Mental Decline & Dependency/Coping With Aging Loved Ones

I'll say a special prayer for you, Phoenix. This has been very difficult, and it's not getting any easier, is it? Noddy is right...auction houses handle this type of thing all the time. We used one when my mother died. It was a great relief to get everything cleared away.

I really can understand how you feel and felt, Phoenix.

You have my full sympathy.


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My mother is becoming more and more a stress factor ... for us.
Especially, since she doesn't accept all the help offered but instead complains - get's quite often on our nerves.

My mother had alzheimer's from - when we started to notice - the later sixties to the late seventies. She died in 1979.
The dealing with it, for the loved one, is tremendous over the years.
The dealing with it for her is not a small thing either.

I am quite likely to get it myself, given a swath of it in my mother's family. Thus my usual lifetime foibles gain magnitude.

But ne'er mind that.

I think it's important to envisage - if you are in a situation like we are talking about here - an engaged mother (usually a mother but sometimes a father) with empathy, though the spots of cognisance are scant.

My mother told me seriously one afternoon, after months of no coherent speech, I forgive you.

I might guess what that was about - when she was in her paranoid state in early alzheimer's, she told our parish pastor that I had had borrowed 200. dollars from her to have an abortion. I had borrowed twenty, sad to say, but not for an abortion - the abortion was her fantasy fear.

Or maybe it was about something else. It was just one clear sentence that I happened to hear among hundreds or thousands of unclear ones.

Anyway, I meant to post on auction houses. Well, maybe. But I'd want to do a first cull, for bits and pieces I might want, re letters and recipes and miscellaneous memorabilia.

I've have been through such house scouring a few times now and it has been incredibly sad, but also part of the grieving process. Which is of course part hate, partly destructive, part love, maybe all love, and also is a space for coming to terms.

Walter--

I know what you mean. The bottom line is "Nothing is right and since this is not my fault, this is your fault."

Ossobuco--

You are absolutely right about the healing virtues of clearing away the goods and chattels, the lares and penates of the dead. In the middle of the nitty-gritty you often fail to realize the value of examining the minutia of a life that shaped your own.

Thanks for the support, guys. I really appreciate it.

Cognitively, my mom is still in pretty good shape. She understands that she has to be in a place where she will be cared for, and accepts it.

It's the little things that make me realize how far she has deteriorated. Like, when I brought over her TV, which was a better one than the ALF supplied, she did not recognize it as hers.

The staff runs around making sure that she has her portable oxygen, but she often walks out without it. Then she complains of being breathless. So I explain to her why she needs the oxygen. She understands, but a few minutes later, she forgets.

In the beginning she sort of hung out by herself. She refused to go to any of the ALF's activities. Yesterday, when I popped in, I found her listening to a great banjo band. Still by herself, but at least joining in somewhat.

As far as selling some of her stuff, the problem is that I have no room to put anything. My husband has taken over the garage with his stuff, and the only place I would have is in my small computer room. I have put a few ads in, and will see what happens.

Phoenix--

I'm glad to hear that your mother isn't planning to escape the nursing staff--and that the nursing staff is helping her create the new routines which will be necessary for her.

Any charities which run thrift shops will accept old furniture in good condition--and cart it away.

Hold your dominion.

We did that with the Salvation Army. They saved us a lot of trouble.

It is really a pity. A lot of her stuff is really nice. I would love to get some money for her from the sale of some of the furniture and bric a brac.

Bottom line, I could leave some of the stuff in the condo, and sell it as partially furnished. Anything that is not too valuable, I will give to the Salvation Army.

Phoenix--

Bottom line is your nervous system. Do as much as you can and then take a deep breath and Do No More.

Hold your dominion.

Damn- I keep finding more and more papers in my mother's house. I did not think that there was much at first, so I did not buy a heavy duty shredder. I simply blacked out social security numbers, bank account numbers, and tore the stuff up.

I thought that I was through last week, and then found more STUFF. I spent from 9am-6pm looking through, blacking out and tearing up. I then hit the top shelf in the closet, and found MORE papers from the mid eighties.

You have no idea as how many places on papers contain social security numbers. I give up. I cannot spend another entire day doing this. I will go bonkers. I am going to buy a heavy duty shredder, and the hell with it!!!

Shredders are cheap.
Your sanity is worth a lot more, Phoenix.

Get the shredder. Get rid of the papers that need to be disposed of.

Get some fresh air - take care of yourself.

Buy the heavy duty shredder and every time you destroy another piece of hoarded paper give a Kung Fu cry or imitate the Victory Call of the Wild Bull Ape.

If you're a composter, shredded paper makes a good carbon component for the Black Gold.

I've just recently been there, Phoenix.

Old people keep an incredible amount of stuff that is useless to our eyes, but is some sort of a physical personal history (time turned into matter).

I threw away almost everything, from old recipees to 1979 accounting books to 80% of the photos. To do it carefully is an Herculean task... so I decided "what the hell", to just mix the papers with other kind of garbage, and let the ecologists get mad at me.

fbaezer- I am a bit paranoid about identity theft. When I was working on the first group of papers, I had spotted a big bottle of mustard in my mom's old frig. I took the mustard, added some water, poured the whole soupy mess over the papers, and mixed it up.

That's the good thing about it: they don't only have old papers, but also old mustard bottles and other kind of old stuff to make a yucky mix.

fbaezer wrote : "Old people keep an incredible amount of stuff that is useless to our eyes, but is some sort of a physical personal history (time turned into matter). "

that's a funny one ! not only old people keep a lot of old paper around ... !

i do agree that a good shredder is a good thing to have ! hbg

When my mother died, my parent's condo was sold--after we cleared out both living quarters and storage space.

My father had saved every small appliance box just in case the small appliance had to be mailed back to the factory.

The Income Tax Return file started in the 1970's.

Likewise the stack of cancelled checks.

Looking at the mustard in my fridge.
<I don't use mustard all that much, but it is nice to have from time to time.>

Well, I have been looking harder lately as I am moving, and am organizing premove.

I am a semi-packrat, but I am very clear on the whys. I lost my parents moderately early, and don't have siblings. I have somehow invested emotion on where I've been and my friends where I've been. This is, yes, sentimental, but also a kind of cloud on which I disport myself. I could lose any one thing with equanimity, but there is some comfort in the whole.

It would be convivial, I think, if we paid attention to each others packs, as rats.

I have had people stay with me here in north north, and go through my displayed books, trust me, tip of the iceberg. A few of them really got into the books. Somehow having interesting books about, which ever they are at the time, gives me some feet in space.

I am materialist in the simplest sense, in that I like things, and also able to blink and see them gone with equanimity, as they are still in my mind. But, I prefer some of them there.

I have several friends of opposite comport, who have extremely sparely furnished homes of whatever size and monetary value. I like visiting their places.

I prefer gathered and some falling books for some vestigial reason, for myself.

Papers have been the bane for generations of correctly worrying people, pre computer. When people had in their own background personal knowledge of loss of property, and so on... they have felt the need to keep paper - much of paper keeping is from straight out fear.

Fortunately I (we) know about the all the bits and pieces in my mother's house. (There are still thousands of photos - going back to 1865 -, although we have already taken some hundreds to us; plus a collection of father's slides, which will go to the local archive/museum.)

Speaking about this, it reminds me of a drawer in an antique davenport, which we opened for the first time after father's death nine years ago: in it was all old and oldest 'stuff' from grandfather's house, taken away including the rubbles of the bombing and never looked at since 1945.