We moved my step grandfather inlaw into a nursing home today. After 2 years of torturously trying to get him to accept home help and him refusing. Multiple hospital admissions via ambulance, disastrous dealings with his retirement village company who ripped him off and failed to look after him and find him a nursing home position after all the money he plunged into their coffers.
So, after months of looking for a nursing home, I found one, close to me, that was nice. He gets there and says "oh, this is not what i expected". I think he expected a new version of where he has been living at his 3 bedroom retirement unit, complete with garage, back yard, front yard, kitchen, bathroom, laundry, dining room.
He immediately decided that he needed to bring more furniture and surround himself with his multiple hundreds of books. We'd set it up beautifully for him, we bought his computer desk and printer and computer, his large screen TV, his recliner, his wheelchair, his gopher, his walking frame, his clothes, his alarm clock and personal effects. But, no, he still wants to go home and measure up the book shelves.
We have 2 weeks to vacate his retirement village, and he had over 20 years of stuff there. The place is a bomb site. We've had furniture removed, curtains removed, there is boxes and things everywhere. The dining room is empty, the kitchen is empty and the rest of the house is piles of different things to go to different places.
If he returns home to "help us sort it out" he will have a complete break down. But doesn't seem to realise that we can't store all of his stuff in our sheds and that most of it except for the important stuff must be disposed of.
I'm not looking forward to the next 2 weeks. I hope if he goes back home, it's not when I'm there, because I don't have the time or the energy to pick up the pieces right now. I've got too much of everything else to do.
What a sense of doom that this is likely to happen to me again a few more times in my lifetime where I have to ship people off to nursing homes and dispose of their lifes collections.
I'm exhausted, and drained.
