From Daughter to Caregiver: A Personal Journey

Navigating the uncertain and emotional journey of becoming a caregiver for a loved one in their later years is a deeply personal and challenging experience. This episode shares my personal story of stepping up as a caregiver for my adoptive mother, who was battling age-related dementia. I talk about the logistical challenges, balancing her health needs while managing a life in a different city. Listen as I recount the decision to move her into a home specially built for her comfort, from finding the right property to managing her health care needs.

The second half of this episode takes a deeper look into the emotional weight of caregiving, where I reflect on the transition of moving my mom into a memory care facility and the financial burden that came with it. I share the cathartic experience of sorting through her belongings post her passing, and how it served as a means of closure. While the journey was filled with moments of stress, responsibility, and sorrow, it was also about the bond we formed, the good moments shared, and the solace found in providing care for a loved one. This episode aims to provide not just practical tips for caregiving, but also a reminder of the emotional rollercoaster involved and how to find balance amidst it all.

Transcript

Caring for Aging Parents, Finding Balance

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to the BWB podcast Balancing with Becca. I'm Becca, I'm in my fifties and I'm still trying to find balance in all of the ways. If you're looking to balance your relationships, your food, your fitness, your lifestyles, join me here on the BWB podcast. Let's get started. Hi Balanced Babes, welcome to the BWB podcast. It's Rebecca, also known as Becca.

Speaker 1 0:42

I wanted to talk about one of life's stages that we are all eventually going to go through, and that is caring for a family member or an aging parent. So back in like 2016, my adoptive mom the mom who adopted me when I was 12, she started going through some stages in her age group, which was in her 80s, where she was starting to lose her memory and she needed me to take care of some things for her. She lived in San Diego I live here in the Inland Empire and so it was a challenge driving up and down to San Diego whenever she needed me. I did do that for about a year or so, maybe a year and a half, before we decided it was time that she come and live with us Now. The house that I was living in at the time although it was a beautiful house, it was a two-story house, and I knew that she was not going to be able to navigate those stairs. So we decided to start looking in a different area, which we did. We started looking in Yuccaipa and we found a property that was big enough to build her a little granny flat or a little guest house. So we pretty much did this all just in time because she started really developing the age-related dementia and we were able to get everything on paper and buy the house and start building her house and get her house done. We got it done within about I think it was about six months to eight months, and so she was able to come up here and live with us and it was perfect timing because I had caregivers that would come in for four hours a day but nobody stayed with her at night and she was starting to fall and it just started to get super stressful and super challenging. So we called her Granny and Granny was, like I said, in her 80s.

Speaker 1 3:14

In her early 80s she came to live with us. She brought her two dogs and a lot of stuff, and that's what really got me thinking about doing this podcast. A number of reasons. First of all, it can be very, very challenging and very, very stressful to be a caregiver to somebody in your family, and especially a parent, because there's that you know you mess with that balance right there of the mom and their daughter, or the dad and the daughter or son. So first of all, there's that. Second of all, they bring with them a lot of stuff and we went through her house. Luckily for me, her caregivers did most of her packing. We did hire a moving company to move her up here, which I highly recommend, and we brought up a trailer full of all of her plants. My mom loved her flowers, loved her plants, and we wanted to make sure that she really felt at home when she got here.

Speaker 1 4:26

Now. She had lived in San Diego for over 50 years and so she was very, very familiar with her town and coming up here obviously was very confusing for her just at the stage of her dementia. It's funny I was thinking about it the other day we would go to a doctor's appointment up here and then, as we're driving home, she was so bewildered by all the street names and everything. And then we'd get to my house and she'd say is this my house? Pretty much every time we drove up to this house she would say is this my house? But she loved it. She really loved her cute little house that we had built for her.

Speaker 1 5:11

So her stuff because it couldn't fit in this I don't even know how many square feet it is. It's a bedroom, bathroom, laundry, kitchen, small little studio house, maybe 700 square feet I think. Most of her stuff went into a shed behind this little house and a lot of it went in there and we also had to have a yard sale before we sold her house because she just had 80 years of stuff and Granny kept everything. She had her dad's driver's license even Now. You figure she was 84 when she came here and she still had her father's driver's license. She had pictures from her grandparents and great grandparents and documents and she saved everything Cards, letters, pictures, the photo albums just boxes and boxes of photo albums, and so she just she had a lot of stuff besides all the trinkets and everything else. So this shed, like I said, was just pretty much ceiling high with boxes. The Christmas stuff was unbelievable how much Christmas stuff she had accumulated in her lifetime. She loved Christmas.

Speaker 1 6:42

So she comes up here and she lives up here for about a year and during that year I luckily, was not working at the time so I was able to dedicate full time to her. She was also diabetic, so we she actually had a little problem with her insulin which started causing the falling and not feeling good and just so many things. So through diet we got her pretty situated with the diabetes and I meal prepped for her so got her here. I was her sole caregiver once she got up here. So for a year that's what I did. I took care of her. I made sure she had her meals throughout her day. She had her snacks in between meals. We would do her little blood test to test her sugar during the day to make sure she was good. If she was a little high, we would have her walk around her little house and I would walk with her. And so you know all of the things the doctor's appointments and everything that goes with taking care of another person. That year wasn't totally the worst year ever or anything like that. Her and I bonded during that time. Even though she was losing her memory. We still had some good moments. We had some bad moments.

Speaker 1 8:15

I think you know, when you're a caregiver for someone, you worry more than maybe you should about them, and maybe it's because you are solely responsible for everything that has to do with them. She was always really good with it. She was very positive, always. You know, super sweet Granny was always just pretty much a happy person, even with the dementia I told her one time. I said it's like you're living in the moment. That's what I teach my yogis to live in the moment. And that's what she did. She was living in the moment and so she, like I said, lasted about a year, but the ending part of that year that she was here in my home was probably the hardest, because she did start falling a lot.

Speaker 1 9:04

We did all of the things, though she had the necklace so that if we weren't home she could push the button and they would dial 911 for her. I swear, every time I heard a siren even near my house, I would get an anxiety attack because I knew that they were probably at my house, and most times they weren't. But that's my thought process. You know I was always so worried about her but, like I said, I would meal prep for her. I would make her three or four omelets and cover them up and put them in her fridge so in the morning she could wake up and she would have her omelet. All she had to do was put it in the microwave. We purposely did not put a stove in this kitchen because we didn't want her to burn the house down. But she would warm up her coffee for like five minutes at a time and, because of the diabetes, her fingertips were kind of numb so she wouldn't feel the coffee pot being so hot. So I would come in sometimes and the microwave would just be going for that one little cup of coffee.

The Challenges of Caregiving

Speaker 1 10:06

So, anyways, the day-to-day challenges with taking care of someone is it's kind of hard to explain if you've not done it before. So I feel like we're all going to be at some point taking care of somebody in our family, and so that's why I wanted to do this podcast. I really wanted to just share my experience with you, so maybe it can help you out. So meal prepping, cleaning for her, cleaning after her, getting her to doctor's appointments, waiting for test results to come in, and when she would fall we would have to take her to the emergency room. And she was so cute.

Speaker 1 10:49

Her family was from Czechoslovakia originally, and so she'd always say she would always talk about her toughness and her toughness, being her bohunk that's what she called it her bohunk family traits, and so she would never hurt herself when she'd fall. She would fall hard, but she would never split her head open or anything like that. One time she fell and she did hit her head and she got a black eye. That was before she came up here and, oh my God, she had that black eye for like two months and every time I took her to her doctor's appointments I would just think, oh my God, please don't think I'm doing elderly abuse or anything here. So to go back a little bit, her name was Dorothy. Dorothy adopted my brother and I when I was about 12 and my brother was six, so we had been in the foster system for about five years before that. So she adopted my brother and I together, her and her husband, and we did not have a good relationship whatsoever. She literally adopted a 12 year old and I left at 18, walked out the door with my stuff and honestly, that's a whole different show, believe me, but we did not get along that great.

Speaker 1 12:16

So for me to be the one that is taking care of her towards the end of her life was pretty surprising to most, especially her friends and her best friend, especially Dolores. They were very grateful that I was doing it, of course, but they were very surprised. And here's how I looked at it. I looked at it like she took care of me in a very crucial time of my life. I didn't have to live on the streets, I had a roof over my head. Even though life wasn't perfect, she still taught me manners. She taught me a lot, and even though we weren't that close during those years, she still taught me a lot about life, and so I was grateful for that. And when it came time to taking care of her, there was no question in my mind that I was going to do it for her. So, like I said, she lived here for a year and then it just got to be too much.

Speaker 1 13:19

The dementia was really setting in. The amount of care that I was providing for her was. It was starting to get too much on me. I mean, honest to God, guys, I would have terrible thoughts during that time. I was so stressed out. I had anxiety attacks constantly. It was very stressful. It was very, very stressful. I couldn't leave there's. You know, we couldn't go anywhere because we had to take care of granny, and you know, joe and I both like to travel so much, but during that time there was no traveling, no going anywhere. So, which is fine, it's a small time in your life that you have to do it. So it finally got to the point where we had to start looking at assisted living centers for her, because it was just too much on me. Even after just a year of her being here, there was a year and a half, almost two years, of me driving back and forth to San Diego taking care of her. So we're talking about three years or so at this point and honestly I couldn't do it anymore. I just I had nothing more to give. So we found a assisted living center in Loma Linda and took her there to do a tour and they had two sections one section where if you're an older adult and you just can't really live on your own but you don't have any dementia, you can live in that area, or they have a total assisted living that is for dementia and Alzheimer's patients.

Speaker 1 15:10

We thought that she would be okay living in the regular part. We got her all moved in. She loved it. There was an elevator. She got to bring her dog. She brought Belle with her, her little white poodle mix, and two days into it she got lost in the parking lot. She lost her hearing aid. It was a mess. So they automatically moved her over to the memory care part of the assisted living.

Speaker 1 15:41

And let me just tell you guys that this is not inexpensive at all. So with her living in the regular apartment part, it was more than my house payment. So it was a one-bedroom little tiny place. The memory care part of it was way more. So we're talking of over $5,000 for the memory care part of it. Now, luckily for us, my mom years ago had taken out an insurance policy where, if she ever needed care, in that way that they would pay up to about $56,000 a year for that care. So it's called Banker's Life, in case you want to look it up. They were a lifesaver. The challenging part of that was is they don't pay for the first month. They don't start paying until the second month. So we had to pay for the first month of her being there and then it kicked in. The other kicker about it is that they only pay up to that $56,000. So you can imagine how expensive that actually is.

Speaker 1 17:03

I would lay awake at night, so stressed out because after that $56,000 mark I would have to pay for this and my mom only had her social security, so that's what she lived on every month with her social security and that was definitely not going to cover over $5,000 in memory care. So lots of sleepless nights, lots of numbing myself. In a sense I think I probably drank more in that year than any other time in my life because I was just so stressed out constantly. She didn't mind the home at all, she had a roommate and she was really day-to-day anyways. So if yet today was good, then it was all great, and then tomorrow would come and that would be great too.

Speaker 1 18:03

I would go visit her just about every day when she first went into the memory care and then I started kind of tapering off. But I would feel so guilty. I would feel so guilty if I didn't go see her in a day. So I would try to get there three or four times a week and even if I just stayed an hour just to see how she was doing, check up on her, make sure they're taking care of her well enough. This facility was very nice. It was a newer facility, but they do have a lot of people in there and not that many caregivers. So I was super concerned about her, just constantly worried about her all the time. She actually lasted in that facility exactly 365 days to the date she went in. I did not realize that until about a year after she passed away. That that's the date she went in and a year later the date she passed away was the same. So it was a crazy, super crazy four years just about of taking care of her.

Letting Go of Loved One's Belongings

Speaker 1 19:16

What I did not take advantage of and I wanted to just mention is that if you are a caregiver for one of your parents or somebody else in your family, you're the full-time caregiver. There is a program and look it up. It does relieve you for a few days to a week, I think, once a year. So if you want to take a vacation and you want to get away, you can put them into a facility for that weekend or that week and it will be paid for. I don't know how it is in everyone's state, but it's called the reprisal program, I believe, and it's to help the caregiver to recharge and restore. So look it up. I can't I don't have any phone numbers or anything for you guys. I apologize, but Google it and see if that's something, if you're dealing with this, so you get and I don't like to use this word loosely, believe me, I'm not using this loosely, but you get a type of a PTSD when you are in that situation for an amount of time.

Speaker 1 20:38

And I can remember driving to work one morning and having a little bit of an anxiety attack, but also remembering and thinking I don't have anyone I have to take care of in this moment. And it was about a year after she passed away that I had that revelation and I just I just inhaled and thought, oh my gosh, I don't have anybody that I have to take care of in this moment. And it was a. It was a very strange feeling. To be honest. I had to get off at this one off ramp to go see her. Every single time I'd go see her. It's also the off ramp that I get off to to go to work and for the longest time I would think about that feeling that I would feel when I was going to see her, knowing that when I walked into the door of that place and then the second door because that's how it was, make sure they don't get out the smell of it not that it smelled bad, but it just has its own smell. And then seeing that the people there, the patients there and the caregivers were always so sweet.

Speaker 1 22:01

But just walking into that situation day after day after day, it's, it can be. It can be really hard, guys, it's, it's so hard. I'm gonna be honest with you, it is. That is the hardest thing I've ever done in my lifetime and I've had a lot of hard things in my life, but that is one of the very hardest things I have had to experience, and I did it pretty much by myself. Now, granted, joe, my husband was right there with me, believe me and Dakota and Jesse to a certain point for sure, but when it came down to it, it was my job, I was her daughter, it's my responsibility. I did it, and so that's I don't want to take away from anybody. They did help me, but for the most part it was my. My brother, who she also adopted, has been gone for many years. He passed away many years ago, so it was pretty much just me. I couldn't expect my sister to help me with her. She has my birth mom with her. So I couldn't. I didn't feel at the time like I could ask for that help. I felt like I could do it on my own.

Speaker 1 23:23

So, going back to the stuff part and why, I wanted to also talk about this all of her stuff. So there was a garage cell, yard cell type situation going to happen to help benefit some people in my town and so I decided to grab some of Granny's stuff to donate for that. And when I did I realized there was so many boxes of stuff that I still needed to go through that I hadn't even looked in in the almost six years Boxes that I haven't even hadn't even opened, and so got a few things out for the yard cell and then called a Company called junk dogs and my daughter knows the owners and so she said mom, call this company and They'll come and get all of this stuff. So I called the company and Scheduled an appointment. This was on a Friday or Saturday, scheduled it for Monday, so I knew I had to get into that shed and go through those boxes before they got here. So I went in there on Sunday.

Speaker 1 24:38

I spent half my day going through pictures and boxes and, oh my gosh, the stuff that I Enrapt of hers, that she had had for for her whole life and stuff that she had kept from her mom and her dad and and her husband, my adopted dad and it was so emotional. It was so emotional going through that stuff and learning to Let go of that stuff. My voice is changing because it was so emotional. There was a point that I came into my house and I just cried. I just because the the process of letting go is so hard, it's easier just to keep this stuff and close the door and Not use that space. It was hard to go through that stuff and it was hard to let go because I felt compelled to keep it because it was hers. So there's that emotional Bond, that, that emotional part of it that's so hard.

Speaker 1 25:47

My mom was very, very Catholic and she had a lot of Catholic statues and and she's got a ton of Bibles which, believe me, I did not put any of the Bibles in the boxes to go. I could not do it. But I I Kind of talked to her in the sense while I was doing all of this. I was like, granny, I can't keep all of this stuff, you know. I Know you'll let me know what you want me to keep. And it was funny because she kind of did. I have a whole box of photo albums that are pictures of my brother and I when we were kids, during that time that we were with her, and there's a Mother Mary statue that I did put by the boxes.

Speaker 1 26:34

And then the next morning I came out and I said nope, put her in the shed, I can't give her away. For some reason I couldn't give her away and gosh, there was some really cool old, old music books and things like that that I kept. Just if I felt it to keep it, I would keep it. I kept her wedding album, just a few things like that guys. I went through my brother's box. My brother had this little Buddha, like a little Black Buddha guy that I don't know. I just took it. I thought it'll be perfectly in the yoga room in the Zindan, and so there was little things that were telling me to keep this or keep that.

Speaker 1 27:16

But I walked into the house, like I said, and I just broke down. I'm trying to fix breakfast and I'm just breaking down and I had gone through so much in that household with her husband and her and there were so many problems in that life and so many things that I had to learn to forgive, to move on for myself, and I felt this sorrow come over me. But then I told Joe I feel like they're all hugging me and telling me they're sorry. Right now I feel like even her husband, al, my dad at the time and herself and my brother and my son. I felt like they were all gathered around me and hugging me and telling me that they were so sorry for what they've put me through. And it sounds so crazy, I know, but that's really how I felt. So it made me stop feeling so sad and it helped me to start to heal. And going through that stuff was cleansing. Getting rid of it was very cleansing.

Speaker 1 28:41

Seeing all the boxes sitting there outside of the shed waiting for the junk dogs to come get it was weird for me to see, but I wasn't tempted to go grab anything else out. I told myself you look through it. You said you're going to let it go and you're going to let it go, and that's what I did. When they got here, they were very sweet, I have to say. They were very sensitive and that was helpful. And I told him this was all my mom's stuff as they're loading it in my brother's box. He had a little bit of toys and stuff in there. My brother's box broke open and a little jet plane came out and I instantly grabbed that jet plane and said I'm keeping this. So I kept that. And it's just super odd how you go through all those feelings. And at this point in my day, as I look out my window to that shed, I know that there's a box of antique tablecloths in there that I decided to keep and an Afghan in there that my grandma had made that I decided to keep. The Mary statue is in my front yard along with St Francis. It was also her statue and I decided to put her there so that I would just think about my mom when I saw her and there was something that compelled me to get her and keep her. So I feel like my mom was telling me to grab her and keep her. So that is what I wanted to talk to you guys about today. I know it's a little long winded and I apologize for that, but I also hope that you got something out of this.

Speaker 1 30:36

If nothing else, if you're going through the same, there is support out there to help you. Please take care of yourself. That is so important. Self care is so important when you're a caregiver. Honestly, it is truly one of the hardest, hardest jobs you'll ever do. If you're caring for a parent especially. Again, there is that you know that's the mom or that's the dad and they're used to taking care of you and now you're taking care of them. So there is a balance of sensitivity that you have to think about when you're taking care of them, because they were your parent, they're your whole life, they were your parent and now you're telling them what to do. So just my advice is to be very sensitive.

Speaker 1 31:30

If you're dealing with an older parent and they're forgetting things, one of the biggest pieces of advice I have for you is please don't tell them. Remember I told you, or you already told me, that those are really. I had to learn that with Granny because it was always in bear. I know it was embarrassing for her when I would say that and I would say it out of frustration, like granny. Remember we already did this or we did that, or you know, and I finally realized that she didn't need to hear me say that. Obviously, she didn't remember it. So that's one piece of advice I have for you is don't constantly say to them don't you remember? Or remember we talked about that? Don't say anything like that, just move on with the conversation because they're not here for a long time. Once you start taking care of them, it's not a long time. It seems like it In the moment. It seems like it's never going to end. When I got the call that Granny had passed away, I was on the way with the kids to do a horseback riding lesson and my instructor put me on her horse bear back, even though I wasn't supposed to ride that day. She said get on my horse bear back and while she did the lesson with the kids, I just walked around on that horse bear back and I'll never forget that day.

Speaker 1 33:02

It was a day of grief, but it was also, in a way, a day of relief and I'm sorry if that sounds terrible to say that, but if you're a caregiver already, you'll understand it how hard it actually is. She was 87 when she passed away and she passed away in her sleep, so I was happy about that. But it wasn't a life in that home for her and living with dementia wasn't a quality life at all for her. She was confused a lot. I'm so thankful that she was able to take her dog with her, because her dog was so faithfully by her side the whole time she was in there. So that was really very, very special.

Speaker 1 34:01

But it wasn't easy. Her death wasn't an easy death. She was in hospice for about four months and so that four months was really hard on her and it was hard on us watching her go through that. So when I say it was a day of grief and a day of relief, it was both of that. I'm going to be very honest with you. It was. We miss her. We loved her dearly. I think her and I got a chance to really bond the last four years of her life and I was grateful for that and I was grateful for her being there for me when I needed her, when I was a kid and a teenager.

Speaker 1 34:52

So, with all of this said again, self-care is super important. Just love your people. Love them for as long as you can, try to be patient, but also know that you can go for a drive in your car and scream your head off out the sunroof, like I did many times. Oh my gosh, thinking about it, it's crazy. Today was a day of cleansing and I had to get on here and talk to you guys about it because as I watched that truck go up the street with all of my mom's stuff in there and some of my brother's stuff and my grandparents and my great-grandparents stuff, I let it go.

Speaker 1 35:39

And that feeling of let it go was not easy. I'm still going through a little bit of it at this moment, but I can now move on and I can use that space out there now for what I need it for, for what I need it for in my life. Thank you guys so much for listening. I appreciate all of you tuning in. Thank you for choosing my podcast in this moment. I hope that I have brought some balance. Thank you again. Bye. Thank you, friends, for joining me on the BWB podcast balancing with Becca. Until next time, keep on balancing, babes.