Today I was thinking about the elderly, parents, and dying. You know the saying, “it takes a village to raise child”, and well I believe it also goes for the elderly and the dying. I don’t think individuals that have families and friends should die alone or be left alone to fend for themselves when their bodies and/or minds deteriorate to the point that they just can’t take care of themselves anymore. What brought on the thoughts of the elderly, parents and the dying is my mother-in-law, Ann.
Ann is dying from a cancer called Multiple Melanoma. She has gone through every available chemotherapy on the market now, and that money can buy. She can’t walk straight and uses a wheel chair to get around. Ann has not had easy for the last 12 years or so. She tried tirelessly to help my husband get some sort visitation with his daughter, worked hard for him and in the end the daughter doesn’t want anything to do with her daddy…… Then she got diagnosed with cancer four years later. This last August four years ago, she lost her youngest son, David, in a car accident, he was 29 years old. Then this coming February will be two years since she lost a grandson, he was 8 years old. The heartache just lingers these days for her.
Ann has come to a point with her health that she needs to have someone with her at all times. This is to monitor the mounting list of prescriptions that she is on, to make sure she eats and to help her around the house. She can’t cook, she can’t clean, and she goes from the bed to the cough, then back to the bed. I have known Ann for just as long as she has had her cancer. She tells me all the time that she wishes that I would have known her before she got sick. My husband has told me stories about what she has like when she was healthy. She was an artist, poet, a chef, a wife to Bill, a mother to Peter, Sara, Michael and David, and grandmother to 7 grandbabies. Now she feels that she is none of the above anymore.
Like I said Ann is to a point that she needs round the clock care and Ann is only on Medicare. Bill had health insurance, but just hasn’t been able to get any coverage on Ann for almost two years. It’s hard to get insurance on a terminal cancer patient. So Bill talked to my husband’s older siblings, Peter and Sara to see if they could pitch in and help pay for a CNA for about 25 hrs per week. See Peter and Sara have the Moolah. They both married spouses that have money; they both have educations and have successful businesses that are expanding as I type this. They have plenty of money to help support this request. Michael and I barely have enough money to make ends meet or we would be helping out too. So Peter and Sara agreed to help out and agreed to split the cost of the CNA for 25 hrs a week at $14.00 per hr. This was about two weeks ago.
So yesterday, as me and my hubby were hanging out with Ann on our usual Sunday afternoon visit, Ann tells me that Sara called her up last week and asked if Bill got a CNA yet? Ann told her no, that he was still looking for someone that would take $14 an hour. Well Sara told Ann that she just can’t help her out with this; she could maybe pay $25 per week. WTF. Then Ann tells me that Peter called her a few days later and told her the same thing that Sara told her. WTF. So they are right back where they were before.
Peter and Sara have been on my short list of people that I really dislike, almost hate. I believe that hate is a strong word, since I believe that hating someone really means that I wish them dead. I don’t wish them dead, I wish that they would know what hardship and pain is so that they would have some compassion for other people. Peter and Sara and their families, along with Bill and Ann are Jehovah’s Witnesses. Since Michael and I aren’t we don’t talk to Peter and Sara much. They isolate themselves within their congregations. They believe that those people are their family and they treat them better then their blood. They treat Michael as though he is worth nothing.
A perfect example of how they treat their family is this. Michael and I live in a house that Sara and her husband bought for Michael before he and I got engaged, years ago. They used money that Michael saved up for the down payment. And Michael pays the mortgage; they are the owners in title only. They then take out a mortgage with a 17% interest rate, insane if you ask me. They don’t have to pay it, so why look out for their family, right? Sure. So anyway, we got married and have lived in this house for a while when Sara’s husband approaches us about buying the house from him and paying off some debt that we have with him from him fronting the money for all the professionals we used with our baby mamma drama. He offered to pay for new floors in the house so it would appraise for what we needed to pay them off and pay off the ridiculous loan that we have been paying for about 6 years now. We were concerned about putting my name on the house, as I already have a house that I rented out a few years back. But he said he would work with us. Well, it has been hell even getting a hold of the guy, let alone getting money from him to pay for the new floors. Grrrrrr.
Now I was raised in a very religious home, where I was required to memorized scripture verses and obey my parents. One verse that has been running through my head all day while I was thinking about how selfish Peter and Sara are is this: Honor you Father and Mother for this is right. Ephesians 6:1. I don’t quite know how, agreeing to pay for care for their mother, then reneging on it, is remotely considered honoring their mother? I would understand if they are strapped like us, but they aren’t. They both brag to Michael about their expanding businesses and the gadgets that they have bought. If they didn’t want to do it, they should have never agreed.
I truly believe that there needs to be a village that helps with Ann until she passes away. But I could give a rat’s left nut if Peter and Sara help, and the sad part is Ann knows that they don’t give a shit about her. As I look back over the years that I have been in this family, I can’t remember either one of them actually admitting that Ann was terminal. They just kept saying that she would get better. I thought when the doctor said “Hospice” that their attitudes would change. NOPE. I have tried to look at their callousness as fear of loosing their mother. But I think that since they really haven’t had much to do with her for years, they really don’t have a connection to her that would make them feel a loss when she dies. Ann has told me that she is done with them. She doesn’t want them or their families at her memorial. I told her that I don’t blame her at all. As for me, I am done with them too. I can’t believe that my sweet, loving, caring husband actually has the same blood in his veins as them and was raised in the same house. Absolutely amazes me.
