"aemeijers" wrote in message
...
On 9/13/2011 7:49 PM, Robert Green wrote:
(snip)

I think most of us on the wrong side of 50 can relate, with grandparents
or parents. The role reversal is hard on both sides of the table.

Hey, we're on the *better* side of 50. No one tells us what to do anymore.
We have enough money to do what we want (worked hard, lived well under our
means) but we're too afraid to spend it on the off chance we live to be 100
years old. Hey, it could happen. They could discover a pill for eternal
life when I am 90 and I can spend eternity drooling in a walker. But all
kidding aside, I agree. The role reversal causes lots of heartaches.

Is a first-floor remodel a viable solution? Convert part of first floor
space to an elderly-friendly bedroom and attached special-needs
bathroom? (rails, 'comfort height' w.c., phone mounted on wall
accessible from floor level, etc.)

Before they got him the stair lift he was living 24 x 7 in a lounger in the
living room. I think he was basically happy that way but it bothered his
kids a lot, especially when they came to visit. So I think that his son
really thought he was doing something nice but it just didn't work out that
way. The only thing upstairs he really used was his computer. I suggested
a long time ago that they just move it downstairs and hook it up to the huge
LCD TV they bought him.

But yeah, one-story housing is the best solution. If the house is paid
for, maybe renting it out would cover the cost of the other housing, and
avoid some of the 'letting go' trauma.

I get the feeling that he's just going to go back to living in the living
room and foresaking the upper floor for visitors. I suspect, from what I am
told, that dementia is starting to take hold because his son says he gets
very angry when they suggest anything that's a change to his routine. It
also runs in the family. His father told him of how he had to constantly
wash up his demented, incontinent dad until age 88.

I know from my own father's descent into Alzheimer's that change really
frightened and angered him. A housekeeper would be a great idea, but it's a
non-starter. He expects his daughter (who has her own job, family and kids)
to shop for him twice a week and isn't shy about complaining to her when she
misses an item or buys the wrong flavor. He's been married twice so there
are two sets of kids to deal with, too. The kids from the first family have
talked about being "abandoned" for his newer family. It's a rough, rough
situation.

I know he's been very generous to his kids, sending them on multi-thousand
dollar vacations every year so his daughter (who lives near his house) does
it without complaint (to him) but when I talk to her, she jokes about how
hard it is to make him happy and that he would be better served by a
housekeeper. I'm trying to stay on the sidelines, and as my wife often says
that as a typical male, I propose engineering solutions to inherently social
problems. Guilty as charged. She taught me a long time ago that women very
often don't want solutions as much as they want discussion and
acknowledgement of the things that are bothering them.

--
Bobby G.