I ended up taking a brief hiatus from blogging. I have a lot on my mind. In my last post, I'd mentioned that I'd been up for hours one night, worrying about my mother. I decided to unload on Bro #2. We worked with him and his family to get a couple of things for our mom. I mentioned the following in a previous post:
Actually, I've long wanted to do lots of things for my parents/at their house, but didn't. Why not? Well, I think at least part of the reason is that I deferred to others. I deferred to my mom when she'd put me off. She'd always use my father's illness as a reason to not do something. I deferred to my oldest brother when he said he didn't need any assistance with the renovations. I deferred to both of them when they said there was nothing I could do to help wrt my father's care. As noted before, I (and my brother Greg - we both live at a distance from my parents' home) offered to pay for at least some home care, especially in the beginning when my father wasn't so sick. As he became sicker, he received state-mandated home care. But noooooo, my mother would not accept it and my brother discouraged me from pursuing the matter. I'm not sure why the latter was the case, but I do think that my mother and that particular brother share some persnality traits that result in common reactions.
It seems, now that my father died, that it's easier to do stuff around their house. Maybe my mom was truly overwhelmed by my father's care and she just didn't want to deal with anything else; that's certainly a possibility. I was thinking the other day that, even though the house wasn't as clean as I would have liked, my father's room, bedding, medical apparatus, clothing, etc. - basically, everything relating to my dad and his care - was well cleaned and organized. I'm sure that my father's care produced lots of laundry, required lots of things to be kept clean, required lots of maintenance (e.g., oxygen thingies, feeding tube machines, etc.), required organization (e.g., medications, ointments, etc.) and so on.
Well, it seems now that maybe it's not so easy to get stuff done around their house. Bro #1, who has a handy streak and enjoys this kind of stuff, started redoing the upstairs bath. Very nice. There had been leakage so the bathroom floor and part of the kitchen ceiling need to be replaced. He started by, of course, gutting things. And that's basically where he stopped. About a year ago. There are floor studs, but there is no bathroom floor. Also, half the kitchen ceiling is missing. No bathroom floor + missing half a ceiling = a big gaping hole between the first second floors. For almost a year now.
There's a bathroom on the first floor with a shower. That one also needs to be redone, but the other bathroom was worse. Mom has always taken baths. She's 82 yo, that's what she knows and that's what she does. She may never have taken a shower, I don't know. So how has she been washing up since her bathtub's been gone? Like a soldier in the field, she's been taking sponge baths every freaking day for almost a year. She's basically healthy although she moves more slowly, is more forgetful, etc., i.e., the usual things. So in a way, I'm glad she doesn't use the shower bc if she fell, it could be disastrous in a way that it might not be for someone younger and with quicker reflexes. But sponge baths for a year?!?
To me, this is unacceptable. If you want to live like that in your own home, good on you. E.g., it's taking a while for our dining and living rooms to get repainted. Why? Oh, bc Kevin only has so much time available to work on it and I haven't lifted one paint brush in the effort. But we can eat elsewhere in the house. We can relax elsewhere in the house. Bathrooms and kitchens are essential rooms. We would never go months and months without having a bathroom and/or kitchen we could use. One does not leave one's mother, especially a) an 82 yo one who b) goes to extreme lengths not to burden anyone and c) couldn't afford to pay for the remodeling so d) is grateful that someone else is going to do it at little or no cost and e) who therefore will most certainly not complain about the lack of progress, without a functional bathroom for longer than a week at most. Jesus fucking christ.
So I unload on Bro #2. Bros #1 and #2 had talked on the phone shortly after my father's death and the former had agreed to consider accepting some kind of assistance wrt getting the work done. From Bro #2 and I it would be financial assistance bc we're a) not close and b) not terribly handy beyond painting and stuff like that. I have never plumbed anything and I'm not about to start, especially not on someone else's house. But Bro #1 never did accept any money...everything's always taken care of, it's going to get done, he just needs a few good weekends, blah blah blah.... Can you all tell how frustrating this is to me? My mother's house is now not safe from a common sense POV and I'm almost certain it's not up to code in the condition it's in. And it's been like this for almost a year.
It appears to me that Bro #1 has some odd compulsion to a) see the glass as totally empty and completely drained of any liquid and b) to do everything from scratch. Bro #2 and his peeps and Kevin and I bought Mom a new bed. Bro #1 said he would build her one. WTF? Don't build her a fucking bed when you have a whole bathroom that needs to be built! Grrrrr.
I can, to an extent, sympathize with Bro #1's tendency to expect the worst. I did that for a long, long time and I still do it. Anyone who's identified such an unfortunate tendency and strives to overcome it knows that it's damn hard to do. I sometimes wish I never a) realized that I do this; b) realized that it makes my life less enjoyable; and c) decided I want to change. I certainly haven't changed things 180 degrees; it's more like 90 degrees; but life is immeasurably better and more interesting and more fun w/even this much change. I also share my mother's dispreference (I love that word) for imposing on people, but this isn't always a bad thing. E.g., I'm usually much more positive when it comes to helping someone else achieve something or even just offering advice/an opinion. (And yes, I could benefit from being as encouraging to myself as I am to others.) What I'm trying to say is that Bro #1 should not let this tendency (if that be what it is) have such a negative effect on my mother's quality of life.
Annnnnyway, Bro #2 and I have decided that the thing to do is get some estimates from contractors to do the work. If it's affordable, we might have them do the whole thing; otherwise, we might have them do the work up through rough plumbing, install the fixtures (tub, sink, etc.) and sheetrock and then Bro #1 can get his DIY jones satisifed by doing the finishing stuff (tile, shelving, painting, smaller fixtures, a door, etc.). I left a message to this effect on Bro #1's machine a week ago and I haven't heard back since, although I understand that he did work at my mother's house for a few hours this past weekend. I intend to go ahead with getting quotes, etc. even though he was there for a few hours bc I don't expect he'll be consistent. Not bc he doesn't want to (although who knows, maybe there's some kind of psychological resistance to doing the work), but bc he just doesn't have the time. He works long hours at his job and only has every other weekend off.
The thing that annoys me - okay, one of the many things that annoys me about this situation - is that I'm 99.9999999% positive that Bro #1 never looked into hiring someone to do it. I think this bc he thinks that it would cost $40,000 - $60,000 to hire someone to do the work. That's about how much it cost us to have our old garage torn down, the old foundation dug up and a new garage built in a new location (bco newer code) from a new foundation up. Surely a bathroom and half a ceiling are not as involved as what we had done. So how he got that number, I have no idea, although I suspect he plucked it from his arse.
On that note, I'm off to an appointment and then to work. Long day today.
Recent Comments