A matter of trust
At the Seniors for Living blog, Lori points out the importance of maintaining trust and dignity when it’s time to help a senior get their living space organized:
Just two days ago I overheard a lunchroom conversation at the office in which an adult granddaughter bragged about how she “cleaned” her 80-year-old grandmother’s apartment while the grandmother was in the hospital for a few days. She threw away “old” copies of National Geographic magazines, for example, because she “knew” her grandmother would never read them.
But from the grandmother’s point of view, whose to say she’ll never read them? Perhaps she was storing them for a purpose. Even if the magazines have no purpose at all, it should be the grandmother’s decision to throw them away.
Though I admit to laying waste to my parents’ pantry one time without asking, my mother wasn’t eating and my dad doesn’t cook. Besides, there was food in there older than my oldest child.
Seriously, though just because someone is elderly, (besides cases of outright safety issues) it doesn’t mean they forfeit the rights to arranging their physical surroundings.
People should stop and ask themselves if they’d be doing this or talking to their best friend in the same manner before proceeding.
You know, one of the reasons that I no longer speak to my SIL, and consequently my brother (since in his mind they are one person and his wife can do no wrong), is her insistence that she was going to go into my parents’ house and go through all the closets and all the drawers and clean things up, whether my mother liked it or not. (This is the same woman who browbeat my terminally ill mother about cremation, “to leave more money for the family,” said in the most whiney voice you can muster. My mother was really adamant about want to be buried, but SIL apparently brought this up three times.)
My mother’s last vacation on earth was in March of 2007, and she spent a good deal of the time leading up to it wondering if the beyotch was going to come into her house and start tossing things while she was gone. Granted, my mom was a hoarder, and it is taking forever to go through things — but this was a marital issue for my parents alone, since there were no safety or health issues going on. And even if there were, it was a matter for my father, my brother, and me to handle.
I understand exactly what you are saying in this post, because I know how this made my mother feel.