When It's Time

Tuesday morning I drove up to my childhood home in Idaho Falls to put my mother in a care facility. Now that it's Wednesday night, and I'm writing this completely exhausted from two days of filling out paperwork, moving furniture, and setting up her room, I can tell you that this was the most difficult thing I've had to do in my life.

My mother has been battling mental illness for years. My father had grown incapable of managing her meds and was at the end of his rope, ready to flee with a packed suitcase to lord knows where. He just couldn't take it anymore. And the process was physically exhausting. I hit the road for an eight-hour round trip and had my first care facility appointment at noon. Then another at 1:00. Then a break for lunch and mom's doctor at 3:00 where we asked her, "Do you believe it's time?" And she responded, "Yes."

So we picked out a place, and I got 100-pages of paperwork to fill out (I'm serious). Living will, resuscitation, medicare, insurance, supplemental, social...all kinds of questions. Then came the part where we had to set up the room. This included picking out furniture, moving a 300-pound solid wood dresser, dolls, things that would give my mother some peace in her new home. All the while she was yelling at us, cussing us out, wondering what the hell is going on.  Then she fell twice, once outside. My dad just sat on the couch in a "fugue" state and said "Your mother fell down." And then just left her there so that I could go and scoop her up. He refused to answer simple questions. "Which pillow do you think she would like?" His response, "I'm not going to answer questions about that. Your decision."

He washed his hands of even the simplest questions.

Long-term care insurance had been lost. They were buried in one of three shoeboxes filled with hundreds of paper receipts from voided checks that should have been thrown away to receipts for stuff he's bought in the last ten years. Pure chaos. He couldn't find the keys to his truck, couldn't find my mother's dentures, was pretty helpless really.

So my brother and I did it all. We got my mother's clothes labeled with sharpies, we bought  cleaning supplies and spit-shined all the furniture going over, we selected all the photographs for her door display so that the residents could see who she was and be curious, we put away her clothes, hung the pictures in her room, connected the television, got her set up for her meds to be delivered already in bubble packs directly from the pharmacy with speed pay, signed all the papers, and then took her there.

I got emotional driving her there. She thought we were going to iHop which is one of her favorite restaurants. When we ended up at the nursing home, she knew what this place was, despite all of her mental issues. So I cried...I tried to stop it, but I couldn't.

If you ever have to commit your mother to a facility, I know your pain. My mother loves me so much. Though most of her is gone, this is one of those milestones where you know that a loved one's life left on this earth has grown short. And despite this love, I couldn't take her home. She wanted to go home to the dog she loves, to the place where she was comfortable, and she isn't going to go home ever again. This facility is now her home. I had to move out of state to find a job. I can only visit twice a year because of vacation. And you simply cannot live in this country if you don't have a job. So there's a mandatory 40-hours of my week that is gone. And honestly, there's no way I could care for her even if I lived locally.

So yeah, this week has been hell. I'll remember it for the rest of my life. I think she'll make new friends and lead a healthier more social lifestyle so perhaps this will be a good fit. The home I put her in seemed like a really good one.

Anyway, if I haven't had time to visit your blogs this week, this is why. This is what I've been doing. I've got one more day to wrap up and finalize some things, take my mom to a doctor's appointment, and replace a phone that I dropped accidentally in the hot tub at the hotel I'm staying at. Sigh. When this week is over, it shall be a big relief.