Ugh…more unpleasantness.
The nursing home administrators did move my parents into a double-occupancy room, which is quite large, with floor-to-ceiling windows that look out on a wooded area, and an expansive private bath.
This was against our wishes, as ever since Mom has moved into the home, they’ve both been aggravating each other. My mom is bitter and unhappy and takes it out on my dad, and my dad has reverted to some sort of 1850’s version of a husband/wife-owner and continually bosses my mom (and the nurses) around in an extremely demeaning manner - before Mom moved in, Dad was generally cheerful and easy to manage, but now he’s gotten extremely possessive of my mom, and is treating everyone (mainly the women) horribly.
Even the nursing staff voted against moving them in together, but the administration overruled it, on a “temporary” basis. Money is the name of the game, as getting my folks in a larger room together frees up more space, and the single rooms they were in go for $8500US/month each. With Medicare picking up the cost of my dad’s share, and with my mom’s soon to follow (she’s got enough to fund maybe 10 more months before Medicare kicks in for her), families have less of a say, because they’re not footing the bill.
They’ve already had to separate them once and put my mom in a single room for the night, because Dad was shouting the house down, telling her to “GET THEM DAMN CHICKENS IN!” and “GET YOUR FAT ASS IN THE CAR BEFORE I KNOCK SOME SENSE INTO YOU!” - it’s important to note that I’ve never heard my dad ever use a “bad” word except one time, when describing pizza (“It smells like somebody done shit in the oven!”), and for as much as he beat us boys black and blue growing up, he never hit my mom or my sister, and always had a special hatred for any man who hit women/girls, so both those statements are very, very out of character for my dad.
I had to go over to meet with the care facility as part of the family as a whole, and to also walk through the house and take anything small that I wanted, and put my name on any large items, to be decided by lottery later if more than one person wanted something.
I never like doing that, because there isn’t really anything much that I ever wanted from them - my parents usually bought everything used/cheap if they could, and most of their stuff was gotten rid of when they moved from the big house to the condo, but I did grab a couple of things. I’ll post those elsewhere.
I’m already getting the grandfather clock (and it’s better quality than I thought, because it was my paternal grandparents’ clock, and they bought quality when they could. I’d originally thought it was my maternal grandparents’ clock, and they would have gotten it from K-Mart…or worse).
As befitted my paranoid, untrusting Mom, there was also some miscellaneous cash in the house, tucked away here and there (she learned that from her parents - we found loads of cash squirreled away all over their house when they died) and my ever-honest brother divided that up between us.
Back again in a couple of weeks to get the clock. Lee was laughing at me walking around the house, because he was following me with a pad to write down what I potentially wanted, and I said, “Can I have this plastic kitchen clock?”
“Well yeah, that’s just junk.”
“Ok…what about this little pottery jug? I kind of like that.”
“Yeah, sure. Anything big, though? You need a bed, or bookcases? That bed was your grandma’s you know, when she was a girl, so it’s old.”
“What about this jar of pickles? They’re not opened. I’d eat those.”
“JFC, you’re unreal! All you want’s <bleeping> canned goods!”
I finally settled on a nice space heater they have, mainly to give him something to write down next to my name.
Texts from Mom have been equal parts crazy and heartbreaking. One minute, she’ll randomly text one of us, and say something like, “Please tell the motel people here not to wake me up so much. Thank you, Lee.” followed by one a couple of hours later that’ll say something like, “Lee, please come and get us and take us home. Do not leave us here. We want to die at home and don’t have any time left at all. Please.” followed by another one that’ll say, “Please have a heart and call us and explain why you are doing this to us, Lee. I will come live with you and be quiet if you will just let me.”
Those, of course, upsets Lee something awful, because even though she sends those to random people, she always names Lee in them. Later, though, she’ll be back to texting something about being on vacation or being in a motel.
), and from there, it would just go downhill, as her imagination would kick in, and she’d add, “…and they stole my dog from me!” to the list of nonexistent grievances she already has against her entire family and half the town.
When you first joined the forum and visited Maidstone (your home town and where I live) I was consumed by paranoia about Covid, so didn't meet up with you. Then, just as I was coming round to meeting people again I broke my leg quite disastrously so it wasn't to be. My thoughts are with you.
