Even though my sister lives a few miles away, I do not trust her in attending to my parents needs. There are a few reasons why for my thoughts. Main reason is that she still has issues with them when she was young. I believe she will neglect both parents.
This happens more than people think. It's actually quite common.
I've always taken care of my health, but getting too old has been a rough ride. I stopped driving myself for practical business reasons many years ago, but I always liked to occasionally drive myself sometimes to get away, get something to eat, go to a park or something. Now I have to come to terms that I'm an active danger to others on the road if I get behind the wheel. My vision is failing. My hand eye coordination is shot. My reaction time has degraded. When you get older, well you make adjustments. Then you get to an age where you run out of adjustments.
I have full time in house care now. Just in case. That's one thing I wanted to make sure of and planned for it long ago. That my godson would not have to spend his youth taking care of a geriatric headed for the glue farm. But I recognize that my situation is probably unique compared to the average. Most people end up in nursing homes or in a spare bedroom in their adult children's houses or situation.
As I am much older than most of you, probably nearly all of you, here are some things to consider
1) Reduce your stress level at all costs. Career stress probably took 15 years off my lifespan and did a heavy number on my overall health. The pandemic and all the BS from all the logistics from that was a doozy. It was more drama that I needed at my age.
2) Exercise as if your life depends on it. Because it does. I took care of myself. And I'm in bad shape. Sometimes I imagine if I didn't. Take care of your health, think about how you eat, sleep and spend your time.
3) Clutter is stress. Push things out of your life that don't have a real function for you. Stuff is one of them. People who bring nothing good in your life is another. From my career path, I still have clients that send me gifts several times a year ( Xmas, birthday, etc, etc) because they want to keep those lines of communication open in case they want to approach me later for something. TVs, IPads, ear buds, clothing, sports equipment, etc, etc. They don't even know what they are sending. Their secretaries get it, and give them a card to sign. I should know, I spend decades signing cards for gifts to be sent out and I had no clue what was being sent out, because I had to manage relationships with clients as well. Someone just sent me a Pivot mountain bike. I can't drive myself anymore and I get up 6 times a night to pee, how exactly am I going to hop onto a bicycle now? I've literally run out of people in my daily life to hand off this stuff. The point is, when you die, don't leave storage units worth of mess for your grieving relatives to sort through and handle. A year ago, I sent my godson a Concept 2 rower that a client gifted me. I was just relieved to get that out of my way. Three months ago, I got another one. Same person. His secretary probably forget to cross it off a list and had it ordered and sent again.
4) Get into a single story living situation. Stairs will break you if you are already broken down enough.
5) Retrofit your bathrooms, if you can. Most of you here today, if you slip in your bathroom, well you might be OK. If it happens to me, the recovery, if I could recover, could take years. Literally years at this point from some kind of bad fall. Think about your bathrooms for functionality as you age. The kind of grip on the floor of a shower stall or a tub might be the difference between you being wrecked or not.
6) You lose maintenance ability. I don't mow my own lawns, clean my own bathrooms nor do my own cooking. But for those that do still, you have to think about that. You want to be pushing a lawnmower in your 80s? In most cases, most people are better off downsizing their living situation. Also less stuff means less stuff that needs to be handled or cleaned or be given maintenance.
I can still pull quality and drop loads though. At least that didn't fall apart on me.
One thing I will say and it will sound bizarre. Get your parents into gaming. It's a good time killer and it will likely help them focus on how to do small problem solving, etc, etc, etc. I don't think extensive gaming is good for young people and middle aged people with other priorities, but it's probably good escapism for those who will go insane if they try to read another book or watch another episode of Walker Texas Ranger on cable. My IT people are all on the younger side, I got them all that new graphics card that just came out for Xmas. They were so excited as nearly all of them are into video games. Don't quite get it, but if it keeps these tech monkeys somewhat sane, it should keep some codgers sane too. One of those kids tried to explain to me why these things need to be the size of a loaf of bread and have so many fans on them. So excited, I thought he was going to pee his pants. Well, it's nice to see people happy I suppose. I should have sent him that rower instead.
