The Preamble
I’ve been taking care of my mother in one way or another most of my life.
For the last 56 out of 67 years, I’ve been negotiating and looking after her emotional well-being and safety, or at least doing the best I could (see: the lost years, when heroin, booze & sex took precedence the best I could do was lie and try to hide it all from her to protect her).
For the last 12 years I’ve managed her legal and financial life.
Eight years ago I took over the rental and upkeep of the condo.
Six years ago, she moved in and I took responsibility for her physical well-being.
This year I’m setting up a trust and documentation on the off-chance I die first, because this is one healthy old lady.
This is not a complaint. I’m happy to do it all. I wouldn’t be alive today if wasn’t for her, and I’m not talking about the whole shooting me out of her vagina part, but the lost years, the part where she did her best to keep me from crashing into a metaphorical and literal flaming brick wall that I seemed intent on crashing into.
Ok, Now You’re Up to Date
At this point, she doesn’t need much from a caregiver.
I need someone to feed her two meals a day, get her showered, dressed, take her out in the wheelchair for ninety minutes a day and play with her. Entertain her. She’s out of her mind, but she still has fun. She is still silly and laughs and craves touch and company.
When we last met to talk about this, I thought I’d found someone perfect, she’d been caring for a friend’s dad. She trained for a day. Then, radio silence. JOSIE’d wound up in a women’s shelter and despite my efforts to work around that, I never heard from her after she said, “Really? That would be great.”
JUDY looked great on paper. Actually, she looked a lot like our weekday aide who we adore, had a lot of experience, and she lives close. She also has an eight-year-old and no childcare, so where Judy goes, Judy’s kid goes. I get that’s a difficult situation, but that wasn’t going to work well for anyone.
SOFINIA seemed good but wasn’t completely truthful about her experience and didn’t care for me showing her how we did things that conflicted with “how they taught us.” She walked out in the middle of her third shift, said I was micromanaging, which I translated to I might be a bitch. It’s possible, I might be a bitch. I might even be a real cunt and a control freak but, I’ve been caring for Mom for a pretty long time (see Preamble, above) and I’ve already made the mistakes. I know what works. Or at least I know what doesn’t.
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