Our youngest son lives out of state and is going through some tough personal times right now. Because of this, I have been thinking about getting him home for the holidays. Naturally when I think about the holidays, I thought how great it would be to also have my parents here. My boys are their only grandchildren. My thoughts about special times like the holidays frequently include the consideration that between my parents ages and my mom's dementia, this may be the last time for... fill in the blank. Two years ago they came for Thanksgiving and I said then I would never have them drive this far again. It is a 12 hour drive from their house to mine. We can do it in 1 day, but it takes them 2. Dad is the only one that can drive, so it is too much now. When we had vacation this summer, my youngest brother was able to pick my parents up and drive them the 6 hours to the vacation destination.
Whenever I'm contemplating something with my parents these days, I e-mail my brothers to get their perspective. It is nice just to be able to have validation and another point of view. The longer I work in long term care, the more I realize how lucky I am to have both brothers involved. My youngest brother pointed out a perspective that I had not thought about before and now I'm trying to figure out what to do. All 3 of us have talked with our parents about moving closer to one of us. Right now, they live 6 hours from my youngest brother, 12 hours from me and about 15 hours from the middle brother. When they retired, we were still traveling with the military and both my brothers were pretty new in their careers with the potential to move. So my parents moved back to Missouri to be close to the then 5 brothers and sisters of my dad who were still living. It made sense then. As they have gotten older and my family and my brothers more settled, we have been talking to them about choosing one location, no-one cares which, and living where one of us would be available to help. My dad is fiercely independent so he does not see the need and has been pretty adamant that they able to take care of themselves where they are.
So my original proposition I ran past my brothers was I would fly my son to the airport close to my parents and he could drive them here for the holidays. Of course that makes 6 days of travel for him. The advice my youngest brother gave me really gave me some food for thought. He feels like our parents choose to live far away from all of the children and one of the consequences of that decision is that we are not able to get together for the holidays and they will then be alone. If I jump through hoops and commit my son to a large part of his vacation getting them here, then I am enabling them to continue in a situation that will at some point result in a huge mess. The plan right now per my dad is for them to remain by themselves where they are until the sh... hits the fan and then I guess the expectation that one of us will come to the rescue. Since the youngest is the closest, I'm sure he feels the pressure that it would be him that would have to respond. Yet due to the current economy, his job situation is the least stable and he is the least likely to be able to have time to respond.
But another part of me, the guilty female part, remembers what I tell all my resident families. We all know there will be a time when this ends and our parents will pass away. When that happens and you look back on what you have done, will you feel like you did all you should have or needed to do? I don't think I would in this case. I keep thinking, it could be my dad's last holidays. The statistics show that a huge percentage of spouses that are caregivers die before their loved ones that have dementia. In fact, one of the caregivers from the support group is now having heart problems. She has been caring for her husband since 2007. What a conundrum with no right or wrong answer.
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