Letters to the Editor
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If that's the best life has to offer...
A family is a tyranny ruled over by its sickest member. I do not remember who said that originally, but that's the truth. I'm experiencing this with my mother in law, now in her last weeks of life.
I opted out where she was concerned after trying to deal with her depression. I just got sick of it and so decided to support my husband in his dealings with her and hire the caregivers this frankly very spoiled and particular woman wanted to meet her needs. If she had to have everything just so, she could pay for it. Her upkeep has been enormously expensive, but it's been worth every penny to me.
She's a regular cottage industry. My daughter calls her home Planet Grandma, a place where everything is tightly controlled by the whims of that dear little woman lying in her bed, day after day, year after year.
Ever since I have known her, all I have heard is, "Will she be all right? Can she manage?" Well, all the people who said that are dead, and she's still alive. My task has been to see that my husband outlives her, because she is like a parasite draining the life out of him. Believe me, it's a race to the finish.
After she dies, we are going on a long, long vacation.
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Let's break this down.
LW and his wife and child are happy, healthy, and settled...someplace. LW knows his health and his child's health are clean wrt Huntington's because he was proactive before choosing to have a child. Good work, there. Choices should be informed.
Within a few years LW & family will need to make a choice about where to settle permanently. They want to know if they should simply default to Denver, because of his mother and sister's needs.
Okay. First, the sister. She lives in fear of Huntington's because she was not proactive, and has chosen to avoid finding out if she has it, as well as whether or not her children have it. This was her choice. She is married, and the father also chose to have children with her without insisting she be tested first. So, there's a whole lot of avoidance and refusal to face self in that family, but to sum up, they are a family unit - two parents, two children - and this is how they've chosen to live their lives.
The mother does not have Huntington's, but simply a collection of ailments common to people in their 60s.
I think that there is ample assistance that you can offer these people from a safe distance, and that you and your wife should begin discussing now what you'd like to go ahead and start putting in place for that eventuality. However, you guys should not move anywhere that could be visited to/from Denver without an airplane being involved. There is nothing you can actually *do* for them that you cannot do from a safe distance, but there is plenty that they can do *to* you and *try* to get from you that they do not need, will simply want, if you're in town.
Obviously you and your wife can be sources of medical advice, including recommending specialists, etc. But without actually being in Denver, you will not be put in the position of having to *manage* them, which is what will be put on you there, not because they need it, but because it'll be easy for them.
Also you and your wife - you seem to be saying she's fine with helping some financially so I assume this will be okay - might want to think about setting up some accounts. Long term care insurance for your mother, though very pricy at her age, may actually be affordable for you. Some accounts for your sister's children, college accounts, etc., could also be set up. An avoider like LW's sister is probably not a planner because planning requires thinking about how to handle situations which avoiders cannot do, so this probably hasn't been done.
When the time comes to decide where to set up your lives permanently, consider everywhere that's at least one plane ride away from Denver and then pick what's best for you, your wife, and your child. I'd use online tools to stay in nice constant contact with them. If they don't have such things, get them all set up with computers, webcams, broadband, etc. If your mom is one of those "I can't use a computer!" people respond to that need not by flying in and teaching her, but by engaging a local business or service (often there are Internet for Seniors classes) to help her out. Same with sis. You want to be close, just not *physically* close. You want to meet needs but not whims that are really just about getting your attention.
You will never have to have a conversation about why you're not moving back to Denver, since there's almost no chance that the best jobs in the whole world for you and your wife are going to be there. Frame your choices as about being for your careers, offer the help you can getting all that set up, and then carefully manage the attention you give to mom and sis.
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Oh, also
Instead of thinking "I'll give my sister a few thousand bucks," get her *help*. Like, contract with Merry Maids or something to clean up the house a few days a week. Mom might appreciate that, too. With her husband traveling so much her yard is probably a nightmare, if she's a homeowner. Hire someone to take care of the lawn. Approach helping her out with child care the same way. Everything should be framed in terms of using what you have - intellectual curiosity and money - to find a solution to improve their lives.
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another classic letter from another
overeeducated, overconfident, spoiled upper middle class twit who thinks he and his wife are god's gift to the rest of us intellectually inferior humanoids, dealing with their silly moral conflicts that only exist because of all the life opportunities open to them due to their education, entitlement, and intellectual superiority. I also bet he and his wife believe nurses are dumb robots who only exist to take orders from them, obviously inferior because they don't possess an MD or PhD after their name.
---Just another dumb nurse who exists to serve you and follow your orders