We asked family caregivers to share their thoughts and experiences in combining households. Here’s what they said:
I asked my mom to move in with me when I divorced 6 years ago. She was starting to have falls and was calling me 3 times a day and it worried me. Since the move, she has needed 3 major surgeries, gotten more disabled and lost some vision. She also has problems with memory and some confusion, and I had a dementia work up done. She has moderate vascular dementia and some mixed traits(??).
That’s the down side. The up side is that she is happy here. She has to run through her litany of physical complaints every day but it’s just a check and balance for her, sort of like booting up a computer. She wants to help because she wants to do her part, and I know this is very important. Mostly, I like her independence within dependence, her sense of humor and her life philosophy which is not to sweat the small stuff. I never really knew her until I lived with her as an adult. Now I’ve helped her write her story with pictures, and the book is a work in progress. I know what events shaped her and affected her. I know the depth of her love for my father and for all of her children. She’s a snoopy person and now I know why.
This has been one of the richest times of my life and I know that this texture is comprised of the sense of loss as her memory fades, the frustrations I sometimes have, my own despair at times, balanced with the fun times and the good times, as I see her spirit emerge and re-emerge to try to defeat some new setback. So combining households isn’t for the faint of heart, and I believe you need to always view your parent as the wonderful individual she or he is. You will have pain and fatigue and all the rest that experts predict, but you will also find incredible richness of spirit–both in yourself and in your parent.–Sandra Anfinson
My mom has dementia. If I had it to do over again, I would have tried assisted living.
After a year and a half of mom living with me I decided I needed to do something different. Mom was very hard to live with and since I suffer from depression it made it really hard. Moving Mom into an assisted living facility called Beardsley House was the best thing I did for both of us. Beardsley House was the only place I found that was assisted living and had lock down (a secured unit for persons with dementia).
She loves it. She has her own room, she gets three meals a day and has a lot of activities. She likes so much she doesn’t want to be away from there. We have a lot of fun together now. She never used to want to do anything. Now she plays bingo, exercise, does crafts, etc. My mom is so much calmer. I wish I would have tried assisted living first. It would have saved us both a lot of grief. My mom is probably happier more today than she has been in a long time.
If I would say anything to anyone who is trying to decide what to do: I would say try assisted living if you can. I still do things for mom. I see her two or three times a week. I can have lunch with her, sit and talk, do a puzzle, etc. It is great. She has been there for a year now. Last week she came and stayed all night. It was great.
Beardsley House just got their license so they can take Medicaid now. That means I will not have to move mom again. Everything is working out wonderfully.–Glenda Pickett
When we were told Mom’s cancer was terminal, she said, “I would like it if you would invite Aunt Hannah to live with you, if she’d like to.” Aunt Hannah is Mom’s older sister by 11 years, was 88 at the time, and had moved in with Mom 13 years earlier after being widowed.
It really didn’t come across as an “option” with alternatives for me, and I knew my Aunt couldn’t live totally independently at that point. I was so focused on Mom’s condition and finding a nursing home for her, the last thing I could get into was lifestyle alternatives for my aunt. I was afraid that if she lived anywhere other than my house, I’d be running back and forth doing things for her all the time, especially since she’s extremely hard of hearing and telephone communications are useless. She was happier to move in with me, being used to living with my Mom (and having Mom do everything for her!). She moved into my large second bedroom. I’m lucky that I have a fairly large house, where I can “escape” to my home office.
After almost three years of my aunt living here, and starting to take Aricept last December, after some episodes of confusion and belligerently wanting to get up, wash & dress in the middle of the night, I’m sorry I didn’t do things differently, since it was financially feasible.
Ideally, it would have been better for her to go into a gorgeous assisted living facility five minutes away from me, which has an independent senior residence and nursing home integral to the facility. It wouldn’t have been the 30-minute drive I had to Mom’s house, so I could drop groceries and other supplies off regularly and visit with her. I wouldn’t feel like a prisoner in my own house, having to stick around in the morning to put her compression hose on, make sure I’m around to give her lunch daily and eat with her to be social, or be home early evening to make sure she gets her Aricept. I wouldn’t have to hide or “take a ride,” when she had severe diarrhea and the entire house became permeated with the odor, even though she cleaned up quickly. I wouldn’t feel obligated to sit and watch TV all evening with her, because she gets bored watching by herself. Or feel obligated to take her with me whenever I go out for a ride in nice weather, because I don’t feel comfortable leaving her sitting on a bench while I walk or bike to get some exercise. I’d be able to have company over without including her, which I pretty much have to do now, since I don’t want to make her feel unwelcome. God knows how I’d manage if I were seeing a guy… must be why I haven’t bothered looking for any!
Another benefit of her being in assisted living is that it would be easier to make a transition to nursing care, if/when she needed it. Now that she’s lived here three years, I feel guilty picking a point at which she’d have to move to a facility, unless it became absolutely impossible for us to manage here without professional help. It would perceived as “banishing her” for something we both know she can’t help.–Name withheld upon request
When we moved my dad in with us we thought “no problem” we will be able to take care of him…that part was not a problem. We did not realize how much his older years had changed him and how stubborn he had become, we did not realize how much our privacy was taken away and how OUR house became community property with in home health care aids coming in constantly, his personal aide being there all the time moving our furniture, leave doors unlocked and we did not have anything to ourselves.I would literally get me a suitcase and every morning before work load my STUFF in it and lock it in a closet and every evening after I got home unload my STUFF so I could still have my space.
In my opinion it would depend on the personality of the care recipient and the size of the house. Our house is small (three bedrooms with one bath and no dinning room). If there were a mother-in-law plan with an outside door then it would not have been so bad or maybe more tolerable.
Also, another thing to take into consideration is how the care givers will react. I saw another side of my husband who felt like he was becoming less and less the Man of the House since my Dad was getting all the attention. Maybe a trial period would have worked better since my husband had not had to deal with having an elderly parent in diapers on his side of the family.
I don’t mind driving 50 miles across town to help them if it means peace in my immediate family.–Nita Bourland
My partner, Kat, and I moved my parents to a mobile home in our front yard from California. Mom died about 3 weeks after they arrived and we have been a caregiver for Dad since then. When we made the decision to move them down to our home town, we didn’t realize just how much difficulty maintaining two households would be for us. We both work full time and are raising Kat’s 11-year-old son so our morning and evening hours were (and are) extremely limited. Kat and I have always planned to relocate when I could retire, a time we assumed would be 3 to 5 years from now, but a “too good to be true” opportunity presented itself about six weeks ago.
Dad sent the two of us on a relocating mission in February to check out a town in North Carolina that my sister recommended as a good retirement area. We HATED that town but fell in love with one about 60 miles away, came home singing its praises and lugging handfuls of real estate brochures which we shared with anyone who would sit still long enough to look at with us.
Dad ended up sharing our enthusiasm for both the town and a huge house that would easily house a three-generation household and sent us back two weeks later to buy the house sight unseen. We were able to make all purchase arrangements via phone and fax which allowed us to pick up the keys two days before Easter. We spent five glorious days camping out in our soon-to-be new home. The time was glorious because there was no dividing our time and attention between Dad, his house and us and our house. We all seem to get along well.
The one drawback to moving is that the washer and dryer are in the basement and Dad may not be able to do laundry as he has been; he has joked the loudest and longest about this being the biggest drawback.
The hardest part about getting back home was parting from “under one roof” living conditions. Not a one of us can wait until the move finally takes place and we are all back under one roof.
I am very enthusiastic about being under one roof. I think we may have a different situation from many of the family caregivers since Dad is easy to get along with and he makes an effort at being pleasant to be around. He rarely complains and does all that he can (and more than he should) to be as self sufficient as he can.–dj Howell
We moved into our current house knowing that we were going to be bringing my mother-in-law and father-in-law to live with us (and their large unruly German Shepherd dog, but that’s another story). We searched for a house in our price range that we could adapt so that they could have their own space. My father-in-law had already lost a leg to diabetes.
We found a house with a walk-out basement yard on a hill so it would not be so “base-ment-y”. We bought the house; they used their money to modify the downstairs; put in a kitchen and large bathroom and a stair chair on the stairs, and so on. My father-in-law was in the house about 1 1/2 years before he died.
My mother-in-law did 95% of his caretaking, but it was still a pain in the neck. For instance, the dialysis bus would come three days a week for pick up and drop off, and back up to my front door and spew diesel fumes into the house for 20 minutes while they were getting him loaded/unloaded. My house reeked for hours afterwards each time.
There was the standard loss of privacy and awkwardness, although that was lessened to a certain extent by the fact that they could retreat if they needed to. My mother-in-law had a QVC habit that was out of control; the UPS driver was here banging on my door at least two or three days a week. Then my father-in-law died, and we had to deal with a depressed grumpy mother-in-law. She would not do ANYTHING on her own. She would moan and groan about how she needed to go get some items from the drug store for days, and then the minute I said I was going out to run errands, she’d be johnny-on-the-spot by the front door, wanting me to take her and escort her around to HER errands (she was capable of driving herself).
I could not escape her! She wouldn’t go to church, to grief groups, to bingo games, to gardening club, to anything. She’d just stay at home and spread her depressed aura throughout the house. Then she had her accident. She fell at home and had a spinal cord injury. She is now in a nursing home and has been for 4 1/2 years. Of course she wants to come home, and is exerting much pressure. Up until January of this year, we have kept her “downstairs apartment” (about 1/3 of the total space in this house) exactly the way she left it.
Meanwhile, our family has grown; I have a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old. I resented that she was in my house taking up my space when she wasn’t even here!!! So this January we took all her stuff that was in three rooms and stuffed it into two. So I have part of my house back. She comes to visit and makes my teeth itch while she is here, but then she goes back to the nursing home and the stress reduces…
When my husband and I agreed together to undertake this responsibility, we thought we were planning so far ahead that we could anticipate any contingency. Our goal was to create a space that no matter what health problems arose, they could stay in their space, safe, surrounded by family, until they died. We thought we were smart.
We thought that even if we had to give them a little money each month to pay for health aids we’d just make it work… “Somehow”. It was the “Right Thing To Do.” We did not think any farther than that!! We did not anticipate the complexity of health issues that can arise. We did not anticipate the sheer enormity of health costs. I was childless at the time, and did not anticipate my enormity of resentment about spending any extra money on them–because I feel the extra money my husband works so hard for should go into our children’s college funds.
I guess my point is, it is a huge sacrifice to merge households, and you have to really understand the impact it is going to have on every family member before you commit to it. My husband has an understandable DESIRE to help his mother. I do not. I’ve tried to MAKE myself more compassionate towards her and to WANT to help her, but I haven’t been able to yet. My priorities are 1) My kids 2) My husband and somewhere after that is… My mother-in-law. I don’t know how to change that!
Condensing households may get rid of some problems, but creates others that are probably impossible to predict and plan for.–Erica D. Duske
It was one of the hardest decisions I ever made, but I would do it again. I had the privilege of caring for my mom for a year and a half knowing she had her wish, to be at home. That is what gives my heart peace these days.
Of course, it came with its share of problems. My sister and I no longer talk, but that is not because we moved into my parents’ home. I think that our differences would’ve surfaced sooner or later, in this case it happened sooner than later.
Things were so VERY HARD, I cannot stress that enough. My mom turned into a very different person, one who I did not know. I believe that happened because she did not know how to deal with her lost independence. I was there and so I got the brunt of her anger.
I think it is much harder for two women to live together in a home than my current caregiving situation which is caring for my dad. I went to a counselor when the stress became too much to manage. I think if I could’ve found one for my mom that would’ve helped immensely as well. It was hard to find one for her since she had dialysis four times a week and other doctor appointments as well. I looked for an in-home counselor, but could not find one.
The advice I’d give to anyone looking into this as an option would be to sit down and make sure (if possible) that both sides have some kind of agreement or plan for care and even for living in the home together. I would seek out support ahead of time. A support group, a weekly time where you are not caregiving and have time to yourself, a counselor– whatever you need and can do to give yourself some down time. You will need it. –Jenn
I moved in with my mother prior to her stroke. Actually, she needed my help prior to her having the stroke. She was already having problems with bladder and bowel control, and I needed to be there to help her. It was good that I was already living there when she had the stroke. Actually, she had it while driving in her car and, somehow, managed to drive home. When I came home from work, I knew that something was wrong with her. I asked her to sit in the Easy Chair in the den and talk to me. As soon as she started talking, I knew that she had had a stroke. She was having problems talking, and one side of her face was not working properly. I told her that she had had a stroke and that we needed to get to the Emergency Room as soon as possible. She really did not think anything was wrong, but she agreed to go to the hospital. As it turned out, two blood vessels had burst inside her head. The ER doctor asked me, “What makes you think she has had a stroke?” Well, by that time, she was slurring her words, and the contortion on one side of her face was more obvious! DUH!!! I don’t have a medical degree, and I knew that she had had a stroke! I wondered if this doctor was qualified to see patients in an Emergency Room! Anyway, it was fortunate that I was living with my mother at the time of the stroke, and knew that she had had a stroke, and knew that she needed medical treatment immediately.
As for our living together, it has its “ups” and “downs.” She is widowed, and I am divorced. So, it is just the two of us living together. It is a small house–2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. It is sometimes difficult to share the bath with her because of her problems with controlling her bladder and bowels. Also, since the house is so small, it is very difficult for me to have any place and/or time to myself. But, it is easier on both of us for me to live there instead of going back and forth from my house and her house. I am still paying the mortgage on my house and plan to move back there when my caregiving responsibilities are over. Since I work a full-time job, in addition to 24/7 care of my mother when I am not at work, I think it would be too much for me to go back and forth between houses every day!–Name withheld upon request
Index of Articles
Tips To Consider as You Decide One Household for All?
Your Thoughts: Does One Household for All Work for You?
