When I met my wife, Dawn, she told me that there would come a time when her aging mother and step-father would require more of her time and attention. If I wanted to marry her, I was marrying that responsibility as well. I jumped right in because that is simply a charge taken by younger generations, and it is quite normal to be caring for parents or grandparents. Little did I know, this choice, this agreement, before my marriage would provide some of the most stressful, heart wrenching, and hilarious moments of my life. Many times, crying seemed like the only option. In those moments, we laughed, not to be mean or cold, but because laughter kept us sane.
The first year of our marriage was calm on the parent front. Deanna and Clyde came up to Indiana for the summer months to live in the house Dawn renovated for them, a mere mile down the road from our home. They went to yard sales, attending my and Dawn’s wedding, drove themselves to Missouri on vacation, and generally spent time tinkering around the house. Clyde mowed the lawn, gardened, read about the mushrooms growing in the yard to see if they were edible (no full determination, and we did not try them). Deanna crocheted, watched tv, and cooked a family meal once a week. I had never met either of them before May, when they came up for the summer. I could tell that neither of them had perfect health. Clyde’s mind was faltering, and he moved slowly. A fifteen year battle with prostate cancer contributed heavily to all of his symptoms. Deanna was unsteady on her feet and was out of breath often, but her major ailments were more than enough to cause those symptoms. They were more than enough kill her outright, but there she stood, tottering about her day. At age 19, she was diagnosed with Type I Diabetes after her pregnancy with Dawn. At age 35, she had a brain aneurysm rupture, and survived after a year in a hospital and nursing home. In her early sixties, she managed to fight off stage four inflammatory breast cancer and a massive heart attack. Throw in a couple of brain bleeds, and Deanna was a walking, talking, ticking time bomb and a medical miracle. No doctors would touch her clogged arteries for fear of a bleed. She considered herself extremely lucky to survive a double mastectomy, chemo, and then surgery for a broken ankle with no major side effects other than being slow to heal. Dawn and I figured we had a couple of years before Deanna and Clyde would become permanent residents of Indiana. After all, their Florida blood had become accustomed to those warm winters.
Sometime during the winter of 2014-2015, Clyde took a turn for the worse. His memory was faltering heavily. He was having trouble putting his thoughts together, and Deanna was becoming overwhelmed trying to manage their property and his medical needs. Dawn, ever the good daughter, talked Deanna into permanently moving to Indiana. Clyde, being a native-born Floridian, balked at the idea, but finally agreed to move. He realized that he was losing his battle with cancer.
During that winter, Deanna packed, cleaned, and sold—yard sales, craigslist, private sales, an auction for a few lots in a subdivision. Clyde collected, maybe even hoarded, anything to do with building, so there was more than just a normal household to dispose of. There were piles. Deanna did her best, even finding a buyer for their property who said to leave anything behind because he liked that kind of stuff. Thank goodness, because when we arrived in early June to load the U-Haul, the out buildings were full. In no way could we have dealt with that in the week we had to move the oldies home with us. As it was, we were overwhelmed by the sheer amount of materials not packed. We had two days to pack, load up, and head home. Vacation days were sparse and the plane tickets purchased. Looking at the items strewn through their three bedroom home, and then looking at what still needed packing, Dawn and I realized we weren’t sleeping much for a couple of days. That might have been the first utterings of, “Are we in over our heads?”
Thanks to Dawn’s uncanny ability to pack anything, and my weird need for organization, we had a fully loaded U-Haul in less than two days. As we left our rental car with Deanna and started on the journey home, we had no idea the experiences awaiting us.
Living with the Old People 