What Shall We Do With Mother? 
What To Do When Your Elderly Parent Is Dependent On You
“The book manages to be three things all at the same time,
which is very remarkable. It is readable, humorous and extremely informative.”
Claire Rayner
In her foreword, the actress Pam Ferris writes:
"There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come"– I can’t remember who said that, but it certainly applies to this book. Because of our ageing population more and more people are wondering ‘What shall we do with Mother?’ and I’ve been one of them – twice!
When I looked after my Mother in the early 1980s it was a pretty lonely business. The rest of the family were miles away – mainly in Australia – and I was a single actress living in a grotty flat in the East End of London, not an
ideal place in which to look after an invalid. Luckily, my Mother and I had a fantastic relationship right to the end. We were united in viewing her illness as a common enemy. Unfortunately, it sometimes felt like the National Health Service was a common enemy too.
More recently my husband and I have had to deal with the slow deterioration of his mother from Alzheimer’s. The years leading up to the realisation that she had the disease, and her final placement in a suitable home, were particularly stressful, and my sympathy goes out to anyone who has been in this situation. My husband describes it as ‘living on orange alert’.
In both these life passages I would have benefited greatly from reading this book. The case histories cover a wide range of experience and I’m sure most people will find something that resonates with their own life."
From the Introduction:
Stepping up a gear in middle age to accommodate the needs of an ageing parent involves both physical and mental adjustment. Life will never be the same again when you take on the responsibility of someone else’s welfare, but neither is it likely to be dull and uneventful, as the stories in this book will show.
We will follow the lives of a number of men and women who are newly dependent, through widowhood, illness or increasing age and frailty, their stories told in part through their daughters or sons upon whom the mantle of Number One Carer has fallen, whether they like it or not. They are the new generation of Offspring Caring for an Aged Parent, what we’ll call Ofcaps. Many of these devoted Ofcaps play their part, and more, through love for their dependent parent. Others admit they have simply done what they see as their duty, knowing it is expected of them, but without a great deal of affection on either side.
In between are those who are muddling through, driven by instinct, compassion, and an awareness that, in the blink of an eye, it’s going to be their turn. What they’re doing is what they hope their children may never have to do for them, but if they do, then their turn of duty has been a blueprint, perhaps a down payment for a comfortable old age.
Every story gives an insight into a world of the sort of carer which, in the main, is lived unnoticed, for these are among the quietly capable heroes and heroines, thousands and thousands of them, who step in to take on the responsibility for the life of the one who, years ago, gave them life. The over-riding feeling that most Ofcaps have in common is not pride or satisfaction in the way they are coping, but guilt. Guilt that they’re not more competent, guilt that they can’t do more, guilt that they sometimes feel resentful, guilt that they get short-tempered, guilt that they can’t make their parent better or happier, guilt that they don’t live closer, guilt that they should or shouldn’t have asked their parent to move in with them, guilt that they’re feeling well when their parent isn’t, and guilt that they feel guilty when a hundred people have told them they shouldn’t.
Few would ever say that being a closely involved Ofcap is all hard work and no payback. Many speak of the wonderful closeness they enjoy with a parent they last knew properly when they still lived at home, and in those days, possibly as much as 40 or 50 years ago, it may have been a prickly relationship with occasional stand-offs over staying out too late and unsuitable hairstyles. Now, with the benefit of maturity, the Ofcap can learn about their parent as an individual and forge a rewarding relationship based on a perfect kind of love.
From Chapter 3:
For some time, probably more than a year, Bob and Kate had each noticed that, alongside her apathy, Anthea [their mother] had been forgetful, having difficulty remembering names of things and people. She also seemed to be having trouble using the washing machine, appearing baffled by what she had hitherto operated with ease.
Kate decided the best way of finding out the extent of the problems was to take a week off work to go and stay with her Mother so she could assess her more closely on a daily basis. She quite quickly became alarmed by what she found. ‘It was obvious that Mum had been covering up rather well for what had probably been ages and ages,’ she says. ‘Maybe even Dad had covered up for her while he was still alive, but now she was getting worse and she couldn’t do anything about it so she was being exposed. Poor Mum was struggling so much we hardly needed to say what was in our minds – that she was showing signs of dementia.’
Incidents of forgetfulness, which Anthea’s Ofcaps had put down to ‘Mum’s dottiness’ in the previous year or so, included missing two appointments with the chiropodist and turning up at 6.30am one morning for an 11am appointment with the hairdresser. They’d pulled her leg about her eccentricity and encouraged her to keep a more careful note of what she was meant to be doing each day.
Bob confided in his sister that he’d noticed Anthea seemed increasingly remote, as if she was struggling with her own world. Anthea denied there was a problem of any sort and refused to see her GP, when Kate suggested it, insisting he wouldn’t want to be bothered by someone who wasn’t ill. Kate was so concerned for her by this time that she asked Bob to join her at their mother’s house and arranged for the doctor to call.
‘It may have been devious of me,’ she says, ‘but it was the only thing I could think of doing. The doctor spent a little time with Anthea on her own in the sitting-room. He stopped in the hallway on his way out and told Bob and me that he was almost certain it was Alzheimer’s. He handed Bob the prescription for Aricept and advised him to contact the Alzheimer’s Society. That was it. Bob and I stared at each other in despair. We were just being left to cope.’
What Shall We Do With Mother? – What To Do When Your Elderly Parent Is Dependent On You
– £9.99 White Ladder Press (from whom copies may be ordered at £7.50 incl p&p if you quote the code RSMOTH.)
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ISBN: 1905410034
9781905410033
