A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.

— Bernard Meltzer

On Tuesday, after almost a year of turmoil, our family situation has been resolved.  Our journey has changed my world view.  It has taught me many things.  It has taught me that compassion is always welcome.  It has taught me that shame is over rated.  It has taught me that, in my life, there are many good and generous people.

When it all started, we knew that it would take time and money to resolve, but we didn’t really have a clue about the journey and the challenges that we were facing.

If you are a long time reader of this blog, you know that my family has a rather unfortunate history of dementia in the elder bodies.  My mother died of Alzheimer’s, my aunt had a form of dementia related to Alzheimer’s called Lewy Body dementia and my father probably also has Alzheimer’s, possibly with complications of bipolar disorder.

During this journey, we have learned many things.  Here are a few of the nuggets we’ve gleaned over the last year.

A Lack of Clarity Can Create a Disaster

The laws regarding caring for adults who are no longer able to make decisions for themselves vary from state to state and change often.  For this reason, you need to stay aware of the changing legal environment or you need to spend a small amount on consulting with your attorney to determine whether your will, trust documents and medical powers of attorney are still effective in ensuring that your wishes are clear.  If you have already spent the money on creating these documents, returning to the same attorney and making sure that any changes in the law do not affect you negatively can ensure that your receive proper care and that your relatives are not put in untenable positions.  In our case, my father’s state of residence had added the requirement for a Mental Healthcare Power of Attorney in addition to the Medical Healthcare Power of Attorney.  If we had had the Mental Healthcare form, things would have gone much more smoothly.  We would not have had to have him declared incompetent, which had been one of his biggest fears.  In the end, we had no choice.  (The blessing is that he really doesn’t know now what is going on.)

What this means is that if you know that you will be caring for parents, aunts, uncles or siblings, be sure that their paperwork is up to date and that you have the latest copy in case of emergency.  The same applies for anyone whom you have designated to care for you.  It doesn’t take long to review and make updates and it can ensure that you will have the funds necessary to provide the care to your loved one that you would like to or that your loved ones will have access to funds to care for you.

When faced with a difficult situation like this, we tend to focus on whether or not it is humane to place a loved one in a facility rather than care for them ourselves.  While that is certainly an emotional issue, it becomes moot when you can’t keep the loved one safe.  (In our case, my brother had installed alarms on every door to the outside in the house and had installed surveillance cameras so that he could watch Dad without confronting him.  Dad ripped the alarms off the doors and climbed up on a chair to tear down the camera. And then wandered away and got lost in the neighborhood.  When you can’t keep your loved one safe then it becomes your responsibility to put them into a situation in which they are safe.  This often takes $$$.  Needing to come up with money to pay for care at the rate of $3,000 – $5,000 per month will put a crimp in most anyone’s lifestyle.  (If this doesn’t crimp your style, would you like to adopt me??)

In the end, a lack of attention to detail and a lack of clarity in various legal documents resulted in the legal process to become Dad’s guardian and be able to use Dad’s funds to pay for his care taking 11 months.  Which leads me to my next point…

People Can Be Incredibly Kind

In some ways our situation was unique because it involved my father’s business.  This presented us with many challenges.  We wanted to maintain the family business as well as keep Dad well cared for.  There were two reasons for this:

• The business was how Dad had intended to provide for his own care.
• Dad wanted the business to continue after he was gone.

Unfortunately, our business is renting apartments or homes to tenants.  We believe that part of what pushed Dad into dementia was the worsening financial situation over the past several years.  He finally reached a point of maximum stress and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

During this journey, we were very short of cash – there was almost none.  Yet, we needed the services of attorneys and we needed to keep Dad in meds and in his Alzheimer’s facility.  The care facility let us run behind for almost the whole year.  The pharmacy kept extending us credit so Dad could be medicated.  The attorneys also worked without any being paid.  (Remember, all of these businesses have to pay their bills whether we pay them or not.)  And when properties were about to go into foreclosure for the second time, family and friends kept us solvent – lending us the money to keep it all going.

What I Believe

I was raised in a home where money was king – probably because my father had never learned that cash flow was the life blood of business.  He invested in properties that would be valuable “some day.”  Unfortunately they didn’t support us.  We hoarded what cash we had.  Dad would leave a tip and Mom would take most of it back and put it into her purse.

In our house, the story was always that “blood was thicker than water” and it was us vs. them.  Never admit you have any problems.  Never ask for help.  There is never enough to help anyone else.  The poor are poor because they are lazy… or stupid… or ???  Compassion just wasn’t a family value in my family.

My Chosen Family

The process of choosing my family started with the Benedictine nuns who raised me in high school.  They provided an island of sanity in a life that was seriously crazy at home.

Then it was my husband’s family.  They were loving and warm, very different from my childhood environment.  They lived in the barrio and worked their way out by hard work and determination.  And after we divorced, they kept me as part of the family.

Then it was my Corporate America family.  While some groups were cut throat, I began with a group of people who always had my best interests at heart.  They taught me how to do the job, how to be a good corporate citizen, how the politics work, how to survive and how to thrive.  And in some cases, I became a chosen member of their families.  And they became part of mine.

And once I left Corporate America, there were others who joined my family as I met new people through my new activities.  There were also those I’d known for a long time who I got to know better.  My chosen family just kept growing.

People Are Good

Through all of this, I’ve struggled with what I’d been taught by my birth family.  When I first started at my corporate job, I had a territory in East LA, one of the rougher areas in Southern California.  A co-worker and I were in what I considered a bad neighborhood and it was getting dark.  I was scared.  I’d been taught that if you hung out in bad neighborhoods you’d get hurt or killed.  I’ve never forgotten what my co-worker told me, “People are generally good.  You’ll find what you expect.”

I had that territory for five years and although I was there at all hours of the day and night, I was always safe.  Not to be naïve about this, I was careful.  I tried to be smart about how I behaved in my territory.  But, I was also lucky and blessed by the customers and co-workers who looked out for me.

Now, when my birth family was in trouble, my chosen family took care of all of us.  At a time when no bank or commercial lending institution of any kind would take a flyer on us, these people stepped up and saved us, trusting that we would pay them back.  Others listened to the stories and offered advice and support.  They prayed for us and placed us on prayer lists.  People who didn’t know me or my family reached out with good wishes and prayers for us to get through our troubles.

What do I believe now?  I believe that we are all on a journey and, if we are incredibly blessed, we are surrounded by people who care and who stick with us through thick and thin.

I believe that there are many, many people who are good and many of them are in my life.

I believe that some people are incredibly generous with their time, their prayers and their money.  I believe that not only do you get what you expect, sometimes, you get more than you expect – or could even hope for.