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My husband's parents live with us, and I am going a little nuts dealing with his mother. She is 81, obese, and can barely walk at this point. She sleeps about 16 hours a day, and there are many days that will go by without her coming upstairs (their bedroom and tv room are in the basement). And yet, I can see her going on like this for another 10 years or so. Hooray for modern medicine!
I have to remind myself to detach emotionally and not get frustrated with her. But what particularly bothers me is how it limits the life of my father-in-law. He used to have a job at the grocery store that he loved, but she didn't like being alone, so he quit and now just sits and watches tv with her all day. We're trying to plan a trip to Spain (where he's from), but have to figure out what to do with her because she refuses to go.
I guess I'm struggling to figure out how much of this is coming from her body not working anymore, and how much is just depression (she did spend some time in a mental hospital about 15 years ago and is on Lexapro, which doesn't seem to be doing much). And what do you do when somebody is unwilling to make any moves to help themselves get something out of life? She's just waiting around to die at this point and I hate watching it.
That's a lot to handle, wow. Did you and your now-husband discuss taking care of elderly/infirm parents to this degree early on (i.e. before marriage)? Either way, was it a difficult decision to let your husband's parents move in?
I'd prefer to end up with someone who wouldn't want us to do this for either set of our parents. I'm not saying I don't care if they rot in a shitty retirement home, I'm just saying I don't care enough to make it my problem. It's unclear to me how unpalatable a statement that would be for someone to hear on a date, or how much it'd actually prevent this kind of scenario in our future.
I was quite eager to bring them in because his father is a huge help to us, helping with the childcare and doing our cooking. It's just the mother slug that bothers me on a conceptual level, but I don't have to do anything to take care of her.
When we first had our son we lived several states away from any family, and it's really hard to do child-rearing without any family support. I'm sure it will become more difficult as they get older, but for now it's actually a pretty great situation. I just hate to watch somebody waste their life!
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