<p>Will kind of give you a history of what we did with my Mom before Katrina, which forced her into an ALF.</p>
<p>Mom lived in the two story house most of us grew up in, even after Dad died in 1991. She was in a wheelchair due to obesity and multiple fractures, but was able to cook and take a shower. She had a large bathroom with a step in shower which she entered using a walker. She would balance on the walker during the shower, hang her wash cloth over the bar. Periodically, Medicare would allow her to get home health and physical therapy in home, and when Mom asked the doctor to renew it, his hands were tied because of Medicare rules. It was frustrating to watch her make so much progress, where she was even out of the wheelchair, walking down the hallway with her walker, only to regress back to her previous state once the Medicare provided physical therapy stopped. Such a waste of money, I thought, to stop care just because a dated timeline had been reached.</p>
<p>My sister and I used to do her grocery shopping, and would run laundry while we were there. We’d bring up the dried clothes for her to fold and would help her change the sheets.</p>
<p>When my nephews got to be college aged, and went to the local university, they moved in with Mom to have a place to study, come and go as they pleased, practice downstairs with their band, and they had a very close relationship with Mom. She never slept, and they’d come in from a gig at 3 in the morning and sit in the front room talking with her. They picked up take out to share for dinner with her. And of course, she loved to cook for them. I don’t think they helped much in the way of chores, being college age boys, but they provided much needed companionship. They did not do doctor appointments and such, so the sisters still did that and the laundry and the grocery shopping. However, the grandsons were high school wrestlers, and they actually would carry Mom, wheelchair and all, down the stairs to our car to bring her to the doctor.</p>
<p>The house was falling down around her. Mom had gone through most of Dad’s life insurance money. And brother’s MIL was a real estate agent and anxious to get a commission from our big two story house in what was now a prime neighborhood. So, we sold the house, for cash, to a neighbor, who very generously gave us six months to find Mom a new house. Her wheelchair bound state was quite an issue, as I needed to find a house with wide enough doors, handicap accessible bathroom, or at least in a state that I could reasonably renovate it to that condition.</p>
<p>After about four months, I found a one story house with an attached two car garage, a bathroom with a stand alone shower, and I grabbed my checkbook and put an offer in right away. I hired a local carpenter to modify the bathroom to wider doors, a wider step in shower, and replaced all carpet with wood floors, to ease her wheelchair. I took a leave of absence from my job, without pay, to act as general contractor on the project, overseeing all work, hiring subcontractors, buying and picking up materials, and checking in on Mom at the old house in the meantime. I found a guy that installed wheelchair ramps, which I placed on all entrances to the house. </p>
<p>Finally, in January 2005, on Mom’s birthday, we moved her into her customized new house. It was great. I could pull my car into her garage, wheel Mom up to the car, help her into the front seat, and bring her to the doctor. She could wheel out onto the back porch and enjoy the beautiful yard, and wheel out to the front yard, where we had a nice fenced in courtyard for the grandchildren to play in. Her old lawn man came to the new house to cut her grass, and sister and I continued on with buying her groceries. I even started her back up on Meals on Wheels at the new location.</p>
<p>We intended Mom to live in this house until she was too ill to stay there herself. After my Daddy died, I tried to move her into an independent senior apartment. It would have been affordable, she would have had her meals provided, and would have had companionship. But she would have none of it. </p>
<p>Only when Katrina hit and she was forced by Mother Nature to leave her home did she wind up in Assisted Living, where she enjoyed a new life with friends, activities, field trips out of the facility, and even medical care/physical therapy all on site. It was quite expensive and we used the proceeds from the sale of our childhood home to finance this, and eventually, we sold her custom house to pay the rent when she ran out of the leftover cash from the childhood home.</p>
<p>Until her death this month, we still provided this for our Mom. We were able to stretch out funds by applying for and receiving aid and attendance benefits from the VA because my father had served in Korea. We saved VA and Social Security payments until they were enough to pay her ALF rent, and the other months, the children all put in together to pay the rent. She didn’t need much outside of her rent. Just phone bill, and prescription med copay. Her Medicare and supplement paid most of her medical bills, and the facility provided her meals and laundry. We’d buy her clothes for her birthday, mouthwash, shampoo, toiletries she may have needed, but other than that, all she needed was her bingo cards and her friends and visits from her family. </p>
<p>My brother said at her funeral last week that Mom was really happy in her last years. He lived in the city where she evacuated to. That she had friends and a full life, despite living in “one of those places”. She no longer relied on her children and grandchildren checking up on her, bringing her to the doctor, buying her groceries. Someone was there to help her bathe, but other than that, she could dress herself, get to the toilet, and wheel down the hall in her wheelchair for the day. She was never in her room. Her phone was used for late night calls to elder relatives who shared her insomnia and lived in other parts of the country.</p>
<p>While my mother was never willing on her own to leave her home, her time in the ALF was probably the happiest she had been since she lost my Daddy 22 years ago.</p>
<p>Good luck with your parents, and remember, what you do will serve as a lesson to how your children treat you. My mother and father both took care of their parents when they grew older and became widows, and it was from them that I learned that no matter what the financial cost and personal sacrifice, it is the least we can do to repay our parents for all they did for us.</p>
Unless he has significant memory loss or cognition problems and won’t know the difference. It just seems so demeaning and undignified for him…</p>