The Backstory
(March 20, 2024)
I know, I know, they always say the road to great reward is difficult, or requires great sacrifice, or is fraught with peril. That might be from O Brother, Where art thou? But still, you get the picture. Life can be hard. But how, exactly, did I get here? How did I come to be living and caring for my 92-year-old mother? It’s a lifelong story, really, but I will try to tell it in a couple of pages.
I was born in 1973 in Southern California. At the time, my mom was 42 and my dad was 43, past the age that was believed to produce a viable baby at that time, but nevertheless they decided to have me. I had three siblings, aged 20, 18, and 16, or something like that. They were nearly all out of the house—two were away in college and my sister was would also leave for Colorado before I turned two, leaving me as a form of only child. My dad was a college counselor (formerly high school teacher) and my mom was a stay-at-home-mom who soon became the author of a book about having a baby over age 40.
I had a wonderful childhood. My parents adored and doted on me. And my siblings (although from afar) spoiled me as well. My childhood became a bit odd when I was about seven years old and my dad suffered a heart attack and decided to stop counseling. After what seemed like very little discussion, he and my mom decided to sell and liquidate everything to move to Santa Barbara County to build their dream house. They, together with my aunt, cousin, and 75-year-old grandma, began construction on their 7,000 square foot communal ranch home in the Santa Ynez Valley. The real estate market at the time was incredibly volatile, with rates at an all-time high. They spent years constructing the perfect home and when it was finally done, had begged, borrowed, and all but stolen so much money that they were forced to sell at a fraction of the home’s worth (before we had really even had a chance to live there). The experience resulted in my mom writing yet another book, this time about having it all and losing it.
We moved into a much smaller, less fabulous and famous (I had become quite popular with my school friends) home close by within the same school district, and other than the crazy stories I had collected, my life continued largely in the same vein. I was happy, well-adjusted, studious, curious, and loved. My parents took on new roles as historians, writers, and publishers, something they continued to do for thirty or more years. Somewhere in there, my dad needed a five-way heart bypass and pacemaker, and my mom also needed a pacemaker for atrial fibrillation. I went off to college at UCLA, and never really returned home to Santa Barbara County again. I began a series of many careers, which included being an elementary and high school teacher, paramedic firefighter, grant writer, newspaper reporter, small retail wine business owner, and finally, technical writer. In 1999, I met my husband and moved to the Gold Country of California.
Over the next few years, my husband and I started a family and began raising our two boys in our small and beautiful city. We enjoyed road trips, and often visited my mom and dad, who still resided in my childhood home. My boys were young and impressionable and loved spending time with their grandparents, and my parents both had pacemakers and I wanted them near, so I was able to convince my mom and dad to move to our city in around 2006. It was difficult to get them to uproot their lives and all their possessions after almost 30 years over age 70, but they did it and began their new life here in the Gold Country, in the very home where I now sit writing this—full circle.
It has been a full 20 years since then. My mom and dad created new lives for themselves here. They helped raise my boys, reading to them, teaching them about nature, and playing with them after school most days. My dad researched and read and learned new things, and my mom wrote and read and talked to her core group of friends, just as they always had. They played Monopoly games which seemed to go on for years. And my boys grew up to be smart and beautiful.
My parents aged gracefully as well for many years, all things considered. Then one day in 2019, before COVID, my husband and I and the kids were vacationing in Cabo when we received a call that my father had been gardening in his yard and had tripped over a tree trunk and broken his hip. We quickly rushed home to help coordinate his care, which included a hospital stay and then months in a rehab facility. Things never were the same after that. My dad, aged almost 89, eventually came home from rehab. At first, he welcomed his physical therapy and worked on walking and moving around, but gradually over about a year or so, he became less interested in moving and more dependent on my mom. My father, while not a large man, was heavy and muscular, and his caregiving was difficult for my mom. The stress and fatigue took a toll on her health. She lost a lot of weight and was struggling to cope with his continued falls and declining condition.
Eventually, in 2021, my mother and I made the difficult decision that my father could no longer live in their home. We had researched all sorts of other options (including $7,000 a month retirement homes (too expensive), a VA facility (long waiting list), or various options for selling and moving, but due to his declining health and the realization that he would never return home again, we chose a home only a block from my mom, where she could visit him daily, and one that was covered by Medi-Cal (basically free). The board-and-care facility we chose was the same one, in fact, where he had stayed for his rehab. My parents were able to celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary while my dad was in the facility, but my father never really adjusted to his new life. He complained about the noise; he complained about his roommates; he complained about the food; he complained about his caregivers. Mostly, he was angry. He was mad at me for moving him there. He was mad at my mom for abandoning him. At one point, he called us both over and over again in the middle of the night for several weeks, begging us to bring him home. “Pick me up,” he would whine. It was awful. Mostly, I think he was just very angry at himself for getting old and getting to the state where he could no longer walk, or eat, or go to the bathroom by himself. This was a very very hard time for my mom. She had such a difficult time telling him no, but I know she knew that he was killing her, too.
On June 3, 2021, all of my family had flown in from all over California and the U.S. and gathered at my home for my son’s graduation from high school—he was to give a speech as Valedictorian. After two weeks of choosing not to eat (my father had a DNR and had chosen no resuscitation or feeding tube), at around 9 p.m., my father finally gave up the fight at the age of 90. He had lived a long, full life and, with all of us present to say our final goodbyes, it seemed a fitting time for everyone (except my son who still had to give his tearjerking speech).
It is now two-and-a-half years later. My mom, I have to say, has been thriving. It took her about six months to learn to live alone. She moved from her parents’ home straight in with my father after they married, so she had never been alone in her 90 years of life. In 2022, she broke her arm, and had a month-long stay in the same facility where my father had passed, but she fought through it and was able to go back home again. She gained some weight and got her color back. She returned to her life of writing and reading and visiting with her friends. She was able to drive again. She went back to her book club. My mom is in pretty good health, but the fact remains: she is 92 years old. She isn’t going to become more mobile, or less of a fall risk, or suddenly get more of her memory back. She needs more help and she needs more caregiving.
My husband and I looked at many other options before we chose this path. Of course, we thought of moving her to our home. But the house is multi-story and all the bathrooms are on the second floor. To add a bathroom to the first level would be about $100,000. We could add some sort of mother-in-law quarters but, again, it would be very costly. We could move her to a retirement or elder care facility, but the costs of $7,000-$10,000 a month are just not feasible without wiping everyone out. We looked at other states or close to other family members, but she has been pretty adamant that she wants to stay near to me. We also looked at selling her home, but it would only give her enough to live on for a year, or selling our home and all of us moving in somewhere together, but this didn’t seem a great option either. There are very few homes in the area that offer what we need, plus the market is really not strong and we aren’t sure we want to leave the area permanently. We thought of everything we could, and in the end settled on moving in to her home. We think we can do it. It is a short-term solution. We will save a bunch of money and be able to support her.
Once we made the decision, there has been a flurry of stressful movement. We went through my mom’s kitchen and other areas to see what we might need to store or be able to get rid of. We rented a storage unit and put our boys’ things in it, since they will need them when they return from college. We cleared out unneeded items and took about ten trips to the thrift store and a couple trips to the dump. We rented the home out before we even had vacated it. We cleaned and prepped and painted and made repairs. We removed all the possessions in our 2,800 square-foot home, and prepped and cleaned and planned for how our whole life could fit into our single bedroom and bath. And on March 1, 2024, 20 days ago, we officially made the move.