“This is supposed to be the time of my life – the nest is empty; but now Mom needs me.”

My husband and I arrived in Florida about a week before the movers were to arrive – we still had so much to do. We’ve got the movers and packers figured out but still have to work on suspending utilities and phone, letting her doctors know she is moving, redirecting her mail and making sure we have all important papers with us.

It was important to make sure I was an account manager on all my mom’s accounts that she held – credit cards, utility companies, phone companies, doctors – basically everyone that my mom dealt with, because my mom was just not able to handle any type of cognitive work any more. Her bank book was a mess, she was behind in credit card payments, utility payments, phone bills – you name it, she was behind. And the sad part about that was she was paying late fees and interest for no reason – the money was always there. Poor Mom, she just couldn’t keep up with it.

I literally spent days just calling everyone to try to get her out of that mess. I must admit, I did a pretty good job! I got her all caught up in her delinquent bills and got her set up on automatic withdrawal for most accounts. The hardest thing was getting the companies to put me on as account manager. They (obviously) needed my mom’s consent which meant mom had to talk to each of them – not too much of a problem, but my mom gets confused easily and it was a little stressful getting through it.

So we were all set for the big move; as you may recall, Mom won’t fly, so let’s go get the RV!  Yup, we are driving Mom across the country in an RV. You realize we’d be home in like 6 hours if we flew, right? But hey, ROAD TRIP!

Should be interesting….

What I Learned: I realized that Mom wasn’t super woman any more – someone really needs to step in at a certain point.