For two years straight, my husband and I took care of my elderly parents, thinking we’d be doing that for years. My mother was always sickly, since I was in kindergarten. So, my father spent my entire life taking care of my mother. She had many illnesses, including osteomyelitis, an infection that could have been controlled with antibiotics, but, at the time, when she was a child, it hadn’t been invented it.

So, the infection spread throughout her body and ate away at her hip bones. The total hip replacement wasn’t invented until I was in college. So my mother waddled through life, partially with a cane, partially in a wheelchair. The first hip replacement wasn’t that great, so it didn’t last long. By then I was in college. Over time, my mother had about eight hip replacements. All that surgery weakened the surrounding bones. In addition, she had other health problems along the way. I had friends and a social life, so I could block out her problems for most of my life, as did my older brother.

Tragedy happened when my father turned 76. I had never seen my father sick, ever! The worst he had was a cold or the flu. Suddenly, he had many things all at once. He had prostate cancer, colon cancer, pneumonia and a debilitating stroke. He ended up in intensive care.
 

My brother had always been as far away from my parents as possible, he was ashamed of them. He always had an overblown opinion of himself, arrogant, materialistic, money-hungry and selfish. That never improved with time. I didn’t have much of a friendship with him, he was never interested. He thought of me as an impediment to his goals. His goal was money, and not much else.

We went our separate ways. At that point, after years of struggles, I had my own life, a husband, a home and my beloved dogs.

My parents’ weren’t the greatest role models, but I knew I’d take care of them in their golden years. My husband and I did their grocery shopping, took them to doctor’s appointments, made sure their house was clean, purchased their medications and took them on long rides, since they were bored and confined to the house.

Suddenly, my brother desperately needed money, wouldn’t explain why, and conned my parents’ into allowing him to take a loan on their home, of $80,000! I warned my parents, but my mother cherished the earth her son walked on and treated me like Cinderella.

I get the chores, the son gets the favors.

My mother inherited some money from HER mother, which went into purchasing my brother’s home in Kentucky.

My brother and his wife lived beyond their means, throwing the B.S. to outsiders that they were “rich and successful.” They might have been, if only they could stop shopping. I did the best I could with my elderly parents, and it was stressful to take care of my own home and my parents’, but I planned to do that because I know the difference between right and wrong.

My parents’ lost their home and possessions to their son, and two years’ ago they both died without my knowledge.

My brother argues with everyone and can’t hold down a job for very long, and the only friends he had were the guys he grew up with since childhood. As of now, none of those guys are speaking to him. An ex-friend of my brother’s told me my brother asked a woman out on a date from high school (even though he’s been married for 30 years) and told her my mother is dead.

I learned of my father’s death over the Internet.

My brother had my parents’ cremated with no service, no burial, no obituary in the newspapers. After he took their savings, their home and their possessions, he put the into cardboard boxes, too frugal to even put the ashes into an urn!

The moral of this story is: I was trying to the right thing by treating my elderly parents with dignity in their final years. But they trusted their son, the pathological liar, giving him everything and turning a blind eye to the daughter who actually cared about them. I am writing this article, hoping other baby boomers prepare more properly for the lives’ of their elderly parents. I had no idea my own brother could be that horrible and his behavior so unbelievably disrespectful towards his own parents. It just goes to show you anything can happen.

Please be prepared!

I thought I was prepared, but I was wrong!

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