A Daughter's Stories About an Aging Parent: Sharing Tips & Facts Learned Along The Way
I was online one morning, when I came across an interesting article titled “Handling Controlling Elderly Parents.” “Ha!” I thought half-jokingly. “Here’s my breakthrough guide to fix all of my control issues with my 89-year-old mother Ginny.” Very quickly, however, I wasn’t laughing. I was thinking. Hard. With some parents, an overly critical, authoritarian parenting…
This story begins three years ago, when my then 86-year-old mother Ginny called, quite excited. “Have you seen anything on the news?” “About what exactly mom?” I respond. “Well, I think I’m a finalist and will win a lot of money!” she shared. “What are you talking about? What money?” I ask, my heart beating…
Read more How Do You Control the Spending Habits of an Aging Parent?
In my last story, I shared how my mother Ginny’s best friend had given her an unexpected inheritance gift. She should be receiving that gift soon, and we remain grateful. It’s important, however, that we are responsible about how to manage the gift and dig into information regarding cash assets and how they relate, in…
Read more Figuring Out VA Benefits and an Inheritance: Our Story
I remain in a funny place after returning from Ann’s service in Minneapolis. Ann was my mother Ginny’s oldest friend who had recently passed. (Here is a link to that story. In an unexpected development, this is Part 2.) As I had mentioned, the service and weekend spent with her family had held many emotional…
As my blog often confirms, life is complicated, funny and always full of surprises. These past few days have been no exception. As a resident living on the east coast of Florida, I have been distracted as well as knee-deep in preparations for Hurricane Dorian. I had hoped to start the first week of September…
This is going to be a tough one. We’ve just heard that my mother Ginny’s best friend Ann passed away yesterday. She was 90. Ann and Ginny’s friendship began 65 years ago when their future husbands met at college. They raised their families in the same suburb for many years. When my dad died at…
Today I visited the “Reader” section on WordPress (my blog platform) to see if I could find other blogs with interesting stories about the elderly that I might be able to reblog onto my own. I typed in a couple of search terms, but struck out. Then I tried “old people.” There were a lot…
Today I’m in the mood to pull the curtains back from a darkened room and find the joy. Living through aging parent experiences is draining, it goes with the territory, but witnessing pure joy sure brings in a lot of light. I found an example of just such a joy when reading a Glamour article…
In an unusual coincidence, two different friends are holding memorial services today for a parent who passed away. One friend’s father died young at age 68 in Illinois and they returned to California with his ashes this weekend. The other friend’s mother died four days ago at age 100 and her service is in Pennsylvania.…
Since the launch of my blog, I have been asked a few times “why did you choose Leaving The Door Open for the site name?” For me, it fell neatly into a few categories. First, I wanted a well-known phrase for readers. It was possible it would be easier to remember and I was also…
