Kitchen Etiquette 101

The kitchen is the most used room in the house. Food and utensils are stored, prepared, and cleaned in the area. This presents some unique challenges for the Shanty caregiver. When one doesn't have the use of a stove, having been disconnected to assure the elders safety, preparation can be a challenge. All things must be prepared in the microwave or crock pot, different utensils and food types are required. There seems to be more waste byproducts when you prepare food this way and sanitation is an issue.

When using the crock pot to make a stew, chili or a roast you can usually leave the offering in the pot all day and go about your business secure in the knowledge that it should be cooked adequately after you return home. Unless..., Ma, who has become unusually afraid of electric appliances, unplugs the the concoction at some indeterminable place in the cooking process. Then a guessing game occurs as to how much time remains to cook and when it will be of an edible quality. If I am very lucky she has not put the crock pot, still hot, into the refrigerator with the plug still attached melting the plastic coating on the refrigerator shelves and making the plug wet in an attempt to electrocute her unsuspecting caregiver. I have taken to cooking in the crock pot at night when I am sleeping on the couch to keep Ma from taking a late night walk during some delusional nightmare. I now multitask while sleeping by blocking access to the door and cooking at the same time. Sometimes my inventiveness even impresses me.

Cooking in the microwave requires constant checking and often interferes with Ma reheating her tea. No problem, whatever is being cooked can be removed in mid processing and be replaced with a mug of tea temporarily soothing Ma's insatiable thirst. Besides, Ma can't set the timer properly and to find the device with time actually running on it is a real treat. Just set whatever is in the Microwave to the side, reheat the brew, and walk away leaving the previously cooking item in some unrelated location like on a chair or in a cabinet. It has become a game not unlike hide and seek or blind man's bluff. How much time elapsed before the interruption? How much time passed during the interruption? And my personal favorite, where the hell is the food?

Clean up is a real treat. The hair on the back of my neck stands up as I hear Ma rattling dishes, pyrex bowls or glasses in the sink. In self defense I try to clean as I go but I often want to rest and digest my food before cleanup. Ma has a sixth sense about this and she bee lines to the sink while I am distracted where she pretends to clean the dishes. She rinses them, dries them and slams the glass wear into the cupboards and the utensils into the drawer. More often than not a glass breaks or a dish cracks and they are put in the cupboard anyway. Thank God they probably still have some food on them which acts as a glue holding them together till her caregiver reluctantly removes them from their resting place to give them a proper cleansing, If not broken. I would like to have stock in Buffalo China or Pyrex as I am sure their stock has increased in value since Ma has aged.

Leftovers are a challenge as Ma doesn't seem to believe in wrapping paper. Various unidentified items are often found in the refrigerator, uncovered or in bowls with dishes covering the top, or covered with paper plates. The only thing you can count on is that she did not use the clear wrap that is in plain sight on the counter top.

Trash removal is another issue. Empty cans and other containers are found in some unusual hiding places, sometimes rinsed, sometimes not. Hidden in the back of cupboards, on the floor in the coat closet, on the window sill, or under the sink. One thing is certain, it is not where you would logically expect it to be. Just another way that Ma helps sharpen my deductive skills. I can tell when Ma has taken out the trash. 100% of the time the hinged cover is on the plastic container backwards. Where she is taking the trash I have yet to find out. I am not sure I want to know.

EPILOGUE TO ALRIGHT, OK

After 2 1/2 hours of the alright, ok, "Chinese Water Torture" I succumbed and went on a trek to find #13 hearing aid batteries. Lancaster, Cheektowaga, and finally West Seneca at Wegman's. You cannot imagine the relief I felt when I saw the lucky #13's hanging on the hook just waiting to be grabbed up. Is it Christmas again? I scurried home, my salvation in my pocket. Ma was in the kitchen, obviously worn out from her alright, ok experience, still with the non performing device in her ear. I handed her a new battery and she, thinking it was her medicine, started to put it in her mouth. I stopped her and had her remove the hearing aid and put the battery in the device myself to insure proper performance. As the all too familiar whistling sound pierced the air I knew peace was just around the corner. Four more rounds of alright, ok and the prattle stops as the confounding device is working again. I think I can safely say I will never forget to stock up on batteries again, especially since Ma has ordained them to be edible mints. I wonder how many she has consumed in the past? I guess I'll have to take her to the court building down the street and see if she sets off the metal detectors.

WELL ALRIGHT, OK, YOU WIN....

Alright, ok, alright, ok, alright, ok, alright, ok, alright, ok. This is one of the most frustrating things about Ma's hearing loss. She will go on for hours trying to find a old battery that works when she runs out. She will put in the wrong size then jam the the unit shut insuring that I must repair it or take it to be repaired. For some reason I hate handling it, kinda creepy, I do it anyway.

I didn't remember that I had run out of replacements for her and a trip to the pharmacy left me empty handed. I know they will have them tomorrow because I asked, but in the meantime she will spend the night putting the same old batteries in again, and again ,and again, and again, alright, ok, alright, ok. If she would change it to ok, alright for a little variety. Whatever happened to testing 1,2,3? I beg her to throw the old batteries away and she ignores me. She has a stash of the irritating non performers and she uses them to torture me so I never run out again. This is as bad as the "Chinese Water Torture". I don't really understand why someone would be so obsessed with making something work that obviously doesn't.

Gotta go now. The Volume Police have a disturbance call at the TV. It's time to start the evening dance card.

Insanity Television

Television viewing is Ma's only distraction now that the snow is flying and she can't take her daily walks. When I moved Ma out of her home I purchased her a flat screen TV with an output that would accept a headphone set. I figured that if I put the earphones on the TV it could play endlessly without driving the neighbors to distraction. It only created more work for me. Every day, without exception, Ma would complain about not being able to adjust the sound on the TV. At this point I would walk into the room take the earphones off the doorknob and hand them to her. She always acted like she had seen them for the first time. Then she had to be re-educated on how to adjust the sound and change the channel. Every day the same routine.

About one month ago Ma decided to carry a cup of tea (see The Buffalo Tea Party) into her room late at night in the dark. She fell and spilled tea everywhere which I cleaned up and I made sure she was alright before I went to bed. Sometime later she was complaining about not being able to turn on the TV. I found it unplugged and the cable had been removed. They just don't work so well without power. I plugged it in and fastened the cable and nothing. I move the set to look at the connections and I discovered the tea had been spilled into the back of the set. Another dead soldier. I put my TV in her room so she would have something to watch. My TV is as old as my mother. It has no outlet for earphones and it now marks the way for my new challenge. The volume. Once again I am the TV Volume Police.

My daily routine now includes monitoring the volume on Ma's TV. I walk in at night and the sound is max-ed out and Ma complains as I turn down the volume. I put on the closed captions despite her protests and she complains I am controlling her. She says "you might as well turn it off", I leave that for her. Sometimes she gets in a snit and turns it off and goes to bed. Other times she watches in silent scorn, stealthily increasing the volume till I come in and turn it down again. She renews her complaints and the cycle repeats. The truth is I think she sometimes does it to get me to engage her and other times she is just frustrated at the fact she is old and deaf.

Ma really can't figure anything out anymore. Not the simplest mechanical logic. It must be horribly frustrating and frightening for her. I left her watching TV in the living room the other day when I left for the weekend. I instructed her on turning off the large screen TV and returned to find everything unplugged. Cable box, computer, paper shredder, television, surround sound, dvd, and even my desk lamp. If you don't understand it, pull the plug. Pull all the plugs. I now know what I need to do with my tax return.

To Go Or Not To Go... That Is The Question.

I have commitments the next two weekends and I am having feelings of guilt about leaving Ma unsupervised that long. She has been really disoriented lately and has been skipping her medicines. It seems she starts to take them and gets distracted and forgets to come back for them. She really can't afford to do without her meds. More correctly, I really can't afford for her to be without her meds. When she isn't adequately medicated she gets more delusional. The invisible cat runs through the house, my sister's death becomes a bad dream, and she chat's freely with my deceased father. So helping her helps me. There is a level of detachment I have achieved when listening to Ma's ramblings that insures I won't go crazy myself. I just keep reminding myself that it isn't really purposeful, but after a while it gets frustrating and I need some disconnect time. So leave I will, hoping she doesn't wander or lock herself in the hall without her keys. I have asked family to check to be sure she takes her meds, I will lay out the medicine in envelopes for night and day and they will check to be sure the proper envelopes are empty at the proper times.

Shantycare, medicare and medicine.

I hesitate to get political but must speak out on health care in this country. It is a crime that a person spends their whole life contributing to the productivity and growth of our country and many have to decide on what medicines they can afford to take to insure the quality of their lives. Ma is fortunate as I am able to insure she can purchase what she needs, but my heart breaks at the thought of the childless unsupported elderly couples or singles who live in quiet desperation, fearing for their well being because they have to choose between eating or medicine. It is inconceivable that some able bodied persons qualify for full coverage medicaid benefits with $0 co-pays while the elderly who make a pittance on social security and have to pay for coverage that is inadequate because they don't meet the poverty guidelines. Ma's outlay for her monthly medicine co-pays is about $85 and she pays $65 taken directly from her social security check which amounts to $150 per month after she actually pays for her medicines. I am personally appalled by this.

It became evident that Ma had lost her ability to manage her health care. There were unfilled prescriptions hidden throughout the house, and an evening ritual of pulling out a plastic tub and rummaging through multiple prescription bottles, some current, some outdated and some unnecessary. What she was or was not taking was a mystery. I first had to make arrangements to meet with her doctor to determine what she was taking and why. I knew she was delusional and forgetful but didn't know why or what was being done for her. Ma had a diagnosis of vascular dementia. This is a hardening of the arteries to the brain and many of the medicines Ma was taking were prescribed to facilitate oxygenated blood flow to the brain to minimize the symptoms. Not taking them increased her dementia and threatened her life. I was not overly impressed with her doctor so I took all her prescriptions to a pharmacist to understand what they did and if any of them were unnecessary or counteracted the others. He was right on with his choices and I was humbled by the experience. I regret judging him so harshly, but she is my Ma, for whom I feel personally responsible, and he is a paid practitioner that I have no personal relationship with.

I had a hard time finding a way to get all the prescriptions to be filled at the same time every month so one trip to the pharmacy was all that was required. This actually became quite easy as I discovered unused prescriptions everywhere and actually got a free month as I had more than enough of everything. Now the challenge became getting her to take them in the proper dosages at the right times. This was accomplished by color coding several daily dose containers. The doctor changed her prescriptions to make her dosing only day and night so I could administer them without having to rely on her memory at all. So the dance began.

I used to fill the daily dose containers and gave them to her leaving her in charge of the taking of the medicine, this never really worked but I had to try. I used to leave the prescriptions in the kitchen cabinet until they disappeared early one month and I spent two days looking for them and finally finding them hidden in Ma's room. She claimed that someone had been sneaking in to take her drugs, a delusion. I told her that I didn't think there was a street use for aricept, lipitor, nitroglycerine patches and potassium. The medicines went under lock and key and I distribute them daily like Nurse Ratchet in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". My Cuckoo's Nest is every bit as entertaining as hers.

I leave the morning doses in a cup on the kitchen table and usually return home to find one or more of them has not been taken. At night I physically watch her take the medicine like some attendant on a Psych Ward. What she takes and doesn't take is truly indicative of how delusional she becomes. I can manage my own stress level by insuring her medicinal intake.

Ma has been increasingly delusional since the death of my sister in November. She is definitely waiting for the end. I have mixed feelings about this as I get tired of taking care of her but really don't want to see her go. I want her to be happy and I don't believe she is suited for this world any longer. No entertainment beyond the daily paper and the unbelievably loud television watching. She relives better times from earlier days and asks the same questions over and over like a drunkard in his cups. She really needs to go to her final rest so she can be at peace and I need to feel empowered do go about the business of getting old myself. I really want to go like my father, full of piss and vinegar till my last breath, but I hope I never turn my two girls into Shanty Care Givers. Give me a pillow sandwich if I ever lose my wits and can't take care of myself.

The Buffalo Tea Party.

Ma has been drinking tea since she was a child. All her sisters and brothers drank tea, I believe they even put it in their pet's water bowls. This is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. It does produce some unique challenges for shanty caregivers. Before turning off the gas on the stove Ma melted 4 different water kettles. She really doesn't appreciate the gravity of this situation, she at least pretends it is quite normal to endanger yourself, your neighbors and the entire Fire Department for want of a good cup of tea.

Tea stains. Ma is oblivious to her surroundings and the protocol for preparation and disposal of her precious brew. My sister purchased a electric kettle for boiling water to insure Ma had the ability to steep 213 cups of tea daily, she has never used it. She puts the porcelain pot in the microwave with the tea bags in it insuring that the titillating tincture will stain the walls when it boils over. Just like when she used the now disconnected stove, she sets the timer, which she can't read or work, to about 9 hrs and 42 minutes and lets the brew boil uncovered till she remembers it is there or the unit shuts down. We are on our second microwave this year. When Ma needs a new caffeine fix she dumps the old into the porcelain wash sink side of the double bowl, If I am lucky, or over recently washed dishes if I am not. The sink is stained as are the cabinets, the dish caddy in the rinse sink, the floor, and the counter top. Once or twice a week I fill the sinks with hot water and Clorox, submerge the dish caddy, bleach the cabinets and floor, and rewash every cup and dish in the house. I have used more Clorox in the last 2 years than I did in the previous 52. How tea gets inside the cabinets on the door ridges is beyond me, but it happens. I have a vision of Ma doing some ritualistic tea dance when I am not around, where she purposefully pours tea on every surface so she can watch me clean. I have become her manservant, moving from surface to surface with a dishrag and Clorox, boy did I waste my college dollars.

We used to have 20 to 30 cups and mugs that were some color other than tea at one time. With breakage and permanently stained interiors we now have 0 cups and mugs that do not belong at some toxic waste dump. We have 7 current victims in waiting and 23 brave soldiers that have been entombed at the local dump because of falls from a higher level to a surface not conducive to soft landings. There are currently 4 cups of cold brew located around the house waiting for their opportunity to put Ma's manservant to work cleaning the rug, the floor or making their funeral arrangements.

For those of you who have read or believe the stories in the Catholic Bible I offer this picture of my final day on this plane. God is not even going to kill me, he is going to take me direct to my heavenly reward via Ascension, like Mother Mary and the Big J himself. I have more than atoned for the sins of my youth and for every gray hair I put on Ma's head.

Old Lady Survival Kit

There are few things more important to the comfort and happiness of an elderly woman than toilet paper. I purchase 30 1000 sheet rolls every 45 days. That is 30,000 sheets, enough to wipe all the derrieres in the town of Shenandoah, Wyoming (population 297) for 2 weeks. I never realized the many uses for sunshine paper; the obvious, to clean ones glasses, to blow one's nose, to clean the things you spill off the floor, to clean the porcelain throne, to put on or remove makeup, to apply topical medications, and my personal favorite lining the seat of the toilet you just cleaned so you can sit without fear of catching germs from another user. It is critical that one never use the roll completely before replacing it on the dispenser. 200 or 300 sheets must be left on each roll when it is disposed of to insure maximum waste. Another necessary component of the sunshine paper dance is to precariously place the core on the edge of the holder so an unsuspecting user who tugs at the roll can dislodge it from its' perch and watch helplessly as it falls into the bowl rendering the unit unusable. A bonus is that said user must reach into the bowl and remove the moistened mass of mache'. Hopefully the core does not come from the roll and a second dive into the abyss is not required.

Every Day A New Adventure?

I was called from work by relatives in April when Ma had broken into her former home claiming my sister had sold it out from under her. We had just recently quit-claimed the house to my sister and Ma reported to me that her friends had told her that my sister had sold the house. Not totally unbelievable, but somewhat questionable. I pulled up to the house as the police arrived and I told them what was going on and they left. I then walked to the house as Ma scurried inside to claim her territory. The house was in total disarray as my sister had been cleaning out 20 years of accumulated junk so she could fix it up prior to moving in. Ma saw this as someone trying to steal her treasures (?). She kept stating that it was her house and she was staying. I reminded her of my friend, the lawyer, coming to the apartment to explain the quit claim process and what it meant, the house was no longer hers. She was furious and started picking up different items and claiming she could not live without them. We ended up taking some silk flowers as she wouldn't leave empty handed. I took her back to our apartment and the next day the flowers found their way to the garbage disposal. This was Ma's last real wandering event. She slowly was resigning herself to the idea that she was no longer going back to her old life.

I talked about this experience with my brother who reminded me that what Ma said was not always reliable. I have come to know he is right. It is a real consciousness shift to start questioning every statement someone makes as potentially false or delusional. The first part is to lose the strong desire within to believe everything that your parents say. In the words of Vinny Barbarino, "The woman is completely holy". How do you stop believing that this person, who has been a stalwart of integrity throughout her life, and is now weaving stories with elements of the truth twisted in some way to support an agenda that is delusional. How much do you believe and how much do you discount as horse-pucky. I didn't really comprehend that Ma wasn't capable of reporting the facts and I had a lifetime of trusting her judgement to overcome to get a handle on her current situation.

The second part to overcome is the natural inclination to take these apparent deceptions personally. I chased ghosts for several months coming up empty, confused more times than not, and angry as I had wasted valuable time investigating Ma's rants. Angry because I wanted to believe and I wasn't able, at the time, to look at some of these things in a comedic light. She was weaving partial truths from a lifetime of experience into currently delusional stories that had a basis in fact from 1972, or 1952, or yesterday. Her life and consciousness were like a stew after it is ready to serve. Are there potatoes? Yes! Did they go into the stew first or last? Does the order of the ingredients in the stew matter at all? Is it not a stew if the potatoes go in first or last? Ma's consciousness was in question, not the actual order of events or their truthfulness. This view makes things easier to digest. There is not a dishonest bone in her body, as always, just a delusional misinterpretation of factual information from disjointed places in time.

The third and most distressing part is to not discount everything she says as delusional. It is truly difficult not to just write her off as always delusional. When Ma wakes up in the night chasing cat's and bugs off of her bed and then reports that someone has tried to get in the apartment during the day when I am at work, I tend to immediately discount her experience as delusion. She locked me out of the apartment one day by putting her shoulder into the door and attaching the chain lock as I was entering, demanding that I identify myself. I became angry and spent five minutes getting her to undo the latch. She had moved swiftly and deliberately to put on the latch, but it took five minutes to remove it. She told me that someone had tried to get in and I remembered the cats and told her she was wrong. I later found out that my sister had tried to visit her but Ma's lack of hearing and fear kept her from letting her in. Ma thought she was someone to be afraid of, not someone coming to visit. It is truly heartbreaking to watch her be so incompetent. So heartbreaking to see that her reward for a lifetime of personal sacrifice is isolation, a prisoner of her own infirmities.

A Delicate Balance/A Dangerous Time

Right, wrong, healthy, unhealthy, I don't care. I feel an obligation to keep my mother out of a nursing home until she is a danger to herself, not an inconvenience to me. Overly responsible? Who can say honestly? I was on the verge of admitting Ma to a care facility and I had whipped up enough adrenalin to do it. I was waiting for her doctor to complete some paperwork and I realized I was unable to do it. Thus, the course of my existence is set by me and not by circumstance. I had a choice and I made it.

When I went to care for my Father in early January 2oo9, I knew I would also have to keep tabs on Ma who lived about 1/2 a mile away. I fell into a routine of stopping at Ma's on the way home to check on her and make sure she had groceries or anything else she wanted. You could always hear the TV playing from the street and often something was burning on the stove. I had not begun monitoring her medications which I later discovered that she was taking inconsistently at best. At times there would be evidence of some mishap and I was deeply concerned but kind of stuck. As my Father grew sicker I slept less and less as he required help for the simplest of things. One time I was so worn out I didn't stop to see Ma on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday, so Wednesday morning I stopped by before work to find she had barricaded herself into the house. She had the furniture piled in front of door to keep some unspoken intruder out, most likely fictional, except the door opened the other way and I climbed over the barrier and loaded her refrigerator with groceries and she never stirred. Kinda scary. I waited until I saw that she was breathing and left for work. She never knew I was there. At this point I realized that she was a lot further along than even I imagined. It is like any bad situation you are in, a loveless marriage, a rotten job or long term financial difficulties, you never realize that things are worsening while you sit in the middle of it. Moving in to take care of my Father gave me that opportunity to stand back and assess things in a different light. Ma required more attention than I had been willing to admit to myself. I decided it was time to move her out of the house and the neighborhood. Although she resisted, even she knew that it was time.

The arrangements for my Father's memorial came off well and the focus now became getting Ma safe. We moved her into a secure apartment complex with me and she was disoriented for quite a while. The first day she was there she decided to take a walk when I was sleeping. When I found her gone I called my sister and brother and we began looking for her. She was discovered by my sister holding the police and an EMT crew at bay with language I would never have believed she ever heard let alone used. She had went to the wrong building and tried to enter the wrong apartment. This was the first of many adventures as Ma fought her dependency and tried to maintain a modicum of control in her life. I was called home from work by relatives when Ma broke into the house she had lived in --- more police. People were real understanding and helpful, but the stress was intense. She finally settled in to a routine and life became less eventful. The real craziness is in the day to day challenges that are intermittently comedic and frustrating.

I disconnected the stove before she arrived to insure she wouldn't create an inferno in the high rise. I came home one day to find her making grill cheese sandwiches on the stove. Without gas it is really an amazing undertaking. She stayed at it and hour and then all but poured her "sandwich" into a bowl and ate it with a fork. She asked if I might like one and I told her I would pass at this time. She turns her nose up at the microwave ready meals I purchase for her and eats bologna sandwiches all the time. At the end, her cremation will smell like the corner deli. She loads up on ice cream and juice, completely ignoring the meals I cook for her or the vegetable entree's I stock up on. Thank God for Progresso Soups which she likes for the time being.

It is not the major upheavals that are most frustrating now, it is the little things that go on day to day. Putting away dishes that are dirty, spilling things on the floor and forgetting it while in the process of going to get a mop to clean it, hiding soiled clothing in corners that aren't discovered until it starts to smell, the dumping of tea into the sink without regard for the staining that occurs, and my personal favorite, seeing things that are not there. Thank God for medications. I have to physically hand her her medicine every day or it won't be taken and she has night terrors. It is like caring for a child who has a lifetime of independent action and is resentful of your necessary interference. I have become my Mother's servant and sometimes I think she enjoys it just a little too much.

The Loss of Independence.

Ma separated from Dad for the umpteenth and last time in 1999. When I called her I asked her why after all those years she chased him off when they both needed someone with them to call 911 if the other collapsed. She said she just didn't want anyone telling her what to do anymore. For the next 5 years I received reports on her degeneration and outlandish behaviors. I returned home in October of 2004 and moved in with Ma to insure she would be ok.

It didn't take long to appreciate how debilitated she had become as her hearing was all but gone and her vision wasn't much better. You could hear the TV playing from the street when she was watching and she sat right on top of it. She would turn the water on in the sink at night and go to sleep with it running. I would get up in the night and find water throughout the house and the wooden drawers full of water. She would put something on the stove and it would melt the utensils. She began blaming the stove for her forgetfulness and started taking it apart to repair it, making it much worse. I would come home and smell gas by the front door and have to air the house out as she sat watching TV blissfully unaware. I began disconnecting the appliances to insure she couldn't hurt herself and she continued to diminish. She began talking incessantly about the same things that happened in the 1950's but couldn't tell you what she had for lunch.

Just before Christmas 2006 we decided that she could no longer drive a car, about 5 years later than when we should have done something. My Brother went to the DMV and made the courageous move to notify the State that my mother was no longer fit to drive. Her venomous reaction to his efforts was frightening to say the least. She was required to take a new driving exam if she was to be given a new license. She knew she wouldn't be able to pass but insisted she could still drive. We had two cars at the time and I gave one, mine to my daughter as Ma could not be trusted not to drive when no one was there watching. I even had to hide the car at night as she took joyrides when I was sleeping. This loss of independence was the beginning of a startling loss of competence and awareness. In 2007 my brother and I had to take Power of Attorney to manage her affairs for her. This was particularly difficult as it marked the time when she stopped feeling responsible for her surroundings and lost track of time and space.

I used to take Ma shopping every week as she enjoyed it. I tried to have her maintain some kind of independent activity but she could not complete the simplest of tasks. Her shopping trips became a major burden as she was indecisive and couldn't complete the job without an assist. My daughter and I would take turns with her and I would give Ma cash to pay for her groceries which she would lose by the time she got to the checkout. One day I left her in the Produce Department at a local market and left to get my haircut and car washed. I returned to the store about 1-1/2 hours after I had left her and she was still in the Produce Department. That was the last time I took Ma shopping. I called my friend Patty and told her I had earned my place in heaven and that God was not even going to kill me. He was going to take me directly to my eternal reward. She intimated to me that she felt I was overstating my contribution and just may have to go the normal way.

My brother and I had to clean up some financial messes as Ma had stopped paying bills regularly and the level of her financial straits were not appreciated until we acquired Power of Attorney. Ma did not have the financial wherewithal to stop the tidal wave of unmet obligations so my brother and I helped right her financial ship. From that point on she did not pay any bills or manage any money. She would hide money so no one would steal it (???) and then she wouldn't remember where it was hidden. My sister once found $380 in peculiar places when she was helping Ma look for some she had misplaced. Un-cashed checks and hidden mail had become the norm as Ma figured if you didn't see the bills you didn't have any. We had to secure the mailbox to insure the statements were seen by myself. As my Father's health deteriorated and he required more of my attention, Ma's inability to care for herself became a more urgent concern. This last year has been a real challenge as Ma cannot remember to take medicines she requires and her desire to remain viable and independent create a need in her to pretend she is more competent than she really is. The loss of independence is a harsh punishment for a woman who spent her life helping others and nurturing her grandchildren into adulthood.