I was thinking today about how when people get really old, they can’t really take care of themselves. I once had to wrap my mom’s bleeding hand after she took a fall on some steps, for example. Nothing broken, but in her 70’s she certainly already feels the effects of senescence, and not being able to do normal daily tasks is problematic on several levels.

Fortunately in our society, we have assisted living facilities and personal care, etc, services that can help these old people. And, for the stubborn geriatric that wants to die alone and, in all likelihood, a most embaressing manner, the law pretty much protects them against being forced to leave their home.

Then I was thinking about the mentally handicapped. And I mean really handicapped, not some Tourette’s free pass to say the C word crap, but like…cannot survive alone handicapped. They’re cute when they’re young, but aren’t very flushable as adults.

Naturally my concern is what to do with my mom and older, significantly more retarded, brother (that depends on her for survival). You can’t force a cognitively impaired person into a care facility if their parent or guardian is still alive and won’t allow it.

I asked the internet about this, and it turns out there are a LOT of people that have this concern, and many many people whose situations are actually very similar to mine. In fact, did you know that there are 39,800,000 American adults currently caring for another American adult (that is severely handicapped)?

I might call DHS or CMH and see where the leads. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t go far. It goes back to the mom being competent and therefore in control of the situation. OH! Do you know what else is super common? Aging people that are clearly experiencing dementia or Alzheimer’s but somehow manage to be lucid when APS shows up. My personal theory is that a stranger at the door is not a novel experience, but certainly a fairly infrequent one. Kinda like when you muddle through a Monday morning in October and you go outside thinking it’ll be like 60 degrees cuz of recent days, but then it’s like 45 and you wake up real fast. You aren’t so much surprised as just very aware of the fact that you need to respond to this information (in this case by getting a jacket).

TLDR - Aging mom can no longer properly care for herself or the autistic guy she keeps locked in a room all day (except for feeding time). The picture is not mine, but damn it sure could be.