Thursday, September 6, 2012

The Indelicate Truth

So....................

At the risk of being indelicate - what's new - I have a talk about another consequence of being ill-prepared.

I should be in Trinidad today. Yes, I know, I just got back 27 days ago, but there's a thing happening there today that I should really be attending. My relative, who also struggled with Alzheimer's Disease, has finally been granted release and peace. I should be there but I'm not. I can't afford to go. Between the cost of airfare and the cost of care for Mummy while I'm gone (~$1,000 USD a week), it's simply not in the cards.

I know I talk about this an awful lot, but hear me well: it's not just the everyday issues that become frustrating, maddening and fiscally frightening, it is that EVERYTHING becomes that to you. Any and everything can (and often does) create a fiscal cliff and sometimes, to avoid the cliff, we have to simply stop and do nothing even when the last thing we want to be doing is nothing. So today, instead of donning my black dress and standing with my young cousin at her mother's side. I'm here, in my pjs writing this to you.

Fourteen years ago next week, my grandmother passed from this world. Then, everyone was working and all was well with the world, financially speaking. Several of my relatives lived in the US but that was not an impediment to their being present at the final services for my grandmother. There was no question at that time, of whether people would come home, it was a question of when they would arrive. This time around, it's been 'whether'. How wrong is that? How wrong is it that a young woman should have to shoulder alone the final arrangements for her mother? This is the consequence of our poor planning. Everyone is on such shaky financial ground that there are no resources set aside for emergent issues.

Fourteen years ago, my family had a meeting at which I pointed out that we needed to set aside money for the next round of illness. I advised that we needed to establish a family mutual fund account to which the senior generation should contribute as the young ones were either in school or on the verge of returning to school at the time. The plan was to have a pool of resources that could fund care when next someone was ill. Well, the account was created but only two of the four who 'owned' it ever contributed to it with any regularity. Can't say I didn't try.

I have tried over the course of the last fourteen years to encourage (or berate, depending on your perspective) others to see what I see and do as I have recommended. To little avail. I've only succeeded with my mother's affairs because I'm responsible for those. The wider family has largely ignored me, (who am I kidding with this 'largely' nonsense?) and so this is where we end up: with a service in progress and half of us too impecunious to get there to offer moral or other support. How's that working for ya? It's clearly not working for me cuz I'm sitting here writing and mad, or hurt or something.

And still, we don't learn. I'm pretty sure that once today passes into history, we'll keep plodding on in the same insipid and asinine way because, for reasons I am yet to fathom, we will not learn. But hear this as well: continuing the same action will not magically yield a different result. We won't learn. Will you?

1 comment:

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