I traded my 2019 Impreza in for this 2026 Wilderness in February and can I just say I adore this car. I named him Coyote after Coyote Peterson of "Brave Wilderness." Six months in and I still get a thrill every time I look at him or drive him. I can hardly believe he's mine!
I guess reposting is not allowed, as I tried to do that to provide this update and it never appeared, so I'll try this way. I do want to acknowledge and thank everyone who offered their thoughts on the original post, linked here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AgingParents/s/h1BMmlAaJC
Other than bad knees and hips she is in pretty good health. Starting to get a little forgetful but overall pretty good mentally.
There is no way she would stay anywhere overnight unless she were hospitalized. She has two cats that she absolutely dotes on and she will not voluntarily leave them alone for longer than a few hours and even for just that long she will fret about them. They are her babies.
She is extremely strong-willed and stubborn and always has been. She wants things her way, always has, and for the most part, has gotten it, for as long as I can remember. She will do what she wants to do, period, and we will have to fall in line.
She is actually going to the best eye care provider in this general area, associated with the large world-renowned hospital system where my partner and I both work. We have no worries whatsoever about the quality of care she'll be getting. That said, though she lives out in the sticks, there are two decently sized cities much closer to her, with perfectly adequate providers and hospitals. My brother gets all of his care in one of those cities. She could too, if she wanted to.
We would never refuse to help out and we really do appreciate everything my brother does for her and he always says it's no big deal and he's happy to do it - she's mostly independent so far so it's been mostly errands and appointments. When her husband died, my son and I spent quite a bit of time helping her load up a dumpster with all kinds of junk that her husband had hoarded; she just wanted to clear things out and we helped her with that.
Running her to appointments is more difficult for us because of having to take time off work and it's so dang much driving. Another thing that makes it hard for my partner and me is that we have a dog so someone has to be around to let her out, etc. I work from home so that's no problem during the work week while my partner's at work. It can become a challenge if we both have to be away for more than about six hours.
Also, I have serious anxiety issues with city driving. I haven't had to do it since COVID and the prospect of driving into the city with all the traffic makes me incredibly nervous. I am a very timid driver when it comes to city traffic. (I'll drive around the block just to avoid making a left turn in traffic!) The places she's choosing to get care are awful as far as traffic goes.
Family discussions are not going to happen. Our family is extremely dysfunctional and avoidant. My partner and I can talk openly between ourselves, and my adult son is also willing to talk about difficult issues, but my mother and brother will not. Every now and then if he gets stressed out, my brother will email me (I suspect after a few drinks) and vent, and I'll take the time to reply as thoughtfully as I can, and then that's the end of it, I really think that once he sobers up he shuts down. It's frustrating but there's a lot of baggage for both of us - my mother divorced our father when we were teens, she behaved very badly, it was ugly, and the man she married was only 6 years older than me - an alcoholic who I never learned to do more than barely tolerate (true story, many times I tried to tell myself that there was a bright side - he was so much younger than her, he'd be able to take care of her when she got old - but his smoking caught up with him and he died of COPD last April) - she is lucky my brother and I are in her life at all, to be completely honest. He's told me directly, more than once, that he doesn't like her and will never forgive her for some of the things she did. He's been great with her in spite of that, he's a better human than I am!!
Edited to add: She has said many times that she will never move from her rural "barn" home, that she loves it there and she intends to stay there and "there's nothing to manage." It's on 11 acres that she can't take care of, heated with a wood stove with supplemental electric baseboards and a propane fireplace. Every winter her drains freeze because the 'house' is basically a pole barn without a real foundation, no skirting, etc. My son has done a lot of work there, insulating the second story, wrapping pipes underneath, but it's still a worrisome situation.
My 88 year old mother lost her husband last year. She lives alone in a pole barn building, in a very rural area, that they turned into a house (sort of - that is a whole 'nuther tale). She lives an hour southeast from my partner and me. My brother (only sibling) lives about a half hour south of her. He has been wonderful about taking her grocery shopping, to doctor appointments, etc. He's retired. My partner and I still work full-time.
She has no other relatives in this country.
Instead of seeking out medical providers near her, she has chosen to see doctors in the city that is about a half hour west of where my partner and I live. So getting her to an appointment requires a lot of driving, even for my brother.
She is having cataract surgeries this month and has several appointments coming up and my brother has asked for help getting her to a few of them. Fair enough.
But. For me (or my partner, who is better with city driving and is willing to do it) to get her to an appointment requires:
Taking a day off work
A one hour drive to her home
A drive of about an hour and a half, back the way we just came, to her appointment
Waiting during the appointment
A drive of an hour and a half to take her home (basically passing the area where we live, on the way)
Then an hour drive back the way we just came, to our house.
I think this is insane, frankly, and while we've agreed to help in this instance, if this becomes an ongoing thing, I don't think it's sustainable. Would I be wrong to suggest that she try to find medical providers near where she lives, so all this backtracking isn't necessary? It's not that I mind helping. If it were a matter of occasionally driving to her place, taking her to an appointment in one of the towns near her, then taking her home and coming home, it wouldn't seem so bad. But what we're doing now just makes no sense to me at all and we cannot be doing it all the time. Would I be wrong to set a boundary around this??