The state of Me: I’m 33 years old, I have a 10 year old son, been divorced for a long time now and the boy and I are currently living in sinful bliss with my boyfriend of not quite 4 years. Well, i’m sinning, my son is not. I left a 10 year career in management to come to law school and things are really looking up for our little family. We’ve got a fantastic plan for the future, we’re comfortable and doing well.
The state of My Parents: Dad is 72 and mom is 68. Dad has always been healthy and comes from hearty stock, long livers on that side of the family, he smoked for 50 years, but then quit cold turkey and never looked back. Mom has always been fragile, lots of mental and emotional problems, prone to depression and anxiety, been smoking since she was 16 and alcoholic since I don’t know when (a quiet evening drinker, went by me, unnoticed for a long time). But don’t get me wrong, she’s a lovely person, everyone adores her.
Couple years ago mom broke her hip sitting in a chair and was subsequently diagnosed with multiple myloma (bone cancer). She’s been undergoing chemo and radiation ever since and also has osteoporosis on top of it. As a result of these conditions one of her legs is a couple inches shorter than the other, she can’t walk more than several steps without sitting and recently the cancer resurfaced in her elbow - we found out after she broke her arm picking up a jar of coffee grounds. Needless to say, my healthy hearty Dad is under a lot of pressure taking care of the house, my mom and the pets.
Recently my Dad was diagnosed with Prostate cancer, but luckily in very early stages. So this is where I’m at right now - I have an internship that I work at all day every thursday and friday, I also have just about a ton of work to do for classes and the journal, and a cub scout with activities once a week or so and sometimes all weekend long, but when my mom called and told me my dad was going in this thursday for prostate surgery I didn’t even pause before telling her I would be there (at 4am on thursday morning) to take him in, pick him up and stay with her while he’s at the hospital.
Luckily I enjoy being with my parents, I really like their company, which was not always the case, especially with my mom. I also get a great amount of satisfaction from helping out, my mom gets so excited when i come over and clean the house, Dad is not the best cleaner. And I think they both feel more secure when they know i’m there and like they did a good job raising me.
My parents are both very intelligent people, but the problems I fear in the future arise from the following: First my dad is probably a hoarder and my mom is anxiety prone and physically impaired, their house is A MESS and it’s pretty big too. Secondly they have NO money. They are basically living on social security and my moms small retirement. Neither of them ever saved anything and I cannot see how they went through their whole working careers without ever putting money away for retirement. So what is going to happen? Am I going to be spending increasing amounts of time going there to help take care of them and their house, and at what cost to my studies, my work etc.? Am I going to end up supporting them financially? What if one of them gets really sick? If I knew I was going to be very wealthy I would not worry about it, but unfortunately my and my boyfriends plans for the future are closely intertwined and involve sharing our money but not supporting my parents - whether or not i’ll be spending a lot of money on my parents has been a huge source of tension between us because it really could affect our future but I don’t see how I could ever refuse or fail to help them out if i have the means to do it.
These questions sit in the back of my mind and i’m not sure there’s any way to plan for what might happen. So tonight i’ll go home and have dinner with my boyfriend and son, then i’ll drive an hour to my parents house and spend the night so I can get up at 4:30am and get them to the hospital where I will wait with my mom, maybe get breakfast and then sit with my dad probably for most of the day until they let him come home. I’m thinking of what condition my dad will be in and what they’ll need when he comes home, so when I asked my mom whether he’ll be in bed or on his feet and what he’ll be able to do she says “I don’t know, they didn’t really say. We’ll see” I’m thinking what!!!!! she can’t walk and only has one useful arm, my dad does everything, cooking, cleaning, helping her get dressed and taking care of the pets - so what does she expect to happen if he can’t do all that stuff? I will spend the next two days not studying, not writing my note, not working on cases but being a parent to my parents.
I just have mixed feelings about whether that is good or bad, or maybe it’s good but too soon. We’ll see how tomorrow goes.
