AGING PARENTS

Tell Beth hi from us.

Scott I hope it works better than you're fearing, it sounds like you are a generous and loyal person who feels for his family, and ultimately that makes a better life than an asshole who's able to cut people off. But it comes at a cost.

I feel these posts. My siblings and I talked and none of us wanted to move, we all like where we are (and much love to Rochester, but if I wanted to live there I wouldn’t have left). Having my folks here does still restrict us, in the sense that my wife and I were tentatively talking about moving elsewhere in a few years and now obviously that is on hold. But we do love our current home and community, so staying longer is ok.

As I grapple with these move logistics part of me is like, we shoulda just let them stay where they are. But I know that’s not good either.

best wishes to yall and yr families <3

My uncle died the night before last. Throat cancer got too hard to endure and he applied for MAID and went through with it. He was 70. He didn’t tell my mom he was sick, she just got the news after he’d passed. No funeral or service or anything.

Felt a little vindictive, but he was always the odd uncle. He wasn’t close to my mom or her other brothers. I always liked him, he was the arrested development uncle, shared his comics with me when I was 8, got me interested in Talking Heads when I was 10.

My mom isn’t showing any signs of grief, she never really got on with him. She was more piqueish herself about my health over the phone. “Smoking is how you get throat cancer.” I know, mom, I know.

Still, I’m like “wow I’m halfway between age 20 and dead at age 70.” My mom and stepfather are getting pretty old. By default I assume I’m the one who will need to live with them when they need it, I’m the gay one, my brothers all have wives and families.

I’ve had a tentative plan to move out west to be closer to my brothers and my mom, the plan is now less-tentative. I think I’m gonna be a good care-child? I’d like to be. Anyway. Sad to lose an uncle. First of my mom’s generation to go.

Sorry to hear that indeed -- and I get this sense of planning and wondering, though it's at best very vague for me still. One of my mom's siblings died of a heart attack some years back, nobody was close to him -- a classic fuckup, being blunt, but I hope wherever he was at gave him some peace. The real loss was my dad's younger brother and only sibling out of nowhere in 2015; the fact that it's almost been a decade now and my dad's the only one of his core family left is very strange to think about.

I think I’m gonna be a good care-child?

This is something I've resolved too, even tho it wasn't a role I ever particularly planned on. Not that there were really any plans, which maybe would have been good if there were, but you can't force these things. Until about 6 months ago I think my dad's plan was "We stay where we are until we die." But subsequent events persuaded him otherwise, and now we have actual moving dates on the calendar. I don't have any exact expectations of what it will be like to suddenly live near my nearly-80-year-old parents after 30-plus years of NOT living near them, but I've just kind of decided I'm willing to do whatever that is.

Sorry about your uncle. My dad's brother died a few years ago, the first one of that generation for either of my parents (they both have/had two siblings). He was the youngest of my aunts/uncles but also the unhealthiest for decades (chronically overweight, smoker, addiction issues, COPD). My parents and the rest of their siblings all seem poised at the moment to make it into their 80s, but obviously anything can happen at this point. I've become accustomed to reading lots of obituaries of people famous and otherwise who died younger than my parents are already. On one hand it can seem a little crazy to be going to so much effort and expense to get my folks moved because we all know that at a likely maximum we're looking at 10 years at the outside. If they both keeled over tomorrow, I think they'd be as relieved as anything at not having to deal with continuing to get older. But as long as they're here, we'll do what we need to.

Big love to you both

Also going to see my dad next weekend, he’s been end-of-lifing for five years now, I feel oddly like this will be my last visit. Goddammit!! Navigating age is a psychological part-time job

Good luck, hope it's good time.

Dad has made it to 97, but he’s now in hospital receiving end of life care and probably won’t make it to the end of the week. When someone you love reaches such an advanced age it feels almost greedy or selfish to wish for more - but however old, it never seems enough once the end of the road is in sight.

I'm so sorry to hear this.

97 years, that is really something to celebrate <3

Wow @ 97. I'm sorry he is reaching the end, best thoughts to your family. That's sort of inconceivable to me. My mom is 77, it's hard for me to imagine another 10 years much less 20.

Mom has mostly not been duped by scams because she often asks me to look at things first or googles then first.

Then yesterday, has dresses for sale on Poshmart, and gets an email formatted so poorly it was obviously fake, saying her dress sold and they needed her banking info.

Nevermind the fact that the website itself showed no sale on it, and the site tells you never to give your bank info to buyers, she clicked on the link, proceeded to give these people all of her banking info, and only realized it was a scam when they asked her for $200 to verify her account.

Now she has to cancel her debit card AND get a new checking account number. I really hope this is not a sign of a mental decline because she's never been foolish like that before. And if she gets cleaned out, it'll impact us both.

And to report it, just now, she juxtaposed two digits and called a scam impersonator instead of her bank.

Praying she's just brain farting today because I really don't have the energy to become her POA agent

Yeah my mom fell for a scam a year back that started with a fake iPhone alert, proceeded to have her call a phone number and told her she need identity fraud protection, and then in this case asked my mom to drive to a convenience store with a bitcoin atm to make a deposit.

Fortunately we caught her before the last part.

But I think it wasn't cognitive impairment here as much as confusion followed by shame. And the scammers knew how to prey on the shame.

trying to explain to my mother why she can't just cash a check made out to my deceased father in her own bank account is like explaining tax codes to kindergartners. i gave up after a half hour.

My project continues: After months of effort by everyone — especially my dad, who made packing up their house basically a full-time job for about four months — I have successfully moved my parents' stuff down to a rental house about a mile from me. Step 2 is actually moving them. I'm going to fly up next weekend and drive back down with both of them. This will be ... interesting. My sister is also moving here, which is great. But it also means I'm suddenly going to be living in the same city with most of my immediate family, after not even living in the same state with any of them for most of the last 30 years. Huh.

The move won't be complete until they buy a house here, which they can't do until they sell their current house in western NY. A lot of change for people who are turning 78 and 80 this year.

wild amount of work - glad your folks have you and your sister, but wow that sounds like a huge undertaking. my only advice is - leave breathing time for you. but it's a good thing you're doing!