it's actually hilarious, that scene, so entirely unsuitable.  but heh anyway.

Oh mate, that sounds properly rubbish for all concerned :(

Ah, man. I do really feel for you and your siblings. The heart issue doesnt sound good.

Quite apart from your Mum’s state of mind, it might be that it is now too difficult for live in care :( :(

Have you got a good care home up your sleeve?

it is a bit shit, but at times like this it is important to find a laugh where you can.  That scene came to me. Do you know it? It's v poignant and also amusing/awkward. 

The bit at the end makes me laugh out loud each time "The trouble with snake women is that they copulate with horses, which makes them strange to me.  She says she doesn't. That's why I call her "Doesnt like horses". But of course she's lying."

Imagine writing that script. 

When I next go out for a dog walk I may say to my wife "SNAKE WOMAN, GET ME MY ELK ROBE" and see how that goes. 

Thanks, I think we have a while to go in terms of home living.  She wants to die there, not at home. It is looking increasingly imminent and may occur on the sofa, it seems. 

You seem to be doing a great job of supporting her through this on her own terms. It’s difficult, but ultimately there is no greater mark of respect.

Thanks. 
no, others are doing so. I am being crap and not doing much.  
However I am honouring one issue: I shall gladly forgo inherited cash to give her the right to live in her own house until she dies. It is not my economics that drives the agenda but her wishes expressed when in better shape. 
Yeah she will spend any remaining inheritance and that is fine by me. It is her money. I earn my own. in fact, I feel quite strongly that I am not dependent on her bank balance but she is. She must stay in her home and be content with that, and if she wants to die in the house that feels like home surrounded by the comfort of a house that is hers not a care home with pictures on the wall that she chooses that is worth a fortune. 

Oh Mutters, no one actively chooses to live in a care home. But that doesnt mean that as things deteriorate that a care home remains a worse option.

when people go into a care home it is almost always crisis driven and their children go down this route not because of money or because they dont respect their parents ‘ wishes, it’s because it becomes the best option.

I hope of course that your Mum can continue to live at home, but it does often become increasingly difficult, so please dont beat yourself up about it if it does, sometimes it is just the kinder option. And just as you intend to respect her wishes do you have a responsibility to do what is best.

oh, and a care isnt just some easy option. It can be very expensive and you will still need to be very involved in Mum’s care. She should however be able to bring her pictures with her! Mine has all her favourites on the wall opposite her bed. She has made friends and loves the art group sessions. This from a woman who was, frankly depressed and miserable living on her own at home ( chucked out the live in carers) , not that she could admit it.

each to their own of course but please dont dismiss it out of hand.

I wish you and your family all the best for the future.

Well said and thank you

In my head all care homes are exactly like The Thirsday Murder Club and therefore ace

I could recommend where my Mum is, there is a fab stroke rehab unit attached and they can handle dementia* and nursing too. Surrey/Hants borders

* I have not seen the dementia unit. My Mum is quite far gone but as she is in a wheelchair and needs nursing and isnt a flight risk she can stay in her ground floor garden room

I've lived through one dementia and one cancer endgame for close family and in both cases if care wasn't the only option I would have avoided it. Staff try very hard but the loss of dignity stayed with the family. If you can, I'd take at home any day. Sorry to hear your family is going through this.

Care home fees are massively more expensive than staying in your own home, even with visiting daily carers.

My MIL’s care home fees were over £7k per month, albeit she was quite high dependency.

Live-in care in own home is very expensive though, much more than visiting carers, and the family’s management burden is still very high.

I have “seen off” two oldsters and still have two left,  so I have varied experience, and hardest/very -if -not -most expensive is live in care at home.

Staff costs are close to care home and you pay all their living costs too and they will want own bedroom and bathroom. The family’s management is high, typically carers come for like 2 weeks on, 6 weeks off, so you need 3 sets in rotation, 4 actually, what with holidays, and they all seem to come from Zim or SA so on constant rotation.

And at the end of the day you have to weigh up the benefit of being in own homes vs disadvantage of poor social interaction - just the same carers day in day out - much more stimulus available in a care home where they do activities, outings etc.

if your oldster is not v mobile or a bit withdrawn or with few friends or  bit of dementia etc etc then being in solitary is a massive negative (lockdown lonliness hastened deaths of many). 

I am very pleased that part of my life is over.

I have seen off two, retained two. 

It's been a shocking year.  The MIL spent xmas in and out of hospital and very unwell. Bounded back eventually and as strident and hard to manage as ever.  Thinks she should be prime minister or UN secgen.

Mother as aforementioned. This has caused untold damage to my siblings' relationships with each other.  I, remarkably, am the peacemaker of sorts. Perhaps by virtue of the fact that my relationship with my mother died a long time ago and I never really respected her.  I find it hard to be very helpful to her but I am indirectly doing that by trying to sort issues between siblings out to maximise mum's access to her children's best sides.  

When she is dead I  the cause around which the siblings coalesce - her continued existence - will cease and thus the cohesive element will fall away and everyone will be scarred by the difficulties of the last few months/years (weeks in particular) and will think fu ck this and the family will fall away from each other.  That's a great shame as my father died feeling that at least he'd achieved the creation of a large and tightly knit family which could withstand the turbulence of life.  I am trying to honour his legacy by keeping it from exploding like a grenade.  There is great pressure in co-sourced aged care. 

delete "I"

nobody interested in that Hoffman fillum then?

Have you got a good care home up your sleeve?
 

Let’s sort his mother’s future out first. 

Heh

It sounds very difficult. If she does not have the mental capacity to decide about eating and drinking then I suppose she must be fed but not everyone with dementia has lost capacity immediately so it may still remain her choice.

We 3 siblings were united with our father that he would die in his own home. His at home dementia care day and night in his last 12 months cost £130,000 which was the last of his life savings other than a bit of equity in the house. We would have also paid for the care had he not at that point died. On his very last day at home (by then sleeping downstairs) he was with his youngest grandchildren who were very very small. He said he had had enough and then died. He was lucky his physical health gave out.

Perhaps we 3 siblings were lucky to be in dispute with his carer's family in our case as that united us - nothing like court proceedings to unite people (laughing as I type) and we won access to him back at death. However the other side is that he cleverly changed his will to ensure he had care until death. Either way it all worked out fine.

On the delusions he was lucky that he thought his carers (he had about 10 part time ones a week) were nurses at his medical clinic. In the earlier days of the dementia he once took off in his car at 1am and realised he was lost. He stopped and got out. He thought he was driving to his medical clinic. Realising it was night he shouted help help. Amazingly some medical students were on that road and they kindly got him home and then he made sure he had  more care after that.

I hope I am more like my mother  - 100% on the ball mentally until death.

*bites tongue*

it's good to have aspirations, heff

Mutters, no fun. 

Our mother stopped eating, but it was not a conscious choice. We were frankly relieved that other things killed her before we had to make a call about her being fed through a tube. 

I only like Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man, he makes me queasy in anything else, but I have watched that Little Big Man clip as moral support for you. And the violinist whose bow broke. 

Really awful decisions to be made when a relative reaches this stage. Personally I'd find it abhorrent to force feed someone but I guess the argument is you can't let them starve?

Luckily my dad was v frail but didn't have dementia, mum was starting to get it but died of other causes, MIL died of other causes and FIL is fine.  But it all takes its toll and the management of carers etc is practically a full-time job - at one point dad had live in (similar rota as described above), plus other carers coming in when two at a time were needed for shower etc and to relieve the live in.  Even so, my sister and I still did tons of house management and banking and stuff.  I hope they let us take a pill when the time comes........Good luck to you all.

Lydia

if she does not have the mental capacity to decide about eating

She does. She has decided not to.  HTH

I remember my nan doing this after my grandad died.  She must have wasted down to below 5 stone in the end.  Made falls fairly spectacular.  Bruises like a rorschatt blob.  Broken hips etc.  nasty business.

in a cruel irony she was an absolutely brilkiant cook.  For other people.

If the muttley mother has the capacity to choose not to eat and has decided not to eat it's pretty simple - it's her choice. My father used to say flu was the old person's friend as it saw you off quickly and nicely (although may be not now people have the flu jab I suppose)

Have you ever thought of a career change, Lyds.  I was thinking concentration camp guard, that sort of thing.

God I dread this happening to my mum so much. She would hate it so much and there is only me there to help realistically. I saw my grand parents go through it when I was a teenager/early 20s.  I am not sure I could bear to watch it happen with my mum. 

we had this with my grandmother in the early 90s. (she was in the early 90s too, helpfully born in 1900, but it was the early 1990s). It tired my mother out looking after her.  This is why I very strongly championed live-in care early on and why I am glad we installed it when we did.  But there are still many things to deal with.

Snake woman, get my elk robe. 

my mum is firm that she wants to die before any of this and will sort that as best she can

I honestly don't understand why more people don't

it will happen to all of us and we need to take some damn responsibility 

admittedly there is a margin of risk between forming the intent and being too doolally to deliver on it

You make live-in care sound like tech from HHGTTG.

Computer, make me a cup of tea

SURE THING, I WOULD LOVE TO, I HAVE OVER 4,000 VARIETIES OF TEA!

Shut up, where have you put my pants?

I HAVE PRESSED AND FOLDED YOUR UNDERWEAR USING MOUNTAIN SPRING WATER HEATED TO 350 DEGREES AND STORED THEM IN YOUR BEDROOM 

Irritating aunt

MY DATABASES RECOMMEND DRINKING CRANBERRY JUICE AND A LIBERAL APPLICATION OF LIVE YOGHURT

My mother essentially devoted a decade of her life to looking after her own mother, but at least my grandmother never really went senile (other than right at the very, very end when she was in hospital), she was just physically very infirm.  My mother has been very, very clear she wouldn't want me to have to do that and she should be packed off to a home but when the time comes who knows. 

it is a hideous thought

if I had to move countries to avoid caring personally for my parents I would do it

I don't mind organising or even subbing (a bit) but I am never ever ever wiping an elderly arse

I am very worried about aggressive attempts by NHS staff to make me take them home (I don't really have the right set-up for them being between various places anyway)

"I am never ever ever wiping an elderly arse"

So, given your comments on what constitutes old, this statement, and your own advancing dotage, you basically have about 7 years left before you quite literally can't wipe your own arse

I was going to caveat "aside from my own" but couldn't be bothered

I had an incredibly grim 2 hour meeting with NHS professionals last week about my mum's condition and how much substantively worse it has gotten in the last 5 years she's lived in a nursing home which my dad somehow managed to wangle full funding for (Lord knows how - he hasn't so much as picked up a phone to speak to her since)

Spelt out in quite graphic detail how much care she now needs, it would be a full time job and then some. I take my hats off to full time carers, I couldn't do it, my dad tried with her and it almost destroyed him and she was in better health then than now

And my mum has always been very much in the mama Clergs "take me out and shoot me if I ever can't./.. *lists thinbgs she can't do now*" school, having been traumatised by seeing her own dad go through it too

what I don't understand is why people don't refuse food

I suppose they forget they've refused food

sorry about your mum, gaga

Lydia - how can someone cleverly change their will so that they have care until death? 

Your will generally doesn't come into effect until after death.

This is all so sh1tty.

My gran had dementia and was pretty gaga near the end.  She stopped eating and drinking unless she had visitors.  I'm not sure how much of a conscious choice it was, but she had no quality of life at that point.

my mother, gloriously stubborn to the end, vowed never to pay a penny for her own care so elected to die two days before the 6 weeks' free care at home ended. 

That's why it's so clever, Escaped!