Candidalias

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Grandparents, aging, and the realities of life...

Grandma B is a wonderful woman... Christian, Artist, DAR (Daughter of the American Revolution). She is strong willed, tough, and a "take no prisoners" kind of person. She loves, in her own stiff sort of way, and thinks often of others. She likes craft fairs, and figurines, and animals in their natural habitat. She takes little ones by the hand and explains the wonders of God's creation while holding little creepy crawlies for those who are loath to touch them.

She is also 93... and loosing her balance...

She has fallen so many times and hit her head so often that she just can't be alone anymore... so we as a family are trying to decide what is best for her...

The assisted living place where she lives would like to move her into the nursing home end of the facility and sell her apartment and move on with things...

we worry that if she has to stay in the nursing home that she will just give up and die... (Himself says that if it ever comes to him having to be in a nursing home, he'll just wonder off into the woods some winter day and die of hypothermia, to which Welly growled "Nobody is EVER putting YOU in a nursing home!")

(Mind you, I am sure there is a nice nursing home out there somewhere, and the assisted living place grandma lives in is very nice and they take good care of people. But they are overall creepy places and I, too, would rather die than have to live in one.)

So we sit and talk, what does she want... on her good days she wants to go home to her apartment. On her bad days she wants to be in the nursing home...

We can't help but think she will live longer in her apartment, if we can find enough of us to watch her.

I'm available weekdays, my brother-in-law on weeknights (though he isn't so helpful in the mundane things, he would be a wonder in an emergency), her daughters for the weekends, and maybe her son and daughter-in-law could take a weekend a month... My kids even want to help (Bowie even volunteered to drop out of school, get his GED and then take care of his great-grandma... which I quickly vetoed... and so did everyone else at the table!) But they are old enough and mature enough to take her on for a couple of hours on a weekend...

and I do mean "take her on" because she can be a cantankerous old woman when she gets a mood on, and she is very set in her ways...

I think this could be a rallying point for the family- to bless her in her final days/months/years and for us to be blessed by her. but then again... When she moved into the place it sparked a family feud (She had a small fortune in antiques that she gave away to family members, some that she promised to multiple members of the family, then she moved and told the family to just pick out what they wanted ... it wasn't pretty. Some family members didn't talk for years afterward... and they are now all on speaking terms again...)

So the realities of life move in on us... not only do we have to work this out with the assisted living place, but with grandma, her children, and us (the grandchildren who live closest)...

And in the midst of it is the sibling rivalry between K and D (oldest and youngest daughters) and the pain of watching your mother slowly die.

I am praying that God's will is done, in spite of us all...

May your decisions be bold and faithful today!