6 ms·

My father-in-law lived with us for the last two years of his life (he just passed a few weeks ago). My wife is his only child, and he didn't have a lot of savin

My father-in-law lived with us for the last two years of his life (he just passed a few weeks ago). My wife is his only child, and he didn't have a lot of savings, so we were basically the only plan he had. It was difficult, especially as time went on (he had liver disease and later developed liver cancer). We both work full-time, so as soon as we would walk in the door, the requests (demands?) would begin. At the beginning, he was mostly frustrated because he couldn't drive anymore (falling asleep too much) and so he was very bored. He took up some hobbies (mostly carving or drawing) but even then, he was restless and often wanted to make dramatic changes to the living arrangements. He thought he could work a part-time job, but because of his other physical issues (he was very weak and it was hard for him to go up stairs or walk or stand for any length of time) he didn't really have much he could do. We got to know each other well, and my daughter was a saint in helping him a lot when we weren't there (especially during the summers). He cooked for us a lot, especially at the beginning, but towards the end, we had hospice care and he was essentially helpless. I don't regret it for one second. It was difficult, but we were there to help him with the medical system (it's a zoo), insurance, and just helping him with his phone or his tablet really helped calm him down. We all got to know him really well, and he and my wife were able to reconcile a lot of old issues they had. He died peacefully at home, surrounded by family, with a stomach of home-cooked food he loved, listening to his granddaughter play the violin. Again, I don't regret it for a second, even though it's emotionally very difficult.

savryn 4y ago
>as we would walk in the door, the requests (demands?) would begin. old age can be like wealth and power in that it magnifies character defects. Many awful people are going to get old and I kinda wish they could be written off the same way they would in middle age, without the social pressure to be compassionate. There is no innocence regained. Brings out a lot of underlying personality/ cultural /freudian entitlement in people who barely enjoyed getting thru life but are afraid of death. Some old people, it's like they can't wait to regress... (I did my part, I get to be the baby now!) also, immigrant kids have a special hell lots of cultural/ethnic and class differences that makes this burdensome, suffocating, manipulative, and "politically incorrect" to talk about in ways that feels lonely. A lot of these kids never got to be kids, since immigrant parents become low-agency children in practice: can't speak english, can't fill out basic forms, often too poor to do basic stuff by the book (legal, banking, etc), don't know the area to have risk assessment or make decisions adults are supposed to make. The kids have to grow up fast without help, succeed in some way without financial or cultural capital, and then take care of their parents without help. They are often being criticized and their decisions undercut the whole way. Offensive to say but real for many, some immigrant parents often just have god awful personalities: poverty and war and refugee trauma have misshaped them into people that can be hard and unpleasant. Depending on age, many are closed-off, unwelcoming by default, they feel too old to learn new things, racist and endlessly judgmental especially if they never moved out of the self-segregating enclave many start out in the host country. The next generation often feels embarrassed or ashamed of them while having to assimilate, can't bring friends or dates around. Growing up with two different sets of norms and expectations. Leads to simmering resentment and anger covered with guilt and duty and never ending ethnic responsibilities of the religious, Confucian, and/or gendered type. (Women expected to be servant-nannies for their middle-aged in-laws makes me fume.) A lot of immigrant kids who 'made it' despite their crummy families can't really share/talk about it with middle-class suburban Americans... I feel this loneliness and often rage myself and see hints of it just go unspoken in my 'scholarship kids' peer group (asian, indian, latino and post-soviet kids in city gifted programs) now that we're all grown up.
- magicalist 4y ago
  > old age can be like wealth and power in that it magnifies character defects Eh, take even good natured people as they are now and add chronic pain, feeling useless, disrupted bodily systems, and have it go on for years and you'll get a lot of the same thing. End of life care is really really hard.
- kradeelav 4y ago
  You're spot on with the particular niche of struggles that immigrant kids have there - seen it in a very real way with my mother and her parents. Thank you for mentioning it out loud, the first step to fixing things fairly for everyone is always that awareness.
- _dmxy 4y ago
  While the substance of what you say may be true, I couldn't disagree more with the sentiment. If all your parents did was give you the opportunity to grow up stateside as opposed to some communist hellhole or third-world slum, that itself is worth a lifetime of gratitude that you can never hope to pay back. As hard as first generation parents may be on their kids, they have almost certainly endured through far worse in their childhood. Second generation immigrant millennials would have parents who grew during or in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, Indo-Pakistani War - under dangerous third world conditions with a daily struggle for food. Yes some of the crude comments they express may be excessively judgmental and even bigoted, but no more than their former compatriots back home. Had they never emigrated, our generation too would have grown up to adopt the same perspectives. It is precisely because they gave us the opportunity to grow up in the (relatively) liberal and free Western world that we can adopt a different (and hopefully better) value system. I've yet to ever change anyone's mind via an online forum but it doesn't stop me from trying: let your parents know you recognize the sacrifices and suffering they endured to make it to the states, it would mean the world to them. It's far from easy to immigrate to the states today, and it was even harder a generation ago. They truly had to be exceptional in so many respects to make the extreme cutoff it took to beat out an entire country of peers competing for the opportunity to come to the states, and give their kids, you, a far better life.
  - 4y ago
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
Thank you for a beautiful gesture and thoughtful comment. Did you and your wife know when you took him in that he was terminal? (I wonder if that might reconcile OP’s anxiety with respect to an open-ended commitment with the resolve and satisfaction you describe.)
- prometheus76 4y ago
  We knew he had liver disease, but they couldn't really (or wouldn't?) give us a timeframe or expectation. He didn't take very good care of himself physically, so we thought it would be less than five years (he was 71 when he moved in with us). As time went on, however, it was clear he wasn't getting better. He also had diabetes, so his mobility just kept getting worse. He fell a few times, and just recently fell down the stairs and broke four of his vertebrae and three ribs. When they were x-raying his ribs, they found the cancer on his liver and on his lungs, so we immediately signed him up for hospice. As soon as he was able to get around with a back brace, we brought him home and he died just a couple of days after coming home. We all learned patience, sacrifice, love, and devotion to someone you love, no matter how hard it is. That lesson alone for my daughter is worth any level of sacrifice it took for my wife and I. I think it's also very healthy for children/young people to confront death and mortality and to go through the grieving process while they are at home with their parents. It's much more difficult to face it alone as an adult. I also am grateful we could provide a happy environment for him. His granddaughters and their spouses came over frequently for family meals (once or twice a week at least). He expressed how much he loved those times. And he was able to die at home peacefully and without struggle, surrounded by family. May we all be so blessed.
  - iAmAPencilYo 4y ago
    Just wanted to say thank you for writing this down and sharing, most importantly how it reflected on yourself and your family.
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    I have bookmarked your comment in my Uber-important-but-misc. folder. Thank you so much for sharing, especially the part about how your family’s demonstration of care relates to your daughter and her development. That previous sentence wariness too clinical, I can’t do it justice, but thank you, seriously. It relates to my experience, and maybe future experience, and I think your perspective will stick with me. Be well.

savryn 4y ago

>as we would walk in the door, the requests (demands?) would begin. old age can be like wealth and power in that it magnifies character defects. Many awful people are going to get old and I kinda wish they could be written off the same way they would in middle age, without the social pressure to be compassionate. There is no innocence regained. Brings out a lot of underlying personality/ cultural /freudian entitlement in people who barely enjoyed getting thru life but are afraid of death. Some old people, it's like they can't wait to regress... (I did my part, I get to be the baby now!) also, immigrant kids have a special hell lots of cultural/ethnic and class differences that makes this burdensome, suffocating, manipulative, and "politically incorrect" to talk about in ways that feels lonely. A lot of these kids never got to be kids, since immigrant parents become low-agency children in practice: can't speak english, can't fill out basic forms, often too poor to do basic stuff by the book (legal, banking, etc), don't know the area to have risk assessment or make decisions adults are supposed to make. The kids have to grow up fast without help, succeed in some way without financial or cultural capital, and then take care of their parents without help. They are often being criticized and their decisions undercut the whole way. Offensive to say but real for many, some immigrant parents often just have god awful personalities: poverty and war and refugee trauma have misshaped them into people that can be hard and unpleasant. Depending on age, many are closed-off, unwelcoming by default, they feel too old to learn new things, racist and endlessly judgmental especially if they never moved out of the self-segregating enclave many start out in the host country. The next generation often feels embarrassed or ashamed of them while having to assimilate, can't bring friends or dates around. Growing up with two different sets of norms and expectations. Leads to simmering resentment and anger covered with guilt and duty and never ending ethnic responsibilities of the religious, Confucian, and/or gendered type. (Women expected to be servant-nannies for their middle-aged in-laws makes me fume.) A lot of immigrant kids who 'made it' despite their crummy families can't really share/talk about it with middle-class suburban Americans... I feel this loneliness and often rage myself and see hints of it just go unspoken in my 'scholarship kids' peer group (asian, indian, latino and post-soviet kids in city gifted programs) now that we're all grown up.

magicalist 4y ago
> old age can be like wealth and power in that it magnifies character defects Eh, take even good natured people as they are now and add chronic pain, feeling useless, disrupted bodily systems, and have it go on for years and you'll get a lot of the same thing. End of life care is really really hard.
kradeelav 4y ago
You're spot on with the particular niche of struggles that immigrant kids have there - seen it in a very real way with my mother and her parents. Thank you for mentioning it out loud, the first step to fixing things fairly for everyone is always that awareness.
_dmxy 4y ago
While the substance of what you say may be true, I couldn't disagree more with the sentiment. If all your parents did was give you the opportunity to grow up stateside as opposed to some communist hellhole or third-world slum, that itself is worth a lifetime of gratitude that you can never hope to pay back. As hard as first generation parents may be on their kids, they have almost certainly endured through far worse in their childhood. Second generation immigrant millennials would have parents who grew during or in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, Indo-Pakistani War - under dangerous third world conditions with a daily struggle for food. Yes some of the crude comments they express may be excessively judgmental and even bigoted, but no more than their former compatriots back home. Had they never emigrated, our generation too would have grown up to adopt the same perspectives. It is precisely because they gave us the opportunity to grow up in the (relatively) liberal and free Western world that we can adopt a different (and hopefully better) value system. I've yet to ever change anyone's mind via an online forum but it doesn't stop me from trying: let your parents know you recognize the sacrifices and suffering they endured to make it to the states, it would mean the world to them. It's far from easy to immigrate to the states today, and it was even harder a generation ago. They truly had to be exceptional in so many respects to make the extreme cutoff it took to beat out an entire country of peers competing for the opportunity to come to the states, and give their kids, you, a far better life.
- 4y ago

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

Thank you for a beautiful gesture and thoughtful comment. Did you and your wife know when you took him in that he was terminal? (I wonder if that might reconcile OP’s anxiety with respect to an open-ended commitment with the resolve and satisfaction you describe.)

prometheus76 4y ago
We knew he had liver disease, but they couldn't really (or wouldn't?) give us a timeframe or expectation. He didn't take very good care of himself physically, so we thought it would be less than five years (he was 71 when he moved in with us). As time went on, however, it was clear he wasn't getting better. He also had diabetes, so his mobility just kept getting worse. He fell a few times, and just recently fell down the stairs and broke four of his vertebrae and three ribs. When they were x-raying his ribs, they found the cancer on his liver and on his lungs, so we immediately signed him up for hospice. As soon as he was able to get around with a back brace, we brought him home and he died just a couple of days after coming home. We all learned patience, sacrifice, love, and devotion to someone you love, no matter how hard it is. That lesson alone for my daughter is worth any level of sacrifice it took for my wife and I. I think it's also very healthy for children/young people to confront death and mortality and to go through the grieving process while they are at home with their parents. It's much more difficult to face it alone as an adult. I also am grateful we could provide a happy environment for him. His granddaughters and their spouses came over frequently for family meals (once or twice a week at least). He expressed how much he loved those times. And he was able to die at home peacefully and without struggle, surrounded by family. May we all be so blessed.
- iAmAPencilYo 4y ago
  Just wanted to say thank you for writing this down and sharing, most importantly how it reflected on yourself and your family.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  I have bookmarked your comment in my Uber-important-but-misc. folder. Thank you so much for sharing, especially the part about how your family’s demonstration of care relates to your daughter and her development. That previous sentence wariness too clinical, I can’t do it justice, but thank you, seriously. It relates to my experience, and maybe future experience, and I think your perspective will stick with me. Be well.