Going Home for the Last Time

I got the call that no one wants to get on the afternoon of December 12, 2024.

A police officer called me at home to inform me my mother had a stroke and my father was confused and frantic with worry.

I tried to get all the necessary information from the policeman and my dad.

Emory University Hospital had called for a well check when they couldn’t reach my father by phone to get approval for an MRI.

My father said my mom fell and hit her head really bad while they were at a cabin in the mountains to look at flowers. In December. He said he took her to the nearest hospital and that she had been transferred. He claimed she was having surgery. This all sounded so odd to me. Why were my elderly parents in the mountains on a vacation so near Christmas and they told no one they were traveling and probably shouldn’t be driving at all?

I knew it was time.

My adult daughter and I drove from Dayton, Ohio, to Atlanta, Georgia. we didn’t know what we were walking into. We brought funeral clothes. We were terrified.

My father was given written directions to Emory University Hospital by the policeman. He also practiced calling me on my mom’s cell phone. I didn’t know what else to do. He wouldn’t use Uber or a taxi or wait for me. The policeman seemed confident that all was well.

What happened after that is stranger than fiction.

It was not well at all.

My dad never made it to Emory. He got very lost. I was trapped in a nightmare, trying to get to Georgia as soon as we could. It took three hours for my husband to coach him back home with multiple hang-ups and call drops. The traffic was “horrendous” and my father was confused and upset. I’m not sure how he managed to get home by himself the previous night.

My daughter and I arrived at my parents’ house late, after 10 PM. We didn’t know what to expect. Would the house be dark and locked? Was my father safe, asleep, or awake? Did he remember we were coming? Would he pull my grandpa’s .38 on me, thinking we were intruders? The policeman told him to put a key for me under the front door mat, but it wasn’t there.

Luckily, the lights were on, the garage door was up, and my dad was just sitting in his chair, watching TV.

He was so visibly relieved to see me and my daughter. I think he knew he was safe and we would take care of him and take him to visit his wife the next day.

We found three messages on the answering machine from my mother over the last two days and two messages from a nurse. He missed all those calls because he had been driving around, lost in Atlanta, the suburbs, almost to the South Carolina border, confused and worried – for two afternoons.

We asked for clarification for what had happened with my mother.

He told us they were sitting in their chairs, watching TV, when she started breathing strangely and looking oddly and wouldn’t answer him. He thought she was just snoozing, but “after four hours, he called 911.” He tried to follow the ambulance to the local ER, but got lost. He doesn’t know how he got home. Then he got lost trying to go to Emory in Atlanta, then lost again getting back home.

We all went to bed and got up the next morning. I called the nurse who had left a message and we spoke to my mother. Everyone was so relieved. I drove us all to visit my mother. Traffic in Atlanta is always stressful, but my father claimed it was “horrendous traffic” if he saw two cars nearby on the road.

My mother didn’t even understand the timeline, had thought she had been in the hospital for weeks.

My mother was very concerned about their monthly bills. She had never set up any payments for autopay, but did every little thing each month on her schedule. I logged into all her accounts and set up autopay. They had always complained they were on a fixed income, never had any money. Their idea of “having no money” is certainly very far from my idea of living paycheck to paycheck my entire adult life.

Physically, my mother is doing amazing. She hardly has any stroke symptoms. After several tests, she was cleared medically.

My mother’s hospital doctor refused to release her to come home unless I had a plan in place for her care. I was told they both should be in assisted living ASAP.

My parents refused and had sworn for years that they would never move out of their house. This humongous house was never my home. They sold the home I remember when I got married and moved away from Georgia. I have no memories of anything meaningful.

My daughter decided to stay to care for my parents. Everyone seemed excited about the plan. We thought maybe finally we could develop a relationship, forgive, and make some nice memories.

I made regular doctor appointments for Friday for both my parents. It was good I got a medical record update.

I learned my father had a memory change diagnosis in 2022. So, I think it was more like 2018 that he started showing symptoms, and I think it’s been bad for both of them since then and they never told me.

I didn’t realize the confusion for both my parents was so far gone. The stroke most likely exacerbated my mother’s mental condition. My father seemed to lose more and more of himself each day, like he didn’t have to hold back anymore.

It was like it went from zero to sixty in three days. They fed off each other and turned into the horrors I remember from a teenager. They were mean and nasty and name-calling and abusive. They screamed at me and threatened me and my daughter.

We didn’t realize how much care they both needed.

I knew I had to take over for my parents’ safety and well-being. I had assumed we could transition them into assisted living over the next year. We soon realized that was impossible.

Of course it got worse.

Because after my father called the police six times in five days, accusing me of all sorts of horrible misdeeds, I had to prove over and over that in spite of having virtually no relationship nor communication with my parents, they had indeed granted me control of their lives for this very instance that these events called for.

Thankfully, I found the binders in the office closet with copies of their wills, living trusts, POAs. My husband and I were joint POA, having been granted this privilege twenty years ago. I had been on their banking accounts for at least two decades.

I very quickly learned that no one would help me. The medical professionals kept informing me I needed neurology referrals. The police informed me they couldn’t do anything for me, my daughter, my husband, my parents unless there was an active murder or suicide taking place. The mental health hotlines couldn’t do anything other than talk to me with very condescending conversation or vet emergency services calls.

It was all so frustrating.

My daughter went back to Ohio and my husband joined me in Georgia.

They both were quite shocked to realize all the horror stories I have told them are all true. I am not just a spoiled only child who thought her parents were strict. My parents are abusive, emotionally immature, narcissistic and selfish.

I started keeping records of every little thing to build a case for assisted living. I didn’t realize how arduous a journey it would be to get them admitted.

I found and hid his guns and ammo in separate spots in the basement. It was sickening how much he had.

I hid all the car keys since it was obvious neither should drive anymore. I was told I needed a neurologist statement to take to DMV to make this official.

I barricaded the office and hid all their medicines so my father couldn’t pop Tylenol like candy.

My father could barely prepare toast or cereal or canned soup. He refused to eat anything I cooked.

She didn’t want to use her walker.

They both refused to bathe.

He started refusing to take his meds, claiming he didn’t know what I was giving him or why. He stopped sleeping and his eye got infected and I could tell he was feeling very bad.

I couldn’t convince my parents they needed more help than I could give them. They claimed they didn’t need any help. They just screamed I was stealing their cars and money. They didn’t want to see me. They wanted me to leave their house. I was trapped in two rooms and couldn’t leave them alone for their safety. My husband didn’t really understand or know what to do. No one was safe.

Two care homes refused to accept them since their dementia symptoms were too much. It took over thirteen days from home assessment to admission to the memory care facility.

Oh, and this entire ordeal happened over the Christmas and New Year holidays.

And no one works weekends either. My four kids spent the holidays alone. It was the longest I have ever been away from them. I was devastated. I was torn from having to do this for my own conscience even though my parents didn’t “deserve” my time or effort.

I had to do everything by phone and online. Their regular doctors refused to sign any paperwork. I had to contact the hospital doctor to sign for my mother. The facility had their contracted NP sign for my father. I had to get a mobile phlebotomist for TB tests and wait almost four days for those results. I had to sneak into their wallets for photos of their IDs and insurance cards.

I had to lie to get my parents in the car to drive them to the facility, telling them the doctor wanted to discuss their lab results. They were extremely anxious on the drive.

My father realized where we were after a few moments and started screaming at me so the nurse had to sneak me out a back door like I was Elvis.

I had to rush to pack up all their bedding and necessaries since I hadn’t been able to plan anything like a normal daughter with normal parents. It took multiple trips back and forth, thirty minutes one way.

My father refused to look at me. My mother turned on her charm for appearances, like always, but demanded items from home or for me to purchase. I told them I was driving back home, but I don’t know if they really understood.

They have enough income and savings and investments to pay for their own care in the memory care home for like fifty years. They have three medical insurances. But it’s frustrating for me to navigate all the bills for their care – the private memory care facility monthly fee, the prescription service monthly fee, the visiting nurse practitioner fees. And the recommended private home care aide for my father since he is still refusing to shower or eat.

We drove home to Ohio on 11 January. It was the first time seeing that Ohio sign on the river bridge that it felt like home to me.

It’s now been almost two months. My mother has called twice and I get texts from the director for my mother’s shopping list of snacks, drinks, underwear.

I am nothing but the keeper of funds now.

It’s both better and also worse than it ever was. I lost parents I never really had in the first place. There is no hope for reconciliation now. My kids never had grandparents.

This was the hardest thing I ever had to do, and it was made that much harder since my parents hate me.

You might also like:

• Adult Daughter
• My Father is a Racist
• Grieving Family Who Are Still Alive

Resources:

• The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You by Elaine N. Aron
• The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping Our Children Thrive When the World Overwhelms Them by Elaine N. Aron
• The Empath’s Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People by Judith Orloff
• The Dance of Anger: A Woman’s Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships by Harriet Lerner
• The Dance of Connection: How to Talk to Someone When You’re Mad, Hurt, Scared, Frustrated, Insulted, Betrayed, or Desperate by Harriet Lerner
• Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers by Karyl McBride
• The Search for Significance: Seeing Your True Worth Through God’s Eyes by Robert S. McGee
• Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No To Take Control of Your Life by Henry Cloud and John Townsend
• Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman