Why?

the biggest benefit in visiting this site for the last year was the realization that my burden and struggle was nothing unique. nearly everyone here is struggling with the same thoughts and fears. my only advice is to keep in mind that the elder in your care is as vulnerable as a newborn and will require extreme patience. sadly they will decline and it gets increasingly complicated.

Perhaps we do these things because we look at the alternatives and they are worse or provide no comfort to us either. As for caring for our mothers and dads who else but the surviving children should look out for their parents well being. It is a hardship for many of us to be sure. But there are little joys and moments of satisfaction that make even the harshest of days bearable. As I write this my poor sweet Mother, a woman who could find the good and the worthwhile in everything and everybody and who spent twice as much time doing the weekly food shopping because of the little conversations she shared with the people she ran into and the employees at work whose lives and families she knew and cared about, is giving her husband of thirty years, my stepdad, a very hard time. She probably doesn't even know it. He was the love of her life, and probably still is. For the past six years he has stayed at side, watching helplessly like all of us as his wife, his best friend, turns into someone none of us know anymore, as she does things for reasons none of us understands, least of all her. When she holds her head in her hands and says "I think" but then cannot...I want to scream. When she holds her head in her hands and says "My head..." I shudder for fear of what is going through her mind, for what "thoughts" are hurting her and making her do what she does. That makes her want her baby, or want her Mother, and mostly at the oddest of times. I shudder and am angered at my own ongoing stupidity that doesn't allow me to tell her what is going wrong, or going off, in "her head." Daily, my heart breaks for them, these sad, lost people who had their lives stolen from them. Yes I question God's plan for my Mother! (I know I should not.) But gee isn't aging/living in the face of one's mortality a sufficient nightmare with which to live and deal as we sense our body giving out on us. Does one's mind need to be f___ed with too? My Mother's Mother lived to 100 and dementia only entered the picture during the last few years. We've been not so lucky with my Mother, and of course who knows what is in store for me. In my view, and apparently my husband is with me on this though we've not yet talked it out, providing the two of them a warm, inviting and comfortable (family room?) place in which to spend their days and to work out for themselves this tenuous life of theirs, as long as it continues, this then is what I can do for them. I wish you peace, Jenny. because I cannot give you reasons to go on. I have too many fears of NOT going on. But that's my problem, and I've got to find the way to deal with THAT. Good luck to you!

Are you sure there is nothing else in that coffee Capt? Something to warm the cockles of your heart maybe?

you sound so much more relaxed your a wonderful person and you will be blessed and you woke up breathing your still standing and how lovely would it be where you live i have never see snow have a beautiful day you deserve

beautiful? we have about 8 inches of snow on the ground here in indiana and it ceased being beautiful to me years ago.
but na, jenny, we dont give up easily. we have much to be thankful for but sometimes these things are somewhat obscured by our immediate problems. gotta enjoy the small things. im having a cup of coffee and a pipe full of tobacco and i might even put a pinch of special flavoring on top of the tobacco.

if you really knew who walk beside you every day you would find peace through all of this you sound so frustrated.take a deep breath and walk out side it beautiful