MORE BIZARRENESS FROM PERSONAL LIFE. WHAT FUN. LIVING WITH MUMMY.
on 11/25/2008 at 08:43 AM
I do hope you are not in Falmouth Cornwall, my old next door person is proprietor of a care giver company, and has a skinny she kid, she is a witch too, or is it coincidence?? sorry you are stuck in the former UK, Ive just escaped, It has snowed in Ontario too, just like it used to.
Posted by Chris Edwards
11/25/2008 at 10:58 PM
Hi Chris,
No. We’re in a village just outside Winchester.
Cold and damp this week and some weak sun, which actually suits me well since I lived in the desert of So,Calif. for so long. Makes a change. Besides, this olde house was built in the 1920s and has no central heat (storage and electric floor heaters) and NO air cond.
OUCH that last. Can get fairly warm in an upstairs bdroom. But this last summer wasn’t bad at all due to global cooling.
Cheers and much good health and good luck in Canada.Hi, Winchester, pretty town, have you been to stockbridge? really pretty and great if there is a summer in 09, dont use the gas station there probably still £1.40 a liter!!
Posted by Chris Edwards
11/26/2008 at 07:11 AM
Peiper - think kindly of me as I am about to go down that road too. My sister (oldest) and brother (younger one) got a POA when my mom had her pacemaker put in (guess all thought that she’d bought the farm, no such luck) - in 1993. Hello, here we are in 2008 and guess what - they (sister and brother) are dead and mom ticks on. And since my oldest brother fled the US (Canada, island off BC) and the other sister is bat crazy - guess who all the ‘responsibility’ is falling onto?
You guessed it the youngest who stupidly thought by virture of the birth order - she’d be long gone before I had to answer the call. I now have the (joy) of managing the family plot (did I also mention that the oldest member of the Uncle’s family, also died last year?!? - and yes, if you can’t guess the patriarchal side of my family dies young - which means we are all ticking time bombs) and now ‘checking’ on her has also fallen to me.
I (can’t believe it, myself) even considered offering to have her move in with us. Thankfully, she hates me enough to have headed that one off at the pass - ‘I just can’t leave my friends and doctors’ - bless her for that. I feel angry and guilty all at the same time - and really, really angry at the older two for not even giving a damn.
A Civil War soldier assigned to Texas after the War once said, ‘I will take it a might rough, if God doesn’t count this time as time spent in Hell’ - it sums up how I feel to have to cater to someone who has treated me horribly my entire life - and at 92 still does.
I keep hoping that this will be one of my ‘deeds’ for me to get to Heaven.
Peiper, a simple question for you: So say Social services does find that the situation is unacceptable… what happens to you and your wife? Really, what power does the UK health system and government have over you? What do they do if you both say, “Screw this.” and head back to the United States?
Sometimes thinking these things through to their logical conclusion can leave you stunned with the realization that you’re in a lot more powerful situation than the powers-that-be would like you to notice.
Hi Tiger.
Well, social services pretty good people, the ones we have met anyway.
It was really the one young woman who was here and reported us to SS. She works for a Care agency. The agency is profit and not free, except to ppl say like the mil who have spent down their savings to a certain level. Then Social Services picks up the tab.There have been reports, valid sadly, of mistreatment of helpless older people. So SS can not ignore any report and has to do a follow up and check. We made it clear that they, SS, were welcome here any time they felt like stopping by and they didn’t even have to call first if they had a real concern. But as I said, we got a clean bill of health.
If someone is actually suspected of, and there is physical proof of abuse, I suppose they can bring legal action.
My wife and her mother were always close. There was never any friction between the two, and so the wife is gonna stick it out to the end. The problem is, we haven’t a clue when the end is coming. The old lady just keeps on ticking. Meanwhile, I honestly believe it’s taking a huge toll on my wife, and I’ve no option but to watch it all happen.
It’s only made worse by the fact that I have a total and unforgiving dislike of the old crone.I used to think that it would be fairly easy taking care of someone you really had no care for, because you could care less what the heck happens to em. But as time goes on, you think, good grief Charlie Brown, I’ve spent Xyears of my life on this wasted breather when I could have been living my own damn life. And so you resent the person you dislike even more.
As I have said in the past, hoping I don’t offend anyone who deeply cares for a family member of old age, the problem is that they suck the life from the living like a vampire.
Wife and I have been together (mostly happy actually) for 40 years. 38 of those married.
Impossible to desert even if I wanted to. Which of course I do not.I can well understand Canada’s refusal (or at the least making it impossible) for older ppl to migrate to Canada unless they have health ins. and no serious old age problems that might put a drain on the Canadian public. And they are correct to do so.
Peiper: Thanks for the answers.
You just go on being really good to that wife of yours so she can enjoy the “living life” part with you, while she has to deal with the drudgery of the situation involving her mother.
You two’ll get through this together.
11/26/2008 at 10:44 AM
