Asklemmy

55434 readers

485 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 7 years ago

MODERATORS

those of you with elderly parents 800 miles away, how do you take care of them? (linux.community)

submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by vestmoria@linux.community to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

my parents live alone 800 miles away from me and are capable of living independently.

There might be a day they're not safe at home anymore and need to be taken care of.

I'm not a caregiver and while my father is flexible and can adapt, my mother is very strict with what she considers right and it's usually her way or the highway, reason why I would never live with her, let her live with me or take care of her alone. It would never work. My parents have a decent pension, no debt, and mostly love each other.

If it ever comes to me taking care of the administrative side of things 800 miles away, what does it look like? If you are in a situation like I described, how often do you visit?

Do you take care of them physically as well? I mean giving them showers, cleaning them, cleaning the house, feeding them, organizing their medicines, dressing them, answering 30 times per day the same question or old story because they forgot, because realistically I can do this up to 2 weeks per year, never on a permanent basis. I'm not a patient man.

I also want to live my life but where I grew up, small town in GA, the expectation seems to be I move in with my parents to physically take care of them, otherwise I'm not a good son.

ETA: thank you all for contributing

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Vanth@reddthat.com 1 points 6 days ago

My folks will go to assisted living. That's according to their wishes. They took care of their aging parents and they don't want to take that same path themselves.

Part of it is yes, their kids ended up scattered around the world so there's no way it wouldn't end up being disproportionately on one to carry the burden. There's also absolutely shit social services for caretakers in my country, almost as bad as for working mothers.