A surprise conversation with my mom

And a life lesson for us all.

My son thought this was a bridge. I explained that it’s a staircase. Maybe it’s a metaphor?

Many of you know the struggle to help a parent who lives far away, or one who can’t manage living in their home, yet refuses to move — or both.

Until recently, I had both. My mom lives about an hour and 20 minutes drive from me — not terrible, but a stretch. And while she has finally! agreed to move to an assisted living, my brother and I (and our very supportive spouses) still have to deal with the life-threatening challenges Mom faces until she moves out.

There was a time, not very long ago, when Mom would have scoffed LOUDLY at a description of anything in her home environment being life threatening.

Then, over the holidays, something changed. She realized how vulnerable she actually is.

*

If you’re over 50, chances are you’re in the middle of a similar nerve-wracking parental dilemma, or you know someone who is. At this point, I know so many people who have older parents who don’t want to leave their homes, that I’ve been schooled in just how wildly variable the variables are.

I’m talking, older parents in their upper 80s and allll the way through their 90s. They’re living alone (sometimes fine, sometimes falling frequently), and defying their adult kids who wish nothing more than to keep their parents from catastrophe (fire, flood, plague — I mean, it’s Biblical at this age).

Do I get it? Well. I’m not in my 80s, and not yet frail, but I think about this dilemma a LOT. Who wants to be forced to leave their home, at any age? Jesus. It’s a terrible situation we’re all in.

A friend, whose mother is 96 and still living on her own, told me that she and her siblings had to make peace with their mother’s refusal to move. “Nothing will change until there’s a bad fall or an illness or something else,” my friend said, and raised her hands in the universal gesture of surrender. “All I can do is wait.”

Acceptance is not a bad strategy. Your options are truly limited. Short of obtaining guardianship (time consuming and expensive), what are you gonna to do? Drag Mom or Dad or Aunt Ada to the car at gun point, and move them to a facility? I’m sure it’s happened. God knows my brother and I have looked into all the possibilities, especially as it became clear that Mom might actually break her neck or burn down the house if nothing changed.

*

Mom lives in one of those condo developments that was thrown together without any thought or planning for how people really live, never mind older people. The mail boxes are installed at one end of the parking lot — outdoors, not even under a shelter. The garbage + recycling area is at the opposite end of that long parking lot from the mailboxes, to distribute the inconvenience equally among residents. No one has garbage bins near their units; every single resident has to walk from wherever they live to take out the trash.

This is our dilemma: Mom purchased a unit that happens to be located farther from the mailboxes, the garbage area, and the parking lot, than any other unit in the entire development. Oh, and her apartment is at the bottom of a flight of 16 steps.

My mom — who has extreme neuropathy and can’t feel her feet, has trouble with her balance and struggles to walk even with a walker — literally has to walk farther to get to her apartment than I do. And I live in New York City.

*

To her credit, my mom — never a quitter — has developed an incredible system for getting up and down the stairs to get her mail or take a taxi. It’s incredible because this 20-minute routine depends on a carefully calculated, highly engineered series of maneuvers that would make an Olympic gymnast rethink everything they’d been taught.

One small example. Not even involving the steps! To get out of her apartment, Mom has to take one step down with the walker. Then, in order to close the door — and because she can’t pivot herself and the walker at the same time — she twists around, puts her hand in the crack of the door (the part between the hinges that can crush your fingers? that part) and applies just enough pressure to get the door to swing closed. Fortunately, it takes 1.5 seconds for the door to start its swing, just enough time for her to slip her hand out of the door jamb, so she can grab the walker and not fall over — before the door shuts.

It has been such a point of contention that we’ve stopped talking about it.

*

But. In the spirit of all things are possible. Maybe. I was taking Mom home after a holiday lunch just a couple of weeks ago, and as we were making our way in the FREEZING COLD MAY I ADD from the parking lot — she says out of nowhere, “Whose idea was this?”

Somehow, I knew she didn’t mean our lunch. Which had been nice, actually. But I needed her to spell it out. So I prompted her: “Whose idea was…??”

“This!” Mom said, her head down, breathing unsteady, as she wrangled her walker over a crack in the uneven pavement, where there was also ice and snow, because the condo association can’t afford SALT apparently.

“The mailboxes are so far away! Fifteen minutes to get from the parking lot! Why didn’t we ever think about it?”

Somehow I managed not to say the worst thing, which would have been, Um, well, we did think about it, but … I mean, I really had to take the grenade out of my own hand. It’s so frustrating at times, you want to do something you’ll regret. Or scream like a crazy person. Instead I managed to say, “You mean, we just didn’t think about how things could end up like this, this hard to navigate, as you got older?”

“Yes!” she fumed. “And the 16 steps! Do you know how many times I’ve counted those damn steps, up and down!”

There, I just left a silence. What could I say? Because a few minutes later, when we got to the top of that ridiculous flight of stairs down to her front door, I knew I’d be counting every single one as she white-knuckled her way, step by shaky step, to the bottom.

It’s a weird sensation — to feel vindicated and heartbroken at the same time. Mom was right: We, or she, could have forecast how the lovely condo she bought 25 years ago would turn into an elder trap. And several years ago, my brother and I (and our very supportive spouses) did start pushing that uncomfortable conversation onto the table whenever we could.

Sometimes a crisis can occur in seconds. But often, a crisis has to mature over time, like a fine wine, before it reaches a certain peak of insanity and gets the attention it deserves.

Now, here we are.

I guess I’m grateful that my mom is finally ready to move somewhere safer. And I’m not above second-guessing myself either. Was there was something we could have done differently, and sooner? Or is the answer always: The lightbulb has to want to change?*

* In case you haven’t heard this one already:

Q: How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: None. The lightbulb has to want to change.