Wow.
dh and I were talking about this the other day. A local situation caused him to say “sometimes I think about us being left with one parent. I’m afraid it’s going to be my mother.”
intold him not to worry. His mother is going into the long term care facility where she put his grandfather and it is 9 hours away. This is because:
1) She has stated that this is what she and his father are going to do.
2) When my mother was spending most of her days caring for my grandmother in gram’s home because that is what mom wanted to do (well, I think she *wanted* to move back in, but that conflicted with being married to my dad....) My mother in law took every opportunity to tell my mother what a terrible burden she was suffering and how it was beyond understanding that she didn’t put her mother in a nursing home because OBVIOUSLY that was the best solution and my grandmother was so unreasonable to let her sacrifice her life.... in spite of my attempts to change the conversation, some of the things she said were absolutely cruel and left my mother teary and speechless.
3) I don’t like her.
4) dh loves her, but he doesn’t like her either.
5) if she can’t afford it (unlikely) we can.
if his siblings disagree, they can make any arrangements they like. We will probably even still send money if needed.
my mother will move in with us if needed/possible (if she needs more intensive medical care than she can get in our home, we will find the best we can nearby or near my brother if the care is better.)
in the extremely unlikely event that my father outlives my mother - and doesn’t commit suicide (i’m Really not sure if he’s joking) he can afford to make whatever arrangements suit him. We both know it will not be living here. His best friends are professional nurses close to my age.
i have no idea what we will do about dh father. Unless he has already moved to assisted living with dh mother, he is likely to insist on living his life unchanged until the day he has a heart attack or stroke, or falls from the roof or into the river and dies because he is alone on a farm 45 minutes from town, has no friends, and leaves his cell phone turned off on his dresser unless he knows he is going somewhere where he might want to make a call. And if you told him that, the response you would be likely to get would be something along the line of “sounds like a plan.”
much like my father’s “I have absolutely no intention of outliving your mother.”