Keep Lynn at Home
Donation protected
I'm not good at asking for help, but for my parents' sake, I'm swallowing my personal preferences to write this plea:
On April 7th, after a blessedly short, terribly traumatic illness, my father passed away. Throughout his life, my dad put his family before all else, and these last few years were no different. Since multiple strokes disabled my mother early last year, he's been her primary caregiver, spending every day answering her endless questions, feeding and bathing her, and keeping her happy through the hourly mood changes of demetia. Throughout the summer months, I commuted between 4-day workweeks in RI to 3-day weekends on an unheated screened porch in Maine, where I helped with laundry, cooking, and shopping, trying to give my father a break.
Any time we spoke about the future or my mother's health, my father's chief concern was keeping her out of a nursing home. Anyone who knows my mother well will understand why that's a priority: my mother has always been extremely nervous around strangers. Saying it that way makes the condition sound mild, but her anxiety is so severe that I can only call it a phobia; she's only really comfortable around close friends and family members.
We've always joked that my father or I could get a wrong number and talk for an hour, but I remember taking over business-type family calls--utility companies, physicians, etc--when I was ten or eleven years old. Even back then I could see how crippling her anxiety became. Needless to say, I agree with my father's desire to keep her at home as long as humanly possible. A nursing home--no matter how good--would KILL my mother. I believe that in the most literal sense.
SO...
My father died around 10 am on a bright, summery Sunday morning, in Room 29 of Rumford Hospital, while my mother was just down the hall in Room 27, having been admitted a few days earlier with a UTI and CHF (congestive heart failure). She was discharged only a few hours after Dad died, while I ran around town picking up prescriptions, finding a commode, and making funeral arrangements, which will hopefully all be covered by my father's $2000 life insurance policy. A local volunteer ambulance service met us at the house, as my mother is no longer able to walk unassisted on FLAT ground, never mind the seven steps up into her home.
Medicare will pay for a few weeks of in-home physical therapy and nursing checks, but after that we're on our own. At most, I'll be able to get four weeks of family leave stipend from the state of RI. I have a couple thousand dollars in savings and a broke-down money-pit of a house in RI, where two of my sons live now, including my eldest, who has autism. Somehow, we'll figure out where my sons can go, get the house cleaned out, and sell it, but I can't imagine accomplishing that in the next six months or so.
In the meantime, my mother is on Social Security and I can't leave her alone for more than half-an-hour or so, so it's impossible for me to get a job here in Maine. I'll be trying every social services agency in the state, of course, while living in an unfinished, unheated (hideously green-painted) storage room above my mother, whose bed was moved to the tiny, first-floor living room.
If he'd been able to speak, my father's final request would surely have been "Take care of Lynn." I sat by his bed for the last three days of his life, stroking his head or his shoulder, soothing him through each increasingly labored breath. Although he was unable to respond, the hospice nurses assured me that he would hear the stories I told of the wonderful life we all had together, and the words I repeated over and over: "It's just me, Dad. Everything's okay. I'm taking care of Mom, just the way you'd want me to. I'll always take care of her; I promise, Dad."
I am not good at asking for help, but here it is:
Please help me keep my promise to my father.
I hope every one of you has someone in your life who loves you as deeply as he loved us. We were so fortunate to have known him.
Donald Owen Horne
1933-2019
On April 7th, after a blessedly short, terribly traumatic illness, my father passed away. Throughout his life, my dad put his family before all else, and these last few years were no different. Since multiple strokes disabled my mother early last year, he's been her primary caregiver, spending every day answering her endless questions, feeding and bathing her, and keeping her happy through the hourly mood changes of demetia. Throughout the summer months, I commuted between 4-day workweeks in RI to 3-day weekends on an unheated screened porch in Maine, where I helped with laundry, cooking, and shopping, trying to give my father a break.
Any time we spoke about the future or my mother's health, my father's chief concern was keeping her out of a nursing home. Anyone who knows my mother well will understand why that's a priority: my mother has always been extremely nervous around strangers. Saying it that way makes the condition sound mild, but her anxiety is so severe that I can only call it a phobia; she's only really comfortable around close friends and family members.
We've always joked that my father or I could get a wrong number and talk for an hour, but I remember taking over business-type family calls--utility companies, physicians, etc--when I was ten or eleven years old. Even back then I could see how crippling her anxiety became. Needless to say, I agree with my father's desire to keep her at home as long as humanly possible. A nursing home--no matter how good--would KILL my mother. I believe that in the most literal sense.
SO...
My father died around 10 am on a bright, summery Sunday morning, in Room 29 of Rumford Hospital, while my mother was just down the hall in Room 27, having been admitted a few days earlier with a UTI and CHF (congestive heart failure). She was discharged only a few hours after Dad died, while I ran around town picking up prescriptions, finding a commode, and making funeral arrangements, which will hopefully all be covered by my father's $2000 life insurance policy. A local volunteer ambulance service met us at the house, as my mother is no longer able to walk unassisted on FLAT ground, never mind the seven steps up into her home.
Medicare will pay for a few weeks of in-home physical therapy and nursing checks, but after that we're on our own. At most, I'll be able to get four weeks of family leave stipend from the state of RI. I have a couple thousand dollars in savings and a broke-down money-pit of a house in RI, where two of my sons live now, including my eldest, who has autism. Somehow, we'll figure out where my sons can go, get the house cleaned out, and sell it, but I can't imagine accomplishing that in the next six months or so.
In the meantime, my mother is on Social Security and I can't leave her alone for more than half-an-hour or so, so it's impossible for me to get a job here in Maine. I'll be trying every social services agency in the state, of course, while living in an unfinished, unheated (hideously green-painted) storage room above my mother, whose bed was moved to the tiny, first-floor living room.
If he'd been able to speak, my father's final request would surely have been "Take care of Lynn." I sat by his bed for the last three days of his life, stroking his head or his shoulder, soothing him through each increasingly labored breath. Although he was unable to respond, the hospice nurses assured me that he would hear the stories I told of the wonderful life we all had together, and the words I repeated over and over: "It's just me, Dad. Everything's okay. I'm taking care of Mom, just the way you'd want me to. I'll always take care of her; I promise, Dad."
I am not good at asking for help, but here it is:
Please help me keep my promise to my father.
I hope every one of you has someone in your life who loves you as deeply as he loved us. We were so fortunate to have known him.
Donald Owen Horne1933-2019
Organizer
Betsy Baranski
Organizer
Dixfield, ME
