Lazy Gardener's Little Town Farm

[Lazy Gardener]

My BIL has come up from MA to stay with my dad and step mom for a few days to allow me to be home and play catch up. I've made great progress integrating the various groups of chickens. Hubby helped me build a chook chunnel between the old coop where the babies and tweens are housed at night, and 1/2 of the chicken run. I've moved the oldest pullets over into the big coop with the hens and roo. Been pulling wheel barrow loads of weeds out of the garden. I hope I can salvage the garden. It's suffered almost a month of neglect since I've been dealing with elderly parent issues. Tonight, I set 8 mouse traps. They've gone wild with all the weed cover. Harvested and grilled a zucchini. And first potatoes!

 

[baymule]

So good of your BIL to come help. You need the time to spend in the garden and with your chickens.

When my Mom had a stroke we moved her in with us. I had already quit my job to care for her. I added onto my chicken coop, got more chickens and expanded my garden. We lived on a tiny lot in town at the time, so I had to find a way to entertain myself. LOL Mom enjoyed watching the chickens and loved the fresh vegetables. I spent LOTS of time in the kitchen because she wanted a full meal, meat, 3 vegetables, bread and dessert every night. I felt like a restaurant chef. My husband waited on her, even cutting up her meat because she couldn’t do it for herself. I couldn’t leave her alone, not even to go to the grocery store a few blocks away. It was hard. Once in a while a lady from church would come stay for the weekend so we could go visit our DD and family.

My heart goes with you on this journey to care for your parents. You cannot restore them back to strength and good health, but you can improve their time left here. Just be careful that you do not wreck your own health along the way. All you can do is the best you can do.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

Bay, Wise statement: All you can do is the best you can do. It's my goal to keep them out of nursing homes. Cause we all know what a killer those are in this age of Covid.

 

[Mini Horses]

My mom wanted me to come stay at her house, in town. Could not do, What would I do with all the animals and their care? Tried to get her to move in here a couple years before & "no". Hey, I didn't have police sirens and traffic to hear & watch all day. Always told her she'd have to move here if ever she needed help. One day, it happened. Her house sat, then I rented her house for a couple years, then sold it. Good thing. Those care facilities are expensive.

It is a difficult thing to watch the decline and you can only do so much. I am an only, so when my mom came to live with me -- Big A came along, a bad knee and heart problems. It was a crushing event emotionally, physically and financially. I had to dramatically adjust my work and life and would liked to have had respite care. Wasn't any. Eventually, after 5 yrs, she had to be placed into a 24 hr care facility. A Place For Mom was tremendous for assisting with finding a location and many online sites with info, support groups/blogs, etc.

Believe me, I understand the feelings. I wish you the best Hoping your parents will recover this and be able to function at their home for more years. Maybe with some help coming in?

 

[Lazy Gardener]

I'm looking at hiring 8 hours/day x 7 days/week. I'm thankful that both of them have saved and invested since they were teenagers. Hiring this help will cost less than assisted living or nursing home care. Even if they were in a facility, it would not provide any more safety, or keep them from falling down. The 8 hours, in split shifts will cover all of their medication dosing, provide companionship, housekeeping, and meal prep. He's 95, she's 80. Both of them have cardiac, dementia. So... there's really no expectation for them to get better... aside from the improvement that will be seen by them having consistent care. She was alone for 5 weeks before we went down to get them, so... she lost a lot of weight and was in medical crisis b/c she was not taking her meds. Much improved since bringing them home 2 weeks ago.

 

[farmerjan]

God bless you for taking over and probably saving both their lives. My parents have in home care and it is costing a small fortune... but it is 24 hrs since no one is close enough to stay there full time or to stay nights. Mom has dementia and father had a severe stroke, with near 90% recovery that is nothing sort of miraculous.... but he has bad knees and shoulders and cannot barely take care of himself and definitely can't take care of her.... not much of a cook either as she always did everything for him.... brother is POA and all that and he wants to "handle it" so I offered help but not pushing it . Will do what I can to help, but hard with all the animals, and still working, and all.... my son can't do everything all the time and work full time too....

 

[baymule]

My brother was in bad health, died before Mom did, my sister had her health problems plus Mom was horrible to her as a child, never did like her and told her so. Mom was never horrible to me, just ignored me, so I didn’t have bad memories of childhood, just that something missing feeling of being unloved. Eh. I did all I could for 2 years and finally had to put her in assisted living. I went to see her almost every day and DH and I were with her when she died 5 years ago. I still waffle between, I did all I could and I didn’t do enough .

 

[Britesea]

My brother was in bad health, died before Mom did, my sister had her health problems plus Mom was horrible to her as a child, never did like her and told her so. Mom was never horrible to me, just ignored me, so I didn’t have bad memories of childhood, just that something missing feeling of being unloved. Eh. I did all I could for 2 years and finally had to put her in assisted living. I went to see her almost every day and DH and I were with her when she died 5 years ago. I still waffle between, I did all I could and I didn’t do enough .

I know what you mean. My mother was abusive to me, and she paid no attention to my brother whatsoever. He told me he wanted nothing to do with her when she started to go into dementia, (he also said he wanted nothing from her estate when she died, but I gave him half of what was in the bank anyway). Over the years, I have been able to understand what caused her to be the way she was, and I've been able to forgive her, and feel pity for her. It doesn't change what she did to me, but I was able to move forward anyway. Like you though, I still feel like I didn't do enough for her, and I feel a certain amount of guilt that the main feeling I had when she finally died was relief.

 

[Mini Horses]

Like you though, I still feel like I didn't do enough for her, and I feel a certain amount of guilt that the main feeling I had when she finally died was relief.

With both you & Bay on this. It's just how life is and I can tell you that it has taken me a couple yrs to even get on with "normal" after her passing. So much to handle and emotionally/financially deal with from burials and onward. Let me just say that a fast heart attack would be a lot easier! The lingering and downward spiral in health is physically hard, then the aftermath. I was fortunate that mom did have 100% medical coverage and enough income to support the majority of her care with the house sale added. Still many challenges. Not good memories.

 

[baymule]

I liked both of your posts with love because I totally get it. I grew to feel sorry for my mom, with her closed up heart, she missed out on so much. Her living with us brought back memories of things I had buried deeply long, long ago. I went through all the emotions and finally settled on pity. How sad for her. I made sure that my kids were loved, knew they were loved, no matter what, always and forever.