Why It's Harder to Parent Your Parents Than Your Own Kids

In this episode of the School of Midlife podcast, Laurie shares a deeply personal story about her aging in-laws, and the difficult decision to move them to memory care. This is a follow-up episode to Episode 26: When Roles Reverse: Caring for Aging Parents with Compassion.

Laurie will share more life-lessons learned about this difficult season of parenting parents.

LINKS + MENTIONS:

Episode 26: When Roles Revers: Caring for Aging Parents with Compassion

Click here to email Laurie about your interest in a masterclass

Your Next Chapter Book Club:
https://www.schoolofmidlife.com/book-discussion

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟RATE THIS PODCAST:
https://ratethispodcast.com/schoolofmidlife

📩 JOIN MY MAILING LIST
https://www.schoolofmidlife.com/the-weekly-best-life-list-sign-up

👉 CONNECT WITH LAURIE:
📩 Email Laurie

On Instagram

On LinkedIn

Work with Laurie

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson. This is the podcast for the midlife woman who starting to ask herself big life questions. Like, what do I want? Is it too late for me? And what's my legacy beyond my family and my work. Each week we're answering these questions and more. At the School of Midlife, we're learning all of the life lessons they didn't teach us in school and we're figuring out finally what it is we want to be when we grow up. Let's make midlife your best life Hey there. Welcome back to the School of Midlife podcast. Ah, big sigh. So at the time I am recording this. My father in law, my 89 year old father-in-law went missing. Two days ago. Um, I'll get to the backstory in a minute, but this we'll call this a follow-up to an episode I recorded a couple of episodes ago in season one about how to care for your aging and elderly parents and how having those conversations early on. Super important. All right. So here's the story. On Monday. So the time this episode drops, it will have been several weeks ago, but on a Monday, At about three o'clock in the afternoon, my 89 year old father in law left his house. He walked out of the front door and a button-down shirt and his underwear. Carrying his jeans slung over his shoulder. And went to get into his red pickup truck. And because he doesn't usually leave the house in his skivvies. Uh, neighbor from across the street, came running over and stopped him when he was getting in his truck and ask him what he was doing. Because of course he wasn't wearing any pants. and for if you've been around here for awhile, you know that my father-in-law suffers from dementia and certainly we have noticed a pronounced. Decline in his cognitive ability and the last. Um, I mean. He's I would say he's been suffering from dementia for probably the last five years, but the last four to six months the decline is. I can't even describe it. It is. There are days where I'm not even sure he recognizes us. So it's been a big decline. But, you know, Aye. He hasn't been leaving the house in his skivvies so this was something new. And. When the neighbor asked him. You know, what are you doing? Like you're not wearing any pants. my father-in-law told the neighbor that he was headed to a friend's house to get some clothes. And he said that he was going to, a town called Marsing, which is another small rural town in Idaho, not too far away from where he lives. But still, I mean, it's, it's out of the small town where they live and he's not wearing pants. So the neighbor kind of backed off. My father-in-law gets in his pickup truck and drives away. And he didn't have any food. He didn't have any water. He didn't have his wallet. He didn't have a cell phone. And I guess I should stop here and say, If you're wondering why an 89 year old with dementia is still driving. I share that question and that concern, I get it, but his doctor had told him that it was okay to drive if he stayed within the town limits, because we'd been having all these conversations like. Can he still drive? is that, is that actually good for him? And with, with the doctor, we decided that taking away the keys would actually kind of plunge him into the next level of things going poorly. So we allowed him to continue driving in the small town of 2000 people with no stoplights. So it's very small. It's very rural. Everyone recognizes them. And while it's not ideal that he would be driving around town, it made him feel better. So we'll call it a classic case of picking your battles. And if you've been dealing with elderly and aging parents, you know exactly what I mean. there are some battles that you choose others, you don't, in fact, maybe you're not even dealing with this with your elderly parents. Maybe you're dealing with this with your kids, right. Where you, you. There are some battles Going to battle for others. You kind of back off. Mike has gotten in the habit of visiting his parents every Monday afternoon to check on them, to help them with their medications for the week, and just generally make sure they're doing okay because we live an hour away from them. And they live on their own. months, we were going out three to four times a week. We've tried to back off that a little bit as his mother has healed from her surgeries. But he goes out every Monday afternoon. And coincidentally, he happened on that Monday. He happened to arrive about five to 10 minutes after my father-in-law drove away in his truck. The neighbor came running out, said, I just talked to your dad. He kind of told him what was going on. And Mike thought, you know what? I'm going to walk into the house. I'm going to get my mom settled down. And then I'll drive around town, looking for dad because the idea was w where's he going to go? I mean, he's not wearing pants, he doesn't have any food or water. You know, he doesn't have a cell phone. He doesn't have his wallet. He's not going very far. And then when he went in to talk with his mother, She was. I don't know if we'd call it delusional. Or hallucinating, but she was convinced that the man who had just walked out of the house was not her husband. Uh, and, and they've been married. 64 years. So Mike was trying to get his mom settled down, get her figured out. And that took a little bit of time, a little longer than he expected. But once he got her situated and the neighbor came over and was sitting with her, mike gets in his car, drives around town to find his father. So this is probably, I don't know, 30, 45 minutes after his dad had left. And his dad is nowhere to be found. Like he's driven the entire town from one end of the other. Um, no red pickup. No, Roger. This is about the time that we alerted the local police. They in turn alerted the state police and hospitals were called and neighbors because it's a small town they headed out in all different directions to look for him. And a Silver Alert was issued. Had no idea what a Silver Alert was, but it's like an Amber alert, but for elderly endangered persons, I said, he left around three. Um, we don't hear from him for hours. It was the lead story on the 10 o'clock news on Monday night. And I'll admit that whenever I have seen a news report about someone say, driving away in their underwear, I have always kind of laughed it off. Like who the hell let somebody leave their house in their underwear. Why is it nobody stops them. I mean, You can just walk out of your house in your underwear. Let me tell you, after going through what we went through on Monday, it's much easier than I ever expected. So next time I see a news report about that. Um, I'm not going to think it's so dramatic or outlandish that. Uh, how, how does that even happen? Because believe me, it does. So by the time the 10 o'clock news comes on. time he's been gone for over seven hours and we have no idea where he is. he obviously can't call us. Because he doesn't have his phone, although I'm not entirely sure that he would know how to use his phone, even if he had his phone. But once the sun went down and we hadn't heard from him. I got to tell you the situations seem to get a little worse. I mean, it's not good anyway, because here's a man with dementia. In a very rural part of Idaho. It was dark. I mean, we're fairly certain he's lost at this point, but we had no way of knowing where he was. And. It's possible that my super power is imagining in excruciating detail every worst possible scenario. Like I said, it's rural Idaho. Um, I 100% imagined him running in to not literally, but like happening upon. Some guys that notice that he is an old man. In his underwear in a very nice truck. And I was just imagining all of the different ways this could go wrong. Like we could find him in a ditch. In his underwear with a button-down shirt on. He could. Get in a car accident and no one would know who he was because he didn't have his ID. I mean, I just kept kind of playing over and over again. Every bad scenario. It probably didn't help that we'd been watching"Fargo" and"The Gentlemen" recently on TV. So, you know, a lot of. Death. A lot Tough situations. a lot of bad luck be falling characters, but. Um, I, I really. Once it got dark and it was seven and a half, eight hours after he left, I really didn't think we were going to see him alive again. So it was kind of a miracle that he was found around 10 30 that night. On a rural road. It might've even been a dirt road. I don't actually know, but rural road in a rural mountain town. About two and a half hours away from where he lives. So he'd been missing for almost eight hours. A very long time for a pantsless demented man, to be gone. And he'd apparently run his pickup truck into a ditch. And when someone stopped to help him, thank God. It wasn't someone like the people that I had been envisioning that we're going to come up upon him. But when they stopped to help him, it was pretty apparent that he wasn't where he was supposed to be. so they helped him get that truck out of the ditch. And they stayed with him until the local police arrived. And at this point they're probably, I'm gonna say 20, between 15 and 20 miles out of the closest town. On a dirt road. It's dark. Rural town, and two and a half hours. away from his actual home in a rural mountain town. And that's two and a half hours if you're driving like the regular speed limit. So I have no, we have no idea how long it took him to get there. But, um, that night Mike and a close family friend drove to pick him up. And they all returned safely at about two 30 in the morning on Tuesday morning. We spent the rest of the week at doctor's appointments. Um, and touring assisted living and memory care facilities. And to begin with, we really thought that they would go into assisted living. I didn't know much about the difference between assisted living and memory care before we started this. But you can go into assisted living if you need some gentle reminders to say, take your medication every day or take a shower, or maybe you even need assistance taking shower. So we really thought given his mom's cognitive ability that you know what they're going to put them in, in assisted living. No big deal. we toured several facilities and on that Friday, so just a couple of days after the drive off by Roger. Um, we took them to lunch at an assisted living slash memory care facility. that happened to be on Virginia's my mother-in-law's 91st birthday. So we, we took them there. We have lunch and then they did an assessment on where they could live in this facility. And we told them that, yeah, we're going to go to lunch and this is likely where you're going to live, which they did not like. I mean, we have, we've had these conversations about moving them for a while and Virginia's take on it is always, I'm not ready. Nope. Those are for old people. Those are for people that can't take care of themselves. Now, bear in mind, they've been living by themselves. Showering. Maybe once a week, they had a cat that they weren't. They weren't taking care of the cat and the way a cat should be taken care of. I mean, they weren't even taking care of themselves in the way they should be taken care of. They, they got confused about their medication. They would get up at three 30 in the morning and, you know, head to church and couldn't understand why no one was there. So there was a lot of confusion and time of day. And I know I'm sure you're saying right now. Why are these people living by themselves, but We have tried to move them with a lot of resistance and not only resistance from them, but also from their neighbors, because it's this very close knit tight knit community. And. It wasn't until the drive off at the beginning of the week that the neighbors were finally like, it's time. Um, you know, I mean, they they've certainly been helping them. With grocery shopping or if they got confused about medication or if they noticed that there was an ambulance, because we, gosh, we've had a lot of ambulance pickups in the last several months, so the neighbors would come over and, They'd wonder about it and they'd talk to us about it. And we were all on the same page that all we wanted was for Roger and Virginia to be safe. So we finally get everybody on board. We explain to them that it's time for them to move. And it's Friday. We're going to go check out this facility. This is the one that we had narrowed it down to. Because there were a number of great options, very nearby Mike and me, I mean, within a mile, which was great because it's not, it's not an hour away. but like one of them didn't have a memory care facility and we got very, as located on a fairly busy five lane road. And we were pretty concerned about Roger, just walking out the front door and getting confused where he was and ending up, who knows where maybe in the middle of a five lane road, hopefully with pants on, but you don't know any more with Roger, right? And then there was another one that we liked a lot, but they would have to be in separate rooms. And we just didn't think that that was a good option for a couple that had been married for 64 years. So we narrowed it down to our top choice. We take them to lunch on Virginia's birthday. They made a big deal out of her birthday. They got her big chocolate cake. Um, sang happy birthday tour. Everyone who all of the residents. Like recognize that we were new and they would stop by and they would talk to us. So it was, it was a lovely, lovely afternoon. And. They did the assessment and they said, we'll take them. And we have room. But they're going to memory care. Which kind of broke my heart. Because I thought my mother-in-law is super social. My father-in-law, isn't talking a lot anymore. because he gets confused But if we move Virginia, This is going to hasten her decline. And then a number of things happened as it relates to Virginia that proved that she was more cognitively incapacitated than we even imagined. Suffice it to say, they will be moving into memory care in a couple of weeks. Um, I was worried about Virginia because in memory care, there is a locked door. Like people can't come and go. If we want to go visit, we have to check in at the front desk and they have to badge us in. And I've been very concerned about how Virginia is going to handle that, knowing that she can't leave. But it also occurs to me. That it's very possible that. They might not know that they can't leave. Right. And, I do believe that they're both going to do better. With three nutritious meals a day prepared by someone else and the serve to them. They're they're going to be better off in a community where people talk with one another and there's some interaction and it's, it's more than just the two of them sitting in their living room and Virginia trying to talk to Roger and Roger, not responding to her. So all in all, I know that this is going to be a big win. It's going to be so much better. Um, for them and it's going to be better for Mike and me as well. I mean, There, there won't be any more, two 30 in the morning pickups. in, you know, A different state. Which. Mike had to do about two months ago. So this has been going on for awhile. I am excited. And nervous about the move because when you have lived on your own for 64 years, Uh, in a house. I think they moved into the house that they're currently in when gosh, Mike was eight, maybe. So they've been in this house a long, long, long, long time. It's going to be a big move. I am optimistic that it's going to turn out well for them. And and that's kind of all I can hope for at this point. because we have to do it. It, there, there are no more. Let's just wait and see how this plays out. The reason that I am sharing all of this with you is I know that there are so many of you out there who are dealing with similar circumstances, maybe not to the extent that we are. Maybe that, you know, you're starting to notice a little bit of decline, but it's, it's not a big deal. They have many, many years. Before you need to do anything before you have to step in before you have to take the car keys away before you have to make some big decisions. I also know this can happen pretty quickly, where if you aren't prepared with the information you have, as far as what are their end of life wishes? What happens if there is a medical emergency, what do they want to have happen? How do they want to be treated? I know that because my dad had a heart attack and died unexpectedly at 66. And he died without a will and he died without us having any conversations about what are your end of life wishes? Where your assets were like, do you have keys that go to say the security deposit box that you still have at a bank? And by the way, Our parents are still of the generation that have security deposit boxes at banks. So you better know where those are. And I learned so much as far as kind of what you should have in order when something happens when your parents aren't able to take care of themselves. And we, we were able to use a lot of that information, learn from what we learned from my dad. To get Mike's parents set up. So, you know, we're on all their account numbers. We know where the bank is. We've got a relationship with the financial planner. My father-in-law collects old cars, mainly fifties era Chevy's and there are six of them in different garages, all over Canyon County, Idaho. So we actually went and saw where the where the garages were because, um, if we were to ask him right now, there is no way he could tell us. So we set up a lot of things along the way to help us navigate this season that we find ourselves in right now. And because of what I've learned. I want to share that with you? I know you're probably thinking, but I don't need this yet. My parents are really good. You know, they're in great health. their cognitive abilities are top notch. I don't need this yet, but I sort of feel like talking with your parents about end of life care or, and it doesn't even have to be at the end of life, but what happens if they get injured or they find themselves in the hospital? having those conversations with your parents is a lot like talking to your kids about drugs or sex. You need to do it earlier than you think you do so that you don't find yourself. questioning what, what am I supposed to do with this? What would they want? How do I, how do I approach this situation? Where do I find the information that I need to provide the best help to them so that they can get the medical care that they want so they can live the life that they want. I'm putting together a masterclass with all of this information. I don't know when it's going to be scheduled yet, but if this sounds like something you would be interested in. I will drop a clickable link in the show notes and just send me an email that says I'm interested in this. Um, like I said, I'm not sure when the masterclass will be held yet, but it's going to have all sorts of information. That's going to serve you. And them. And it will be in place when you actually need it. And that's, that's the whole thing, right? Is you don't want to be trying to figure out these things after it's too late. I mean, that's what I did with my dad. And I couldn't even order a dumpster to have delivered to his home so that we could start essentially throwing things away that we didn't need. I couldn't do that until the death certificate was issued. And that took, uh, I think almost three weeks, four weeks. But if my name had been on, say the accounts, then it wouldn't have been a big deal, but there are just a lot of things that you don't think about until you have to face them. And I want to provide you with the information to help you start thinking about those things to arm you with some practical tips on how to start those conversations, the type of information that you should be looking for, documents that you should have in place. This will be a very tactical hands-on workshop so it's not going to happen on the podcast. Um, But. It's going to be helpful. I promise you that. So if you're interested in something like that, Send me an email, shoot me a DM. Find me on. Instagram. Um, send me a message and we'll get it taken care of. And then when it's time, I'll let you know, and we will put together a little masterclass. I know that this episode. Is a little different than, What you've come to expect for the School of Midlife podcast, but I also know. I did an episode in September when things started to go badly. When my mother-in-law had a series of falls at 89 had to have surgery. So this is kind of a follow-up to that. But since then, things have gotten more real. And if I can help you navigate this, I'm so happy to do it. We've learned a lot in this, in this season. And I want to share that with you so that when you might be dealing with similar circumstances, you're well equipped to handle them. And here's the other thing at the School of Midlife, it's not just about menopause, and am I having a midlife crisis? We're also talking about the life lessons that no one ever taught us in school. So this is very practical knowledge that might feel much different than what we have, what we usually talk about here. But if I can help you learn some things to better set you up for when this happens to you, then that's exactly what we're doing at the podcast; right. Thanks so much for being here today i will see you next week when the school of midlife is back in session. Take care. Do you ever wish you had a community of midlife women you could go talk to about those big life questions that seem to pop up in midlife? Like, what do I want? What's my legacy. What's next for me? A community of women to have candid conversations with about all the things that come at us in midlife that no one else seems to be talking about. Changes in our bodies related to menopause. Sure. But also changes in our relationships and family life and careers. Well, great news. The School of Midlife has launched a book club called Your Next Chapter. Each month we'll be reading and discussing books that relate to the unique experiences of midlife women. It's absolutely free to join. And we'd love to have you meet up with us and add your voice to these important discussions. And this isn't like other book clubs, because if you didn't have time to finish the book, but you're still interested in the conversation. Absolutely join us anyway, because you'll still get so much out of the conversation. The book club is free to join, but you'll need to sign up. Click the sign up link in the show notes and you'll automatically receive your invitation to join us. Get signed up, grab this month's book and start reading. And we'll look forward to seeing you at the next book club discussion we're together we're helping each other make midlife our best life