Emily Yoffe Photo by Teresa Castracane.
Emily Yoffe, aka Dear Prudence, is on Washingtonpost.com weekly to chat live with readers. An edited?transcript of the chat is below. (Sign up here?to get Dear Prudence delivered to your inbox each week. Read Prudie?s?Slate columns?here. Send questions to Prudence at prudence@slate.com.)
Emily Yoffe: Good afternoon, everyone. I look forward to your questions.
Q. Enabling the Elderly?: My grandma is in her early 80s and lives alone in a huge, dilapidated house that she grew up in. The home is not safe. It has very steep stairs, rickety railings?she has fallen and broken bones a few times in the past few years?there is mold, and she cannot keep it clean. Yet she refuses to move elsewhere. The family responds by traveling great distances, several times a week, to help her?these are people with jobs, special-needs kids, spouses who are terminally ill. In short, they are getting run down and exhausted, and it is a huge burden on multiple families. I also worry that she will more seriously injure herself or even die because of this house and her refusal to move. I can't think of another situation where family would go to such great lengths to help someone stay in a situation that is literally harming and is likely to kill her. Do you think this is enabling? Would it be cruel to tell her that some of the assistance/the visits/etc. won't happen unless she downsizes to something safer, goes into assisted living, or moves in with a relative (at least one of her children has offered this)? We are at the end of our rope.
A: I love going to real estate open houses, but occasionally I see a once-valuable property that is in a state of decay and disrepair. I always wonder where the other family members were while the home?and presumably the owner?was falling apart. But as your case shows, it can sometimes be very difficult to help a recalcitrant old person and people back away out of misplaced love. Your grandmother may not have dementia, but clearly she is incapable of making good decisions for herself, so her loved ones have to make them for her. This could require getting power of attorney and taking over her living situation. Perhaps the house needs to be sold to help pay for her to go to a facility where she will be safe and cared for. I know many old people and their loved ones think going to a nursing home is the cruelest kind of abandonment, but a clean, well-run place is so much better than a dangerous, mold-filled wreck. You're not actually independent if you're falling down and requiring overtaxed family members to attend to your every need. It is a kindness to make sure your grandmother is being well taken care of. And I hope her lesson is learned by the generation behind her as they face their own old age.
Dear Prudence: Errant Dildo
Q. Friend's Estranged Father: I have been close friends with ?Jessica? for about four years. We met in college, and I have also traveled to stay with her family for vacation. Her parents separated when she was young, and she basically considers her stepfather her ?dad.? I think she has had some, but very little, sporadic contact with her real father over the years, but I don't know very much about that, and I am not entirely sure what their history is. She hasn't volunteered a whole lot of information, and I am afraid to ask. But last week, I received a Facebook message from someone who says he is her father, asking me if I am close friends with Jessica and saying that he wants to come for a surprise visit but that he needs someone to help him plan it. Prudie, I don't know what to do! I am not even sure that she wants him to visit at all, but what if she does, and I ruin a wonderful opportunity for them to be reunited because I don't help?
A: Creep alert! Who knows who this guy is, but if he's Jessica's father, this approach confirms that she's been better off having him out of her life. Let's assume he is the dad. If so, this is a bizarre and disturbing way to try to resume contact with his daughter. You should immediately forward this message to Jessica and get confirmation that he is her father. If he is, you should tell her that you are very uncomfortable having been contacted by him and you are leaving it up to her and her family to handle this. Don't respond to his request, and block him so you don't get any more. Think about this?you have gotten an invitation from a middle-aged stranger to get together with him and help him plan a surprise party for his estranged daughter. This guy is the definition of someone you never want to meet.
Q. Need Help: I lost my wife due to cancer on Jan. 1, 2012. I understand my in-laws' situation and the loss of their daughter. Even before my wife got sick, they weren't very supportive to my family because we are an interracial couple. Her parents are still old-school, even though in public they accepted our marriage. After I lost my wife, they asked my son (21 years old) to take some stuff from my house, some of which belonged to my wife and other things to her aunt. I did not know about this until my son informed me three months later. I haven't had any communication with my in-laws since my wife passed away. I am not interested in seeing them anymore. I have a 12-year-old daughter, and I'm not interested in exposing her to them and the way they have treated us in past. Sometimes I feel it's wrong, but mostly I want to just avoid them and move on with my life. Any suggestions on how to handle this?
A: They sound like lousy people who manipulated your son to violate your trust. I understand your wanting to cut off ties, but you have to look at this from the perspective of your daughter: What is her relationship with your in-laws, and what would it mean to her to be estranged from them? You don't elaborate on the poor ways they have treated your family. It could be they are totally irredeemable people, and your daughter will be better off having them out of her life. But it could be that as lousy as they are, your daughter has a better relationship with them than you, and she would feel a grave loss at being cut off from this side of her family. Your daughter is still young, but she is old enough for you to talk about this with her. You can tell her you've had your problems with her grandparents, but you know they love her very much and you want to make it possible for her to see them if that's what she wants. If she does, use all your maturity to facilitate this while keeping a wide berth from them yourself.
Q. Re: Enabling the Elderly: You can't "get" a power of attorney?it must be given by the person willing to give authority to another?and that person retains the ability to withdraw the power of attorney at any time. The only way to use the law to force someone to take such action would be a declaration of incompetency by the court, which is not easy to obtain.
A: It could be that in this case the family could hire a social worker to help explain to grandmother that the current situation is unsustainable and that her family loves her wants to help her make decisions to keep her comfortable and safe. If grandmother would prefer to break her bones in a moldy wreck of a house, then it might be time to escalate and have the incompetency declaration made. She certainly can be told that the current situation cannot be sustained, and the family will order Meals on Wheels and other social services to do the feeding and checking in on her, because they can only show up occasionally.
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