Katy Wilson’s mother, Joanne Anderson Wilson, was a teacher, lawyer, a peacemaker, and later a caregiver and a “woman of 1,000 hobbies.”
She belonged to a sailing club in Ann Arbor, Mich., and loved to go out with friends and work on art and sewing projects, and she was an inspiration to Katy, a retired graphic designer.
Joanne had taken care of her own parents, her in-laws and her husband while his health slowly declined.
But as she grew older, she seemed to be almost in denial of her own needs and didn’t want to talk with her children about the future. This went on for years.
Without a plan, Katy and her siblings eventually had to come together to figure out how to support their mother in her final months during the pandemic, when finding help was even harder.
Katy remembers how difficult that was and wanted to share her story in hopes that others can avoid a similarly stressful situation by planning ahead.
Have The Hard Conversations
After Katy’s father died in 2015, the clutter that had always been present continued to pile up and it became clear her mother needed some help. She hired a housekeeper to come in once a week, which did help to an extent.
When the housekeeper mentioned her mother had been leaving food out, Katy, her brother Chuck, and her sister Jenny began to worry.
But Katy still lived four hours away, and Chuck lived across the country. Jenny started visiting with their mother more often, and they all tried to have conversations with her about what support she would need if she continued to stay in her home.
Her mother didn’t have a living will or a power of attorney, although she understood the importance of those documents.
“If there were expectations on her part about what we should do to step in, it was never shared,” Katy said. “Those years where she was getting older and having health issues were the hardest because of the uncertainty, and my mother was never one to talk about difficult topics.”
It may not be easy and they may resist, but make every effort to talk to your parents about what they want for their future.
Ask them if they want to stay in their home and what it would take to make that possible. It might mean making updates to improve safety or just hiring some help for repairs or housekeeping.
Don’t shy away from talking about money, and get help from a financial planner (if they don’t already have one) to determine what type of support they can afford and where they might need more help.
Make sure they have a living will and an assigned power of attorney.
(To learn more about creating a will and power of attorney, join our upcoming webinar.)
Educate Yourself About Resources and Options
During the early days of the pandemic, Katy’s mother had less frequent contact with family and friends, which seemed to accelerate symptoms of depression and decline.
It was an understandably difficult time for all of them due to restrictions on travel and visiting, but it hit her especially hard because she was always such a social person, Katy said.
Around the same time, Chuck was having work done at his Seattle apartment and decided to move in with their mother.
He noticed she was sleeping more, eating less, and becoming more frail. She had developed osteoporosis and needed a chair lift to get up the stairs. She also had congestive heart failure and frequent swelling in her legs.
At that time, Katy recalled, they knew she wasn’t doing well but she was still managing daily activities with some help.
She and her siblings didn’t think they would need extra help, but as she looks back, she realized that would have been a good time to start looking into options. By the time their mother needed more support, they had to scramble to find it.
Make A Plan For Finding Reliable Caregivers
Even with Chuck living in the home to help, the family was caught off-guard by how quickly their mother’s health declined.
One day when Katy called, she started talking about things that were out of character and didn’t make sense.
She also told Katy she wasn’t feeling well.
Katy called her brother, and their mother agreed to go to the emergency room, where they discovered she was in kidney failure.
When she was released from the hospital, Chuck realized she would now need assistance using the bathroom and handling other basic needs.
Finding caregivers in the throes of the pandemic was very difficult, so they decided to move her into a nursing home while she recovered.
“She was very unhappy about not going home,” Katy said. “She was calling Chuck at all hours.”
In the meantime, Katy and Chuck continued to look for caregivers and ordered a hospital bed she could use in her home.
While in the nursing home, she developed COVID-19 and needed oxygen. When her condition worsened, the family moved her into hospice care.
She died Dec. 29, 2021.
While no one is ever really ready for the realities of losing a parent, Katy said, there are some things you can do to avoid the added stress she and her siblings faced.
Kendal at Home offers the kind of support that's hardest to find in a crisis: care coordination, access to vetted resources, and a team that already knows your situation before you need them. The time to build that relationship is now, not when you're in the middle of an emergency.
"Realize what you can do to have influence and what is out of your control,” Katy said. “And make sure you have support.”
Caregiving was never meant to be a solo endeavor. Families that navigate it best have a solid support system established before they need it.
Katy joined Kendal at Home along with her husband because she doesn't want her siblings to find themselves scrambling to make decisions under pressure.
If you haven't had the conversation with your parent/s yet, start today. And if you're thinking about how to protect your own family from the same experience, we'd love to talk with you about what Kendal at Home can offer.
