Occasionally people write directly to me rather than leave public comments on
the blog. I presume the reason for this is to ensure their privacy or a concern
for mine, not wishing to publicly raise issues that I might not be comfortable
dealing with. In order to cover both possibilities I shall not identify the
correspondent of an email I received today, but shall deal with the issue they
raise. The core of the email is as follows:
Michael, there must be a reason why the obvious solution of moving in with
your parents hasn't emerged in your writing. Please forgive me if my suggestion
is indelicate but have you considered this? And what would you consider to be
an event that would trigger your parents' need for 24-hour home care? It is
quite as possible to mistakenly eat a box of poison as it is to mistakenly eat
a box of cat food. My father once tried to eat a tennis ball - same shape as an
apple, same fit in his hand, same motion from hand to mouth. He had no concept
of the rightness or wrongness of his actions.
First let me say that I am sure mum and dad would be delighted if I were to
move in with them - until I started trying to take control that is, but that is
another question. The question is what I think of the idea of moving in.
The reason that I have not considered moving in with my parents is that I am
simply not prepared to make such a sacrifice. I cannot speak for my three
siblings, but I suspect they have the same reasons.
If necessary, I could invent all kinds of justifications for my position, but
the real reason is pure self-interest. I would hate to live in the same house
as my parents, I have had experience of it. I'll explain why I would hate it,
simply for the purposes of explanation rather than justification or
self-defence.
- The house itself. It is everything I dislike: cluttered,
kitsch, obstacle-laden, gloomy and high-maintenance.
- Dad's incessant chatter. I like solitude, quiet, peace and
order. I do not even play music at home. Dad's repetition drives me mad after
only an hour or two; it interrupts my thoughts until I am as confused as he is.
I am infuriated by the trivial subject matter: the catechisms over whether to
have a cup of tea, the long debates about whether it is hot or cold, the daily
conference about when to turn on the lights and draw the curtains (and the
insistence that these must be done simultaneously).
- The constant company. Again, my time alone is often the
best part of my day. Having both parents follow me from room to room would
bring me to breaking point very quickly.
- The early nights and early mornings. Having to tiptoe
around the house for up to six hours each night, and having dad come into my
room only three or four hours after I've gone to bed to ask whether I am awake
- I can do without that kind of misalignment.
- The chaos. In my own place I know exactly where my
toothbrush, my keys, my cutlery and my other belongings are. I don't like it
when they get moved. I often leave projects (such as the cataloguing of the
family photographs) spread out over a table for weeks. I could not continue to
work this way at my parents' place.
- The lack of space. I would have to put the great part of
my furniture, my books, perhaps even my clothes, into storage.
- The workload. I would have to assume responsibility for
each meal, for the washing and cleaning. I do not want to do any more housework
than I already do.
- The noise and temperature. I have at times compared my
parents' place to hell. They have the TV turned up LOUD so that they can hear
it, they then shout at each other simply to be heard over it. The heater is
often roaring at full bore. Under these circumstances I cannot even think. At
my place conditions are comparatively paradisical: I have trained myself to use
neither heaters nor air conditioning. I simply adjust the ventilation and my
clothing to the time of year. The advantages of this seem to be that I no
longer catch colds in winter nor suffer insect infestations in summer (as their
populations die out during the colder months).
- The daily travel. I often work at home but need to make
regular appearances at my office. I walk there from my place. From my parents'
place it is a 90-minute drive during rush-hour.
- Social taboos. I cannot see how I could continue my
current social life under the inquisitive, conservative, and off-putting noses
of my parents.
There are other reasons too, I suspect, but these are enough. I have to weigh
them against the benefits: mum and dad being much happier with a third person
to act as lightning rod for their disagreements, a mediator and a pacifier, an
occasional conspirator (not matter how much a turncoat), an entertainer and an
interlocutor; my pleasure at seeing the cats each day; the extra safety and
general well-being of mum and dad; the certainty of getting my mail; the huge
financial savings living with them would bring. I have done the equation, and I
still don't want to live there.
The second part of the question is what change of circumstances might induce me
to change my mind. Here I answer that I would
never consider it, no
matter how deranged mum and dad's lives had become. There will come a point in
the transition from healthy person to unpredictable demented vegetable at which
mum and dad (either one or both) will no longer be safe alone under any
circumstances. At that point I will move to have them placed in a nursing home,
pending whatever Greg and Rachel are prepared to do.
Until that point, we are riding our luck. Without putting too fine a point on
it, we are playing the probabilities that mum and dad will be OK, that the
autonomy they enjoy is sufficient to counterweight the extra risks they are
running. We chose this rather than strap them down in a cotton-wool cocoon from
which they are not allowed to move without a minder. Our approach is either a
calculated assessment that the solution can often be worse than the problem, or
a form of fatalism that is unwelcome in some cultures, notably America and
increasingly Australia, and possibly others I do not know about, but is
otherwise fairly normal. If our lack of total supervision somehow hastens our
parents' deaths, I will not feel guilty. My goal is not to make them live as
long as possible, no matter what. It is to - and here the logic admittedly gets
a little fuzzy - optimise happiness, both theirs and ours. I think so far we
are doing well enough. Of course, anything can change...
The email went on to say:
A word of warning, there is no pace, rhyme or reason to Alzheimer's. The
decline can be fast, slow and everything in between. But it always gets more
challenging, less predictable and very, very time consuming. It is also
unbelievably expensive.
The New York Times had an article in Saturday's paper - "Elder-Care Costs
Deplete Savings of a Generation" by Jane Gross. I highly recommend reading it.
There are millions of families in the same boat. ... And I hope my suggestion
is taken it the spirit in which it was offered - with an open heart.
Yes, it is taken in that spirit, and I hope my response is taken as an honest
description of a not uncaring attitude. I read the
abovementioned article. It is not a pretty picture.