I am the errand runner for my mom. My mother spends her day watching TV. She also reads the newspaper but they don’t make drugstore reading eyeglasses strong enough for her. I need to take my mother to the eye doctor to get her a new set of glasses but I dread the idea.
My mother goes through prescription glasses like water. This is why we have been buying her the drugstore reading glasses because they are relatively cheap so when she breaks them it doesn’t hurt as much to replace them. Sam’s Club sells reading glasses in packs of eight for about $20 and mom goes through them in about two months.
Her insurance will pay for one pair of eyeglass frames every two years. So she is due for a check up and a new prescription but it still pains me to get the new glasses. I also know that when she breaks this pair, and she will, I will have to make a trip to the optometrists office to get them repaired which really means dropping them off, picking them up a few days later and bringing them out to my mother. Rinse and repeat.
We do this with jewelry too. She has been wearing her wedding ring, engagement ring and my father’s wedding band on a chain for the last few years because she has lost so much weight they don’t fit on her fingers anymore, and dad’s never did. I’ve bought so many chains for her and each one breaks within weeks. The chain I gave her for Christmas broke a few weeks ago. I haven’t rushed out to fix or replace it because I know I will just have to do it again.
I should take care of these things, it’s just more guilt if I don’t but the expense, an unnecessary expense in my book, just prevents me from rushing out and taking care of it. That alone makes me feel even worse. My mom doesn’t ask for much so it seems silly that I can’t take the time to take care of these two little things but I’ll be damned if I can’t get motivated to do so.
Does anyone else have these kinds of jobs that they just don’t want to do, because they have done them so many times and will have to do them again, that they stall on it?
Yup. My mother is in an assisted living complex, but I do her laundry and run her errands. She has few clothes that she wears regularly so I do laundry for her quite regularly.
You are an incredibly strong person. It’s a shame that you have been carrying this burden by yourself for so long. (I’ve been reading through the blog.) I can relate to much of this because my mother, almost 60, has been taking care of her parents as they become increasingly feeble. They insist that they don’t need help – except her – and refuse to have her hire anyone to help them. They seem to expect her to give up her life and care for them fulltime. They live at home, without help.