MY MOTHER-IN-LAW (MIL) IS IN HER 90s. Her health has been better.
She has a live-in helper who is a strain on her finances, but it’s either that or a mosod — a nursing home.
MIL is adamant: she will not abandon her home.
MIL has seven living children, of which five line in the same town as MIL. One lives a few hours away and the seventh lives in the U.S.
In many respects, MIL is as sharp as a tack. In some other ways, not so much. After all, the lady is in her 90s — no one knows for sure as there were no birth certificates in Morocco when she was born. She raised her children and many of her grandchildren.
In her mind, it now is the children's turn to care for her.
That’s how it was in Morocco — and many other places, too.
TIMES CHANGE
She’s right, but . . .
First, she won’t give up her home, a place she shared with her late husband for more than half a century.
Second, her children have their own children — and grandchildren.
Most either have two story homes or apartments on a second or third floor. MIL can barely walk; climbing stairs is an almost impossibility.
The children take turns bringing her to their homes for Shabatot and hagim; the one in Haifa comes to MIL and spends time at MIL’s home; the one in the U.S. comes once or twice a year to spend time with her mother, her daughter, and her grandchildren, as well as visiting her sisters and brothers. Be it two weeks or four, there never is enough time to do everything on her agenda.
MIL has a pension, but the live-in help takes a major chunk of it, and to hear MIL, the live-in does little to earn her keep. MIL’s children generally report a different picture regarding the help the live-in does, or does not, provide for her wages.
MIL’s only other option; one she absolutely refuses to consider, is to move into a retirement home.
The neighbors she once counted as friends have died. She is one of the last remaining original olim from Morocco. The town in which she lives remains largely North African, and Moroccan is still spoken, but by fewer and fewer people.
In a nursing home, MIL would be with others of her generation, probably others from Morocco. She would have full time, supervised, medical attention. The cost probably would be about the same as the live-in.
But, she won’t give up her home.
I can understand that. That’s like asking an American to give up his or her driver’s license. Even if the person no longer can drive, that license still represents “independence.”
As long as MIL has the house, she can think she is independent.
I see the life MIL is living and I am serious when I tell people who wish me
עד 120 — until 120 — that I really don’t want to live that long.
Maybe Moses was able to hike up a mountain at 120, but I can’t do it even now, and I’m decades younger than 120.
Yes, there is Medicare (for how much longer) and Social Security (also, for how much longer), and I do have a pension pittance, but what once took me 15 minutes to walk to “shul,” now takes me 15 minutes to walk to a minyan one-eighth the distance. It could be worse; I could have to “roll” to the minyan when walking becomes out of the question.
I’m not going to anything “foolish” to hurry my demise along, but I am telling the truth when I tell me who wish me עד 120 that I hope their wish, albeit well intentioned, is not something I want fulfilled.
It’s not in my hands, anyway.
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