last?"
"I don't know. I paid it."
"Who do you write the check to?"
"I don't know."
"How did you pay it if you can't see?"
"I paid it."
"Do you have ATT?"
"I don't know."
"Where are your paid and unpaid bills?"
"I don't know."
The next week, last week, she had to return to the eye doctor to see if wearing the new glasses had helped.  The eye doc thought maybe she had to get used to them, I think they are tri-focals or something.
The day before the appointment, the call to her goes like this (using the cell phone, since the house phone doesn't work):
"Don't forget about your eye doctor appointment tomorrow."
"Right, I have to get my new glasses."
"No, you got them last week.  You were supposed to be wearing them."
"I am wearing them."
(confusion)
"Ok, I'm coming to get you at 9:30 tomorrow."
"I don't need a ride."
"Who is taking you?"
"I'll walk."  She can't make it to the end of her driveway even with the cane.  And she has no idea where the eye doctor is because every time she gets a ride she makes sure the person driving knows in advance where it is.
"You can't walk.  It's too far and you don't know where it is."
"I'll walk.  I need my new glasses."
"You have your glasses already!"
At the eye doctor, she insists she still can't see.  He immediately sends her back to the eye surgeon who fixed her cataracts.  He says her eyes are fine and there's no reason she can't see.
That night, there's a small family meeting.  During the meeting, the words "dementia" and "Alzheimer's" and the phrase "can't live alone" are liberally strewn about.  My mom and I have thought for months that she was in the beginning stages but we knew if we said anything (family politics) an explosion would happen.
I walked out of that meeting with a lot of thoughts, none of them happy.  I'm worried that, on one hand, my vast experience with Alzheimer's (via my dad and this blog) will be ignored--she's only my "AUNT," not my parent.  On the other hand, I'm equally worried that I'll end up being her caregiver because I haven't got an outside-the-house job and I live closer to her than anyone and I have the experience.  I don't want either of those things to come to pass.
I think a couple of things about her.  I think she might have stomach or throat cancer (hence the puking) that has metastasized to her visual cortex--not only can she apparently not read, she doesn't seem to recognize objects that are right in front of her.  Or that she has dementia of some type and someone it's in both her visual cortex and whatever controls her vomiting when eating.
My mom thinks she has severe mold poisoning, which has some dementia-like symptoms.  And apparently mold poisoning is fairly permanent, once the damage is done.  I thought mold mostly impacted the lungs but some web sites do list other symptoms.
I advocated that she go to a geriatric doctor (not her family practice doctor) and get a full workup including cognitive testing and blood work. I think she needs a barium swallow (I had one once, doctor thought I had cancer because I couldn't stop coughing for 4 months) for the vomiting and an MRI or some other brain scan for her mental symptoms and (hysterical?) blindness.
I can also add in that she's been in severe depression (hence the hoarding) since the death of her husband many years ago, and she's never been treated for the depression or the hoarding.  When I tried to bring that up delicately a few years ago, pointing out that in Hartford there's a place that treats hoarding and OCD, you would have thought I said Alzheimer's Aunt was a child molester or something.  I didn't bring it up again.
I won't be changing the name of this blog--forever it will honor my dad--but I might have new fodder to write about.  Sadly.

---

I dreamed about my dad last night.  In the dream we were in the Yucatan visiting Mayan ruins.  And we were supposed to be in Miami the next day, only we were supposed to DRIVE there--basically from Merida, across the peninsula, up the coast of Mexico and across Texas and Louisiana, and down the Florida panhandle, in less than a day, and I was trying to find someone to fly us there.  And the ruins we visited were so cool, I wish they existed otherwhere than my dream state.  It was a fun dream-cation with my dad.

"I'd rather have Alzheimer's than cancer" Really?

A couple of my friends were over the other day and because we are morbid we were talking about ways to die.  And one of them said, "I'd rather have Alzheimer's than cancer.  At least I wouldn't know I had it."
And that makes me crazy. People say that all the time.  There's that old joke, "I might have Alzheimer's but at least I don't have Alzheimer's." It's not true.  My dad KNEW.  He didn't know the word "Alzheimer's" (he seemed to understand it as if it was a brain tumor--he'd say "this thing in my head, it's killing me") but he knew he wasn't right anymore.  After he died my mom found a note he'd written, a heartbreaking list titled "things I can't do anymore."  Maybe at the very end, when he was burning up from MRSA or VRSA (whichever one he had) and pretty much brain dead, he didn't know, but then again, he didn't know anything at that point.
I argued with my friend for 2 reasons.  One is that, unless you have a brain tumor, you're pretty much YOU until the end with cancer.  You're in terrible physical pain, true, but people can talk to you and you know who they are and everyone can say a proper goodbye.  Not the long drawn out goodbye that's never officially said with dementia.  I have no idea where along the line my dad forgot who I was, but I know it happened.  I became a person who visited him and helped him out, someone he liked, but he had no connection to me.  My mom was the awful bitch who stole his money and kept him prisoner and drove him to places so "they" could torture him.  As opposed to my grandpa, who died of cancer 25 years ago this summer, who knew everyone and everything up to right before he passed on.
Reason two is a huge one: you can get better from cancer.  I know more than one person who is walking around today who had cancer in the past.  My high school friend, when she was finally listened to and diagnosed, was stage 4 ovarian cancer.  They put her in hospice to die.  She gave away her cats, her car, everything she owned.  16 weeks later, the doctors said, "You aren't going to die after all.  Go home." Bewildered, she said, "I have no home anymore, I gave away everything, you told me I was gonna die."  And she had to go live with her parents again.  That was 10 years ago and she's still walking around and is just fine.  There are no Alzheimer's survivors, there are no dementia survivors.  It's an absolute 100% death sentence.  You are more likely to get eaten by a great white and win Powerball on the same day than you are going to recover from Alzheimer's and be 100% fine.

transitioning

Today I was sitting in a restaurant, eating, and a text message came in on my phone. I thought it was my husband responding to an earlier message from me, and it wasn't.  It was from a really good friend of mine, whose adult son has cancer, and the message was to let me know that his time had come, any minute now.  Maybe even as I'm writing this, who knows?  The second part of the message was to ask me to spiritually be part of her son's transition team.  She also asked for my dad's help.
I was sitting there just crying over my food and the waitress came over and though the food was wrong (again, it had already been remade once) and I told her what I'd just learned and she said "Do you need a hug?" and she hugged me.  It was so sweet.
I'm so sad for my friend, but at the same time I am so honored that she took time out from being with her son for the last time to think of me and to invite me in.  And invite my dad!  If there is ever a time in the world to be completely selfish, it's when you're watching someone you love die.  There is no room for anyone else there.  And she let me in.  She asked me in.  I'd go there if I could, but she's hundreds of mile away, and she's got 7 other children plus some grandchildren--no room for me to be there physically, that's for sure.
A transition team is basically anyone who is there, in body or spirit, to help someone transition between worlds.  You could work with women in labor, welcoming their new babies to this world, or with the dying, saying goodbye.
I wrote back and told her of course I'd be there with her in spirit and I assigned my dad and grandma and all the pets and whoever else is up there to welcome her son home with open arms, to bring him into the Elsewhere Bar and teach him what's what.
I'm so sorry for her loss.  Not having any children, I can't imagine the pain of losing one.  But I know how much it hurts to lose a beloved pet, and I'm sure it's 100x worse if it's your human child.  She had sent me a message in the fall saying that he was doing really bad and in a lot of pain, and that he, and everyone else, was praying for his pain to end, for him to die.  I know that feeling all too well, and the combination of relief and grief that will follow upon his death.
(image source)

Dichotomy in Death

No, Dichotomy in Death isn't the newest JD Robb futuristic thriller.  It's the subject of a discussion I've been having on and off via text all day with one of my friends.  Her grandma just died.  Today marks 4 weeks since mine had her (ultimately fatal) stroke (tomorrow is the 4 week anniversary of her death) so death and dead grandmas are still a sensitive subject for me.
My friend's grandma came to death via a different path than mine.  She had cancer and supposedly had it beat, but then she started acting strangely, as if she had some dementia starting.  My friend's mom thought that the cancer had metastasized to her brain.  She started to lose weight at an alarming rate because she stopped eating.  A couple of days ago, they had to bring a hospice nurse into her home (she lived with one of her children) because she was too sick and weak to be moved to a facility, and now she's gone.
And my friend is facing the same quandary that we went through with my dad and my grandma.  That you love someone, and wish she would stay with you forever.  That's the selfish part, of course, because at the same time, this person you love is sick and suffering and in pain.  You want the pain to end for both your sakes.  So you feel bad for wanting the person to die, and selfish for wanting them not to die.
But when the pain inevitably ends in death, you continue to feel horrible.  Because you are glad the pain is over and the suffering has stopped.  And you are sad, so sad, that your loved one is gone.
And of course my friend had the other side of the coin in a different way.  She had a few days to say goodbye to her grandma and know her grandma heard and acknowledged it for what it was.  My grandma was gone when I said goodbye.  Maybe her spirit was hovering in that hospital room and heard but I don't think so--it fled the night before, trying to fulfill my mom's wish to find her mother dead peacefully in bed.  And with my dad, well, from day to day we never knew if he really understood who we were and we didn't know when if ever he'd die so how to say goodbye in that case?  The last time I saw him, about 15 hours before he died, I told him to go and said goodbye but he was so far gone, stage 4 Alzheimer's, brain damage, MRSA burning through him out of control, that he didn't know.  He didn't hear me either. 
That's why I can't be an atheist.  People have to go somewhere. If energy can't be created or destroyed, they have to be around in some form.  They have to know their children and grandchildren and loved ones have conflicting feelings about their deaths.  They have to still be here.  Otherwise, what is the point?

The Last Time

This morning I was thinking about two different friends of mine, both facing losing their moms to cancer.  At least they get this holiday season with their moms, and they know it's the last one, is the direction my thoughts went, and I started composing some sort of holiday blog post in the back of my mind.
And when I got home from driving and musing, and logged onto Facebook, I saw to my dismay that one friend's mom had succumbed to her cancer only 2 weeks after her diagnosis.  Last year was their last holiday together and they didn't know it.  Her mom was healthy and fine in mid-November (or thought she was).
You don't know when it will be the last time.  The last time you see someone, talk to them, celebrate a holiday, hoist a pint, laugh or cry or cringe at a movie together.  It is worse when a healthy person gets taken in an accident of course, as there is no warning, but as my friend just found out to her sorrow, a mom can be fine on Thanksgiving and dead of cancer by Christmas.
When my dad got diagnosed, the doctors estimated, based on his age and how far his Alzheimer's had progressed, that he would live approximately 11 years.  How GOOD those years might have been, they didn't say.  Just that he should have made it to about 75 years old.  So at that last Christmas, the one we didn't know was the last, in 2006, we thought we had 8 or 9 more years, when in truth it was less than a year.  
Ironically, every year my mom thinks it's her mother's last Christmas (she's 93 now) and every year Grandma keeps going like the Energizer bunny.  We're almost numb to thinking about her not being here anymore, to the point that when it does happen, we're going to be in total shock.
I guess we all know somewhere deep inside that anyone and anything can be taken from us without warning. And maybe we should live like that, never going away mad or holding a grudge.  Always kissing our loved ones goodbye and telling them they are loved.  But we don't.  We get angry.  We slam doors.  We leave without saying goodbye.  Everyone would like to think they are immortal and so are all their loved ones.

I believe that as long as someone remembers us, our memory is immortal, and our souls hang out in the Elsewhere Bar and do whatever needs to be done in the next life.  But Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia can steal away even that breath of life, taking those memories forever.
I can't offer a solution.  I'm not a god or a doctor, just a person who has lost so much, who grieves to see her friends in similar sorrow.  
Love who you have while you have them, and remember them fondly every day after that.

death of an uncle, grandma is crazy

My grandmother's brother died on Monday. He had a brain tumor, similar to the one afflicting Senator Kennedy, and got it around the same time as the senator.
I'm not sure exactly what happened to my uncle. He had been in bad shape as the tumor progressed, and he was placed in a nursing home in the last few weeks. The nursing home moved him to hospice about a week before he died. But there is so much denial and misinformation floating around in the family--supposedly the hospice was temporary and he was getting better and about to be sent home? That makes no sense to me. And everyone seems so absolutely shocked that he died...a man in his 80's who had been fighting a brain tumor for over a year, maybe even two years.
Seeing my grandmother's reaction to her brother's death makes me really question her sanity and yet I can find no signs of dementia in her, unless she is progressing in a completely different fashion than my dad. She complained throughout the wake about "how hard" it was for her (to sit in the chair? To see her brother dead?) and as usual made it all about her. She refused to come to the funeral; my mom and I went as her emissaries. Nothing I loves better than a high Catholic funeral mass on a Friday afternoon to raise my spirits, followed by a military/Naval funeral rite at a windy cold grave site.
I wasn't at all close to my grandmother's brother--I maybe saw him once a year. His children are all 10-15 years older than me and their children 15-20 years younger than me, so I'm not close to them either. I wouldn't recognize his grandchildren if they were seated near me in a restaurant. I couldn't pick them out of the wake/funeral crowd for the most part. So I didn't grieve or anything, although I cried just because of all the emotion in the air, and being so damn empathic in situations like that.
The most noticeable symptom of my grandma's craziness (for lack of a better word) is an utter absence of hygiene. She doesn't change her clothes (including underwear) more than once a week unless my mom forcibly takes the clothes. She now only "washes" once a week. I use the term "washes" loosely as she doesn't take a bath or shower, just wipes the "dirty" parts of her body. I can't go more than 2 days without washing my hair/body because I feel disgusting, I know I smell disgusting, and it's physically uncomfortable. I don't know how she does it. She never, ever washes her hair, which is plastered to her head with grease and is enough to make a person want to vomit. My mom and I have said we'd wash her hair in the sink or take her to a hairdresser once a month to get it washed and she refuses. I said I'd get her dry shampoo (like powder) and she refuses to use it. How do you reason with a person who is filthy? I hate sitting next to her at meals.
I've spoken to some friends who are nurses and they've made suggestions to try to help my grandma. What would be ideal would be to have someone come in once a week and scrub her head to toe. But Medicare won't pay for that. She is utterly non compliant in all medications, so even if we can get her diagnosed with depression or something, she won't take the pills assigned to her. She refuses to take any medicine because it makes her "sick" and gives her "die rear" (how she insists diarrhea is pronounced) and makes her "dizzy".
Her other personal habits are just as annoying & gross. She makes herself coffee, pours milk into it, drinks a sip, then leaves the almost full cup on the counter. A few hours later she microwaves it, drinks another sip, leaves it on the counter. Eventually, after a day or so, she has finished the cup. She pours new coffee into the filthy cup and starts the cycle again. I want to gag when I see her doing it. If my mother dumps out the putrid coffee and washes the cup my grandma gets angry. She's got all these rules which she invented. The other day I was over there mid-afternoon, downstairs with my mom playing video games. My grandma said she wanted bread and cereal (the pantry is in the basement)--no hurry. An hour later she's at the top of the stairs yelling she needs her cereal and bread NOW! Why? So she can lay out her breakfast for the next day...at 4 p.m. the day before. I don't get that at all. My dad did it too, only he didn't lay his out until around 9 p.m. which isn't bad. But it's not like it takes forever to get out a spoon, bowl and box of cereal in the morning, esp. if you are retired and have no pressing engagements.
I went for a long walk yesterday with a friend whose mom is in a nursing home and getting dementia and we talked a lot about how hard it is to deal with loved ones who no longer have any logic to how they do things. My friend paid her mom's rent for 18 months because her mother insisted she was going to come home--even though the doctor said it wasn't happening. She took in her mother's pets and visits her mom daily, only to be showered with invectives for never visiting and not caring. Now her mother is demanding an expensive funeral spread over 2 states (she is no where near dying, just making her own plans). The mother has no money or life insurance policy to pay for a such a thing, and her daughter is already in debt from paying her mother's bills and partially paying for the nursing home for 2 years--and the nursing home is coming after her for MORE money, even though there is none.
These are the real stories of dementia--add in my friend whose grandpa has dementia and MRSA and there are 3 of us just in my very small social circle--we are approximately 30, 40 & 50 years old.
The government so far hasn't helped regular middle-class people like my friend and me (both of us unemployed). But they give AIG billions of dollars and AIG pays out hundreds of millions in bonuses to the people who ran their business into the ground.
I'm so bitter.