If you’ve been reading this website for awhile you might think, “Oh she makes it sound so easy”…after all, I bombard you with all of these news stories you may or may not have heard about, give you pointers and tips along the way ….and on the surface it looks like I know exactly what I’m doing.
But just like you, I struggle every day with the decisions that my sister and I make. Lately, she’s been engrossed in her mother-in-law’s recent medical issues. Unfortunately, like most families — there are only one or two people that shoulder the burden (if you will) of caring for their ill relatives. So, understandably, I’ve taken over most of the duties for my parents for now while she tries to figure things out with her mother-in-law. She’s the only one that her mother-in-law can depend on at this point in time. Trying to juggle those responsibilities, as well as trying to raise a pre-schooler and be supportive to a hard working spouse and building a successful business can sometimes make me want to pull my hair out. None of my friends understand—YET. After all, their parents are still in their 50s and 60s, so they are relatively healthy. So the only the person I can vent to is my husband, besides my sister of course. I try not to so much because he has enough he has to deal with at work.
Lately, I’ve been really religious about getting out to the gym almost everyday to relieve my stress and of course maintain a healthy lifestyle. I think if I wasn’t doing that, I’d probably be a lot more irritable than I have been in the past few months. It’s hard —it really is. I’m fortunate that I work at home. But, there are many other caregivers out there that have 9-5 jobs and they have kids either in high school or younger, that have the responsibility of caring for their elderly parents. My hats go off to them. My Godmother did it by herself with help from her husband and some outside caregivers. But she also had a daily 4 hour commute round trip and 10 hour work days to add to her caregiving duties. After her mom passed away, she got sick for a couple of months.
I think most people don’t understand what we go through. Though we have a caregiver who is around for Mom and Dad and we have part-time help on the weekends, it doesn’t mean that we are home-free. Everyday we have to think about how we can afford to pay for them long-term, how long this will last? Questions run through my head, “what if business slows down?”, “What if they get sicker?”. So, even though the physical aspects are alleviated for us — and not really ,because I still have to run out and get the groceries and pick them up for appointments and pick up the medicine….try to fit that in-between taking my daughter to school, getting our own groceries, and …you know what I mean– the mental stress is still there.
Some members of our family don’t understand this because they are not there to witness things. Yeah it makes me angry because it’s not fair that only two of us have to shoulder all of this on our own. I can go on and on, but I’ll share a video here so you can see my point.
People go on with their lives while we have to schedule ours. How infuriating is that? We have to plan our vacations and time off around who can be around to oversee things. We wouldn’t mind it , if it included everyone in the family. So, yes—I’m frustrated. How many 30-somethings are dealing with this issue? Not much compared to the baby boomer population. But, I love my parents and I want to make sure they are taken care of. It doesn’t make life easy though when you basically just started yours.
