I am honestly at my wits end. My mom is 88 and my dad is 90. They live in a two story home with the primary bedroom being upstairs and no full bath downstairs. Mom has lost all interest in bathing, cooking, cleaning, going to church… all the things she used to do all the time. Definite signs of dementia but the hard part is now that I am trying to help them get into an older adult living community she is resistant. My dad wants to, but he tries to keep the peace so he goes along with what she says. Any help or advice?
You do not need to tell your Mom anything until they day they move.
I'm hoping your parents have assigned PoAs... if not this is a guaranteed problem when trying to manage their future care and affairs.
You will not convince anyone here of anything at all.
It is useless to attempt to and I would imagine your attempts have gone on long enough now for you to have an inkling of that.
Let me ask you if you are POA for these two? Or for even your father?
At some point you and your Dad need the hard talk. Your mother needs a diagnosis from her doctor (perhaps a neuro-psyc consult). You may want to have this talk with Dad and her doctor if HE is POA or only next of kin.
She will not agree to the placement.
If her AGREEMENT is the only circumstance where this is to be done
then this WILL NOT BE DONE, and given that you will have to make other plans.
That may include getting home care in home. If there is not income for that then a reverse mortgage would be good here. It would perhaps sustain these two in their home while they live out their lives, then be paid off when they enter care, and the proceeds pay for the care.
There are some options here FOR THE FUTURE because for now they are not going anywhere until a crisis comes. And it WILL.
The options for their future greatly depends on their assets and what the future brings.
I would buy yourself an hour of time with an Elder Law Attorney or a Licensed Social Worker in private counseling practice to talk through the facts, the assets, the future and present options.
I sure do wish you the best. You are right where so many on this Forum are. When my brother got Lewy's dementia and made me his POA/Trustee I was SOOOO relieved that after talking and exploring the options he agreed with me that ALF was best for him, because any disagreement with an elder moving into aging and dementia is a no win situation with a whole lot of grief on all sides.
I wish you the best of luck and hope you will update us.
it’s so hard to make these decisions…. It feels like I’m the bad guy. 😕
I do have power of attorney.
Thank you for your helpful counsel. I appreciate it.
My parents are self-sufficient in their two-story home. Clearly, I maybe didn’t answer some things correctly, but I don’t believe there’s any reason to be rude.