joyfulnoise- oh my goodness, that development never crossed my mind … I'm so sorry for that surprise.  It does alert me as to pressing steps in our immediate future.

I've been speaking to my mother about having someone looking in on her morning and evening (I live 20-30 min away depending on traffic and am fixing about half the meals).  Up until this recent implosion she has resisted every suggestion including the LifeLine which she only wears when I remind her (and she's fallen several times with a cell phone … one good bounce and that's out of reach!).  And yet she won't openly discuss any alternatives (gad, she fibs to the doctors as to her actual health) … although I've begun to suspect she essentially wants to move in with us and be cared for by someone familar but can't get around our space restriction.  She cared for her own mother who was quite ambulatory, but that was in a house more than twice the size with wide doorways and hall compared to ours today.

Watching this slow decline has been unnerving as DH and I are two parents to our only child … and in no position to afford long-term insurance.  Keep up exercise and eat right!  It wasn't like we didn't plan: we were going to sell this small house with big equity in 2007 to move to another state and purchase a larger house with a corner just for my mother … the real estate implosion moved too quickly and the house is now worth half of where it was with a slightly underwater mortgage.  Trapped and, pfffhht, went the retirement security.

Okay, small rant over, thank you … it's a huge relief to let it out with folks of similar conflict that won't lift an eyebrow.

Oh, wow, kellyb … my mother's mother was a latent diabetic requiring oral insulin and she was one major piece of mischief in the forbidden land of sugar as I remember from childhood.  Not only would she get up in the middle of the night and bake a dozen cinnamon rolls for family … which mysteriously shrank to only 10 rolls by breakfast time … but she would order up boxes of her favorite  chocolates from the drugstore and have them delivered (this is back in the day of free service) and hide them between the mattresses.  Finally a call to the drugstore to declare delivery a no-no followed by a tough-love kitchen table council was the only key.  It took all the family living under that roof to keep grandmother on the straight and narrow, with all of us following a low-sugar diet to keep temptation out of the house.  Removing temptation brought yelling and even tears but was about the only thing that worked with an out-of-control sweet tooth.

Tell your DH he'll have to hang tough … it is worth it.

Kellyb ….

As far as I've seen with family situations of caring for parents, there is always one adult child that becomes the principal heavy whether he/she wants the job.  My mother became that for her mother when her eldest and youngest siblings wussed out (major denial) and was the one that turned the tide of my grandmother's stubborn second childhood.  I can tell you that the kitchen table council with my grandmother involved my mother having to deliver the ugly statement: "You are going to die far sooner than later".  Blunt words wielded like a blunt instrument, however unpleasant, finally had an effect after months of careful handling.

As far as your DH's siblings-in-denial, their inaction forfeits any criticism of what the pro-active siblings do for their parents' benefit.  That includes denial of their father's condition and boils down to put up or shut up.  Your DH sounds like an absolute sweetheart (what a keeper!) thats trying to do the right thing for everybody and wearing himself thin in the effort.  He and his two sisters are plainly the core of parental support and need to stop worrying about cajoling the emotionally reluctant for help.  Yeah, tough love in that direction too.  This sounds horribly harsh, but the hard-booted approach was about the only thing that worked on the stubborn streak that ran through our family (ah, still does).  I wish your DH (and you as his support) bottomless strength.