My grandma has always been my favorite person she and I had a wonderful relationship and although she never showed it when I was little since I have grown up she admitted to me that I was also her favorite.
I'm sad now that she is losing her grip on reality. It is really hard to watch her confusion and so I have been able to find lots of excuses not to spend as much time with her as I should. I admit I have been lax and that it is inexcusable.
It has come to light however, that she is worse off than my mother and I thought. That she has not been taking care of herself properly and that she should not be living alone. In a previous post dated Nov 2 "That is Just Wrong" I talk about the family problems that have cropped up around her inability to care for herself. Well slowly and without any consistency, my mother and her sister have been looking for a better situation for my grandma. The steps have been continuing in there underhanded ways and a whole lot of nothing has been done.
On the 12th of Dec Grandma called my mom in tears, "they took me to the office and tried to get me to sign papers," when my mom asked what kind of papers of course grandma had no idea. " I just kept telling them that Sandi (my mom) has power of attorney and I don't want to sign anything else." The they that grandma was referring to were the steps.
My mom was dithering about what to do, so I said, "she can't stay there" and I offered to let her stay with me until my mom and her sister came up with an alternate plan.
Grandma came to stay with us on the 14th. It was hard having her here because honestly she needs more help than I am able to provide. Having her here was better than having her living alone though. On the first day she was here I heard her get up and in the half hour after she got up and before she came out of her room, she took her meds twice. I then had to take them away from her, on a pretense of child safety, and give them to her at the appropriate times.
She was and is very confused and likely to ask the same question 900 times in a 10 minute period. She also tells the same story over and over and over and over....... Those were not the hardest parts for me though. I am an introvert and I absolutely must, for my sanity, have alone time every day. Grandma absolutely had to be with me at all times all day long until she went to bed at night. So between that and Little T's teething I had someone with me 24/7. I was starting to go crazy.
She also, of course, had very different ideas on child rearing. We are a family very tolerant of a child's needs to have minimal clothing on at all times. Grandma insisted that the children needed to be fully clothed. At one point she held N down and tried to force her to get dressed. After that N was afraid of grandma. So I had to intervene and keep N and grandma apart without making it seem as though I was keeping them apart.
So on Christmas Eve my sister arrived and agreed to stay with grandma and my children so that Tony and I were finally able to go Christmas shopping for our children. While we were out my aunt (the step daughter in law) called me and yelled at me for "kidnapping" grandma and trying to "take her away from us" She finished with, "are you going to let us see her for Christmas?"
Let me just say here that I never took sides in the fight over grandma and that I think that the whole thing is entirely juvenile and ridiculous. I expressed this to the aunt and said of course they could have her for a time on Christmas as she was planning on that.
The aunt then said that my taking grandma to keep her safe was silly since it has been over a year since grandma has needed more help and why should I suddenly take it on myself to move her in with me without consulting anyone. I told her that my mom and her sister were aware of my plans and that grandma called her to tell her she was coming to my house for an indefinite amount of time.
It was a terrible conversation and it nearly left me in tears.
So Christmas Eve we had at my house with my mom and at the end of the night my mom brought up to grandma her options for places to live. Grandma just kept insisting that she only wanted to go back to her house. (which is absolutely not an option as it was sold years ago). She got so upset that only Tony could talk to her and my mom ended up going home with nothing decided. My mom had talked to an assisted living facility and had someone coming to evaluate grandma on the 26th which she didn't tell grandma about due to her upset.
Christmas day Grandma went to spend the day with her step children and I don't know what happened during the day, but when she came home she was so upset she fought off tears for the rest of the night until she went to bed.
On the 26th a lady from the home came to talk to grandma and she does indeed need more help as grandma was unaware that the day before was Christmas among other things. I then went to take a nap with Little T and while I was sleeping grandma recited to Tony all of the things that the steps had been trying to convince her of for months. She also insisted that she wanted to go home.
I called my mom and she arranged to take some time off work and came and got grandma to stay with her. Grandma is moving in to the assisted living place on Monday and we moved her things yesterday.
Hopefully she will be safe and happy there.
