Names have been changed.
My mom called me crying about my grandmother’s retirement paperwork.
She learned that Gram had changed the executor designation from both daughters to just my aunt Deborah. From what we understand, she made that decision while she was still of sound mind.
My mom, Denise, believes her sister must have convinced Gram to do it without Gram fully understanding.
I wasn’t there. I don’t know who said what. But I knew my grandmother before dementia. She was smart, opinionated, and entirely capable of making a decision someone else didn’t like.
I suspect it is easier for my mom to believe her sister manipulated the situation than to consider that her mother knowingly made a choice that hurt her.
One explanation gives her a sister to blame. The other leaves her with a question she may never be able to ask her mother and receive a reliable answer.
I understand why she wants an explanation. What I struggle with is how much attention that question receives while her mother needs care.
Meanwhile, Gram is dehydrated. She isn’t eating. She is confused and scared, convinced people are building apartments beneath her house, using her water, and preventing her from calling the outside world.
She is living inside that fear.
And somehow, we keep coming back to who has been named executor.
I would like to submit a few questions for consideration:
Has she eaten? Has she had any water? Is she safe?
My grandmother has dementia. Her daughters are in their sixties. From what I’ve seen and been told, her home is filthy, cluttered, hazardous, and falling apart. There is hoarding. There are conditions I cannot reconcile with the words “she’s fine.”
Her son, who struggles with severe addiction, has taken over her living room. I’ve been told he urinates in buckets. Gram has reported waking in the middle of the night to find him standing over her, staring.
I don’t know how to hear that and arrive at “fine.”
Just last month, according to what I was told, she fell on her way to the bathroom and spent four hours on the floor. Her son was home. He walked past her multiple times. He asked if she was okay, and she said yes.
So he left her there.
Eventually, she scooted down the hall into her bedroom, where she remained until my mom drove over because no one was answering the phone.
My mom went to check on her. I want to acknowledge that, too. My anger does not erase the ways she shows up. That is part of what makes this so hard: I know she cares, and I still cannot understand how we keep circling back to paperwork while these are the conditions we’re discussing.
Four hours on the floor. A frightened woman who needs help. A house where having another person present does not mean she is being looked after.
I keep returning to the word “okay.” What could it reasonably mean when someone is still on the floor? Her answer offered reassurance to the person asking. It did nothing to get her up.
I wonder how often our family accepts an answer because it allows us to stop asking.
I thought the urgent conversation would be about getting her somewhere safe.
Instead, we have paperwork, old grievances, and information arriving in installments.
At my angriest, I wonder whether giving your children everything can leave them so accustomed to receiving that they struggle to see what someone else needs.
The words in my head are less measured.
Spoiled. Entitled. Assholes.
Those words capture my fury. They don’t account for the whole of either woman. These are my mother and my aunt. I love them. I know there is history here I didn’t witness. I also wonder whether a lifetime of being provided for can make the reversal of responsibility difficult to accept. What happens when the person who has always given now needs others to organize their lives around her?
So I sent a family text explaining that Gram’s money should be spent on Gram.
I opened with “Good morning!”
I like to establish a welcoming atmosphere before introducing a controversial financial concept.
I had researched care costs. I asked that we understand the differences between assisted living and dedicated memory care, what services were included, and the full monthly price. I thanked them for visiting communities.
There were paragraphs. There was diplomacy. I used “aligned” and “shared priority,” because apparently my professional communication skills now extend to asking relatives to cooperate about their mother.
What I wanted to say was: She needs help. She has resources. Why is this so hard?
What I wrote was: “Gram’s money is there to support her.”
An inheritance is an uncertain future possibility. Her need for care is immediate. Yet I felt compelled to explain why her resources should first serve the life she is still living.
Cost matters. We need to understand how long her resources will last and what happens as her needs change. But I find myself listening for the difference between concern about paying for her care and concern about what will remain afterward.
I cannot know what is in someone else’s head. I know how angry it makes me to feel I have to argue for her safety, comfort, and dignity.
I thanked them again. Apparently, I hoped sufficient gratitude would help the central point survive delivery.
Then I asked them to meet. Share documents. Exchange information. Have the uncomfortable conversations now.
“You don’t have to be best friends,” I wrote.
An achievable goal. I wasn’t proposing a sisters’ weekend. Nobody needed to braid anybody’s hair. I wanted relevant information and a plan for their mother.
Deborah called afterward. She was angry. She understood my request for transparency as an accusation that she was scheming and hiding things.
Apparently, we had different reading experiences.
I told her I was happy to have an adult conversation, but I did not appreciate the attitude. The call ended fine.
Still, we had spent another conversation working through someone’s reaction to the request.
Gram still needed everything I had written about.
Last year, in Atlanta, my aunt Deborah cried in a Golden Corral parking lot after my mom, Denise, told her she didn’t really know their father because she couldn’t name where he had worked as a young man.
These women are in their sixties.
Arguing about who knew Daddy best.
At the Golden Corral.
What the flying fuck.
I hadn’t realized there would be a paternal employment quiz before lunch. All I wanted was to stuff my fat face at a buffet and eat as many fried green tomatoes as I could comfortably stomach. I can't good fried green tomatoes in California.
Imagine having a lifetime of memories with your father, only to discover your sister considers your credentials incomplete. Apparently, there was a study guide.
I can laugh at the absurdity and still recognize that my aunt was hurt. Whatever my mom intended, her words reached a place that was still tender after decades.
I think about that exchange now because paperwork can become another test of belonging. Who was trusted? Who was chosen? Whose understanding of the family has suddenly been contradicted by a signature?
A beneficiary designation can carry emotional meaning far beyond its financial value. I can recognize that without agreeing that it should dominate this moment.
Gram cannot wait for her daughters to settle what their childhoods meant.
She is still here.
Dementia has made it harder to understand her wishes, and perhaps impossible to obtain explanations for decisions made years ago. That uncertainty is painful. It does not give anyone permission to invent her motives, dismiss her earlier judgment, or decide that an unwelcome choice could not have been her own.
I want us to respect the woman who made decisions before dementia while attending to the woman who needs help now.
Both require us to remember that her life belongs to her.
I ended my text with: “As always, I love you both. Please let me know how I can support you moving forward.”
I think I meant it.
Then I reread the message, wondering which sentence would become the problem. I worried I had been too direct, then got angry that I was worrying.
Underneath that anger, I’m sad. For Gram. I am also sad for my mom and for my aunt despite my disgust for them. I can understand their pain, but I will never understand or forget their selfishness. What poor role models we have in this family.
I want their questions answered. Some may never be. I want their pain acknowledged. It may remain painful.
We still need to decide where Gram can live safely, who will help her eat, and who will notice when she needs water.
For now, I’m a granddaughter living in a city 1000 miles away writing “Good morning!” at the top of a message I wish I didn’t have to send.
And I keep thinking about Gram, frightened in her own home, needing someone to bring her a glass of water.
Oh, and yes, Gram has two sons, too. If you’ve been wondering why they barely appear in an essay about their mother’s care, that absence tells you something. I wish I had something useful to say about their contributions.
Four adult children. And here I am, her granddaughter, wondering how carefully I need to phrase a request that they take care of their mother.
I don’t know why Gram made certain decisions. We won't ever know and that's okay, because that's not important at the moment. I do know she did not escape the segregated South to spend a lifetime raising a family so she could spend four hours on the floor with someone walking past her.
What makes this so sad, disappointing, and frustrating is that I have asked for help. Adult Protective Services has not brought the intervention I hoped for. Neither has her primary care doctor. And the people positioned to make decisions about her care cannot seem to work together.
My mother and aunt have real pain. I understand that. But their inability to move beyond it has consequences for someone who depends on them. Every unresolved disagreement leaves Gram waiting.
I can research, make calls, ask questions, and edit a family text until there is nothing left in it that could reasonably offend anyone. I cannot make them cooperate. Being an advocate and voice of reason does not mean I have the authority to get her the care she needs.
That is the helplessness beneath my anger.
Gram has four adult children who repeatedly fail her.
Before we have another conversation about what she might leave them, I need them to reckon with how they are leaving her.
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