Elder Abuse The Reality

This is a piece I have been working on a long time. Where I am now is that I cannot shorten it any more, and truth be told you need to read every word. There is so much more I left on the editing floor, this is a topic I plan to write more about. Perhaps next time it will not be so lengthy.

As I live my life, I see things that bother me. My mother is currently in a nursing home. It is a nice one, not the Taj Majal but it is clean and doesn’t smell. I know many of the workers, I taught to the nurses and staff on a regular basis. I also check up on mom, it is the least I can do. My brother and I split up duties with our parents. He took my dad until he died and I took mom. I got the easier deal, and there are some days I have to remind myself of that, matter of fact many days I have to remind myself. Taking care of a loved one whose body and mind is beginning to fail them is not easy, it is not pretty and it can be downright depressing. There is not enough sugar in Texas to sugarcoat a bad day. That is not to say that regardless of how bad it is can I walk away. I can take a break here and now but I cannot walk away.

I bring this up because for some unknown reason I live with people around me that are much older than I am. My kids have never had the kids in the neighborhood. They have had the love and affection of elderly people sweet and kind enough to love them. Along with having this type of neighbor I always have a different experience than a lot of my friends. My friends may have to figure out a lost bike or a dog. I have to figure who to call and when to call them. When Dunk was little, a neighbor had lost most of her reality. She had become a widow unexpectedly quickly he had passed away. She would hear people in her top floor of her house. The elderly lady near her with a husband that needed constant care would get the call. Finally I told the widow to call us, because what was one elderly woman going to do to a robber? The calls would come at 1 or 3 AM. She was so scared; terror would be in her voice. Real or imaginary a person frightened believes to be in danger is scared. After about two weeks of dealing with her fear, I gave the daughter a call. I felt she needed to know how bad it was. Nobody wants to stay somewhere alone and afraid, and surely the daughter would take care of it.

That is when I learned a very important lesson. Some people not all but some decide that caring for their parents is a choice, and they chose not to deal with it. Ignorance of a situation somehow makes them claim, “It’s not that bad. She seems fine when I talk to her”. As I say quite often, Trust me! Without going and seeing first hand, a family member has no idea what is going on long distance. See the daughter was not getting the calls, when the daughter called the widow was rested and trying to make herself sound good. The end result you ask? Yeah I know “Cut to the Chase.”

The widow ending up passing away without the daughter being there, she would come down maybe a couple of days a year. As soon as the widow passed away, the daughter moved into the house and took it over. She came in as if she was the best daughter in the world, most think she still is. To this day, I can’t look at her. I know what hell on earth her self-importance caused her own mother. The only thing the widow wanted was her daughter home, and it only happened after she passed away.

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