Four hours later—or should I say three trips to the vending machine and two cups of horrendous coffee later—we took Mum home with a medical report indicating that she’d most likely suffered a mini-stroke known as a ‘transient ischaemic attack’, or TIA for short. The signs of a TIA are similar to a stroke, but the effects aren’t as long lasting as those of a full-blown stroke.
So Mum was back home, with no obvious signs of being any worse for wear. She was still disoriented, and still had difficulty speaking and understanding—just as she was before the TIA.
This episode, as awful as it must sound, was almost a blessing in disguise, as it jolted Dad into reality. Within a week we were meeting with real estate agents to put the family house on the market. Dad must have wondered what struck him—we were presented with a window of opportunity and we jumped through that window and ran.
Packing up a home that a family has lived in for 50 years is no easy task. Our first decision was whether to sell it as is—a ‘renovator’s dream’—or to actually renovate it. When you live in a house for as long as my parents had, with no intention of ever leaving, you don’t tend to update much. Ours was a humble two-bedroom, one-bathroom weatherboard house on what was a huge block of land for a suburban street. My sister and I had shared a normal-sized bedroom, while my brother had a teeny-tiny room off the kitchen, which Dad built when I ‘accidentally’ came along. That bedroom was so small that my brother had to leave the room to change his mind, or so Dad used to joke. The house had a large rumpus room at the back, which Dad also built, and which ended up being where most of the socialising took place, as it had big sliding windows that opened into the kitchen—the room Mum spent most of her time in. Whenever we had guests over for dinner, we’d cover the huge snooker table in the rumpus room with a piece of chipboard and a tablecloth to serve as a dining table. Mum didn’t like the lounge room getting messy, so that was reserved for after-dinner relaxing and special occasions. A new kitchen was installed in the late 1970s, and the brown laminate cupboards accented with yellow tiles were still in pretty good nick. The lounge had a semi-makeover by way of carpet and a new lounge suite in the 1980s, when Dad won some money on a trifecta. The traffic areas where the shagpile was worn were covered with rugs. There were few modern appliances gracing that house—a colour TV that my parents won in a raffle, and an inbuilt air conditioner they never used. (We would often arrive on a weekend for a summer barbecue and find Mum and Dad sweltering in front of a small oscillating fan. I would remind them they had a perfectly good air conditioner that they could turn on with the touch of a button and be miraculously cool—but no, air conditioners were noisy and used up way too much power.)
In preparation for sale we decided to renovate my brother’s broom closet by ripping out all the cupboards and putting a futon/sofa in it, and voilà—a three-bedroom house. The rest of the house we just de-cluttered and freshened up a little. There was talk of pulling down the asbestos garage, but thankfully commonsense (and the law) prevailed and we convinced Dad that it was a much bigger and more involved job than he could possibly pull off by himself. Dad had voiced a desire to just rip out the offending panels, load them into the trailer and take them to the tip, but we decided that when it was time for the garage to meet its maker, it should be done properly—not by a 70-year-old man with a mallet, a pair of overalls and a 50-cent mask from Bunnings over his nose. Yep, let the new owners deal with it. Besides, we weren’t covering up the fact that the garage—which I might add was also our playroom/cubby house as kids—had asbestos in the roof. We’d hung out there for the best part of twenty years and we all turned out okay.
De-cluttering a family home basically involves asking all the kids who have long fled the nest to take their old shit away. Yep, that took care of about three cupboards. For years, Mum and Dad had encouraged us to take our old stuff to our own houses. We’d often arrive for a family meal to find Mum had packed a box for us to sort through. We had the option of taking it all home, or she was going to throw it all out—so a trip to Mum and Dad’s for dinner usually ended with us leaving with a doggie bag of the past. I would’ve preferred a doggie bag of roast and trifle, as I had no room in my house for these childhood keepsakes, but it turned out the stuff we didn’t take was never actually tossed out, just put straight back into the cupboard, only to greet us again at our next visit. But this time was different, of course, as our family house was going to be sold, which meant there was now a definite deadline for clearing out all our old stuff. We decided upon the most sensible way of dealing with the clutter: a garage sale!
We started sorting though every cupboard, and grouping items into toys, clothes, electronics, kitchen items, etc. I’m a very organised person, so this was right up my alley. I made little signs for each trestle table, and decided every item wouldbe labelled with a price tag. On the day my brother, sister and I would each man a table, and Dad would relay our enormous takings inside the house every twenty minutes. My sister went to the bank to make sure we had plenty of change for our customers, signs went up around the neighbourhood and a notice was printed in the local paper, saying the sale would start at 8 a.m. sharp.
The day arrived and I was there early to set everything up. My sister was running late and my brother texted to say he couldn’t make it at all. Right: all going well so far. When my sister arrived at 7.15 a.m. I heard her arguing with a man in the driveway. An eager shopper had arrived early and wanted to be let in; she basically told him to piss off and come back at the advertised time. I was angry that she’d scared away a potential customer, she got upset at me, Mum kept wandering down the driveway in her dressing gown and Dad was taking stuff off the tables that he now decided he didn’t want to sell—and the crowds were gathering.
I thought I was prepared for what was about to unfold; I wasn’t. Once the gates opened, people started streaming in, and I realised I had clearly underestimated my ability to keep an eye on everything. There were hands going everywhere, customers picking up items and carrying them around, then putting them back down on the wrong table. As a self-confessed control freak, that was doing my head in—but then people were trying to bargain with us while making comments about what our old stuff was actually worth. It was very confronting. How dare somebody say the bike my Dad taught me to ride on wasn’t worth $20! It might have been a bit rusty and missing a wheel, but come on, people. Of course that wooden bowl I bought my parents in Bali and snuck through Customs undetected was worth $5—I could’ve gone to jail for that bowl! It felt like everyone was judging the value of our family memories.
One hour in and the tables were still covered. It seemed like we’d hardly sold a thing—like when you’ve been eating a big bowl of spaghetti for hours and it looks like you haven’t even started. Dad kept coming out every ten minutes to take the cash inside, but would also grab one more keepsake he just couldn’t give up—and every time he came out that back door, Mum would follow in her dressing gown and it would take three of us to get her back in the house.
This wasn’t running smoothly. We had to take some drastic action, and quickly—so we started writing up ‘$5 Everything Must Go’ signs. I was loading stuff up on that red spot special table faster than I could process what was actually happening.
I’d had some previous experience with this trick, which I’d learnt as a teenager working part time in a department store. A staff member would walk around collecting a trolley full of items from the shelves, priced between $1 and $4. The contents of the trolley would then be transferred to a table set up in the middle aisle of the store. They’d put up an ‘Everything $5’ sign, plug in a flashing red light—and instant mayhem. Shoppers would flock to snap up a bargain, filling their arms with $5 items that on the shelves were priced at only $2.
Our red spot special table went nuts. Transactions were proceeding at record speed, and my heart couldn’t keep up with my brain. I sold my favourite childhood toy for $5. It was a Barbie campervan, the stuff childhood dreams are mad
e of. A luxury vehicle fitted out with every mod con, and enough space to sleep eight cool friends. It had a drop-down ramp at the back, and a vinyl roll-up window on the side—perfect for hanging out at the beach. Barbie had her first kiss in there with Ken. It was the ultimate dream toy—and here I was handing it over to a complete stranger for $5.
At one point my sister came over to say a man was offering $20 for all my old AFL cards. $20? WTF? I’d collected those cards over a number of years. I had every player from every team—it was a complete set with swaps. Those cards would’ve been responsible for at least two of the fillings in my teeth (each pack of five cards would come with a strip of chewing gum). She sold the lot for $15.
Ultimately, practicality took over. At that time I didn’t have a child and, at the age of 41, ever having a child wasn’t looking likely. I didn’t have that sense of needing to hold on to these keepsakes to pass on to my own children, so what was I going to do with it all, really? It’d only end up sitting in the back of a cupboard or in storage until the day came when someone would be cleaning out all my own cupboards and tossing it all away. I’d spent most of my adult life convincing my parents not to throw out my childhood keepsakes, but when it came time to clean out the family house, I was the first to load it all up on that red spot special trestle table in the driveway.
At the end of the sale, we still had quite a lot of stuff left. Conveniently my brother showed up just as we were packing everything into boxes for charity. He picked through all those items he hadn’t seen in two decades but now desperately needed—and the rest went straight into the skip the following weekend.
Eight years on and the mother of a seven-year-old, I still kick myself for what I discarded. My son would have loved those footy cards.
7
Location, location, location
After a few weeks on the market, we received a good offer for the house, and sold before auction. Once again proving that pressure is the ultimate motivator.
The settlement period was 90 days, so the process of finding suitable digs for my parents began in earnest. It quickly became apparent that getting into a desirable retirement village is a bit like getting a child into a prestigious private school: the waiting lists are a mile long! There must be some merit in really planning out your life from the outset. As soon as you consider starting a family, you think about what maternity hospital you want to be in, and once you’ve had the baby, then begins the process of putting their name down for day care, primary school, secondary school, college and so on—until one day, you are applying for a spot in a retirement village, then a nursing home, and finally, a burial plot. You start out trying to secure your future, and end up looking for somewhere to end it.
So we did the tours of retirement villages. They never really look like the brochures or websites, and shall we just say that the units some of the older ones had available were clearly available for a reason. We needed a place that would help Dad retain his independence, but also cater for Mum’s decline. It was also important for them to stay close to their network of friends, so they could visit, and ideally to be within a half-hour drive of at least one of us kids.
It struck me as a little ironic that I lived so close to my parents. When my husband and I moved back to Australia, we looked around for quite a few months before finding a place to live. I remember telling Mum about one particular house we were interested in, but she wasn’t impressed with its location. ‘Forty-five minutes away is too far for you to be living,’ she said, making me instantly feel guilty for having a life. I’d been living in the United States for close to ten years, but all of a sudden, 45 minutes was too far away. We ended up settling on a place only seven minutes from the family home. Her guilt trip had clearly worked.
We chanced upon a new retirement village that was still in the process of being built, and which still had some units available to buy off the plan. The units would be finished just as the 90-day settlement period expired, so the timing was brilliant. It was a little further out than we’d hoped—but upon completion there would be a nursing home onsite, with a fully functioning dementia wing, so it was perfect for Mum and Dad.
For Dad, one of the toughest parts of the move was downsizing. He and Mum were avid gardeners and had amassed over a thousand orchids in the greenhouses in their backyard; Mum would lose a whole day just pottering around in them. They’d both served on various orchid club committees, and much of their later social life was spent with fellow club members, so it was a wonderful hobby for them to be immersed in. However, it quickly became obvious that a thousand orchids were not going to fit in a nine-by-five metre courtyard, so Dad had to give most of his beloved orchids away, which broke his heart a little. Even after we’d set a limit on how many orchids he could take to the new unit, we kept finding extra little pots he’d hidden under other household items during the move.
When we finally got Mum and Dad settled into their lovely new unit, it was a huge weight off our minds, as they were now in a facility that catered for them in all the right ways. It was clean, secure, fitted with all the newest mod cons, and had nurses and caretakers on-call around the clock. It even had an air conditioner that they could refuse to turn on.
I knew this would be a huge lifestyle change for Dad, who by nature was a very independent and stubborn person at the best of times. But even he could see the benefits for Mum so he embraced it. I still don’t know whether Mum at that time knew exactly what was happening, but as long as she was with Dad then her world was complete. Within a week they had made friends with all of the residents and we could relax for a while.
We also made an appointment with the nursing home manager to see if we needed to put Mum’s name down on a waiting list for full-time nursing home care. But it didn’t really work like that, the manager explained, as patients need to be officially admitted to the nursing home based on medical assessment. Meanwhile, we would just have to hope for the best, until that time arose.
So, life was good—or as good as it could be, under the circumstances. Mum and Dad spent most of their days wandering around the village, meeting neighbours for coffee and hanging out in the community centre. We organised a home-care nurse to help with Mum a few days a week, to take the pressure off Dad, so he could spend an hour or two off on his own, doing what he wanted to do. We were starting to worry about his lack of normal interaction with people—the kind where he didn’t have to be Mum’s interpreter or carer in every social situation. But it turned out that looking after Mum is all Dad really wanted to do, so he would sit and chat with the nurse while she bathed Mum and did some remedial exercise with her.
The Christmas of 2007, the first in the new ‘family home’, was strange. My sister and I arrived early to prepare the lunch, only to discover that in the downsizing, many of the heavy-duty cooking pots and pans had ended up on the red spot special table at the garage sale. The Christmas tree had no lights on it, someone forgot to buy Christmas crackers, and my brother’s chocolate-bar stocking fell through the cracks again. I did, however, have a legitimate excuse for some of my absentmindedness—I’d found out a few weeks prior to Christmas that I was pregnant. I’m pretty sure that ‘baby brain’ doesn’t kick in that quickly—and if I’m telling the truth, I still try to use that excuse to this day. In my mind the ‘baby brain’ disclaimer has a shelf life of about ten years.
My husband and I were very excited to tell the family of our news. We had been trying to conceive for a long time, and right in the midst of all this parental upheaval, it had finally happened. Mum had always wanted me to have a child, and I had always envisioned telling her being a joyous occasion, but in the end I missed being able to tell her by a few months.
Instead I decided to frame a picture of our ultrasound, wrap it up and give it to Mum and Dad for Christmas.
Dad opened my gift and promptly said, ‘What the bloody hell is this?’
Mum was asleep in a chair.
To be fair, when Dad realised the cryptic gif
t was a picture of his unborn grandson, he was over the moon.
He couldn’t stop smiling.
Mum couldn’t stop sleeping.
About six months after they moved into their new place, I received another one of those ‘Your mother’s not right’ phone calls. This time we called an ambulance, as Mum was getting harder to manage and move around. She had suffered another minor stroke and was admitted to hospital.
We were then faced with deciding whether Mum would be able to go back to their retirement village, or if she now needed to be admitted to a nursing home. That was a bit of a reality shock for all of us.
During her week in hospital, the doctors performed tests to assess Mum’s state of health, both physical and mental. We had been through this before: when they asked Mum if it hurt when they poked her, she would say yes. If they’d asked her if she had three heads, she would also have said yes. Why couldn’t they figure out she was well beyond the stage of being able to communicate properly?
At 5.45 one morning I got a call from the hospital suggesting I come in as soon as I could, as Mum might be heading towards a cardiac arrest. I made it to her bedside in record time—one of those drives that, on reflection, you can’t remember if you stopped for any traffic or red lights. When I arrived, Mum was wired up to a heart monitor; the nurses told me that her heart rate was stable and they were keeping an eye her. I enquired about the events leading up to this new situation; it transpired that when the on-duty nurse checked on her during the early hours and asked Mum if she had pains in her chest, Mum had replied ‘Yes’. I suggested that maybe they shouldhave a big sign above the bed with flashing lights that warned ‘Unable to answer questions accurately’. If Mum had been in court there would have been an objection about leading the witness. Was I the only one in the room who realised their patient wasn’t functioning at full capacity?
Not Right In The Head Page 4
