What More Has to Happen Before Somebody Decides?

I was not prepared to make life-altering decisions for my mother.

I don't think anyone is ever truly ready to parent their parent.

At the time, I was still learning how to make decisions for my young children. Like most parents, I questioned myself constantly. Was I doing the right thing? Was I making the best choice for them?

But the decisions I faced with my mother's care felt different.

They felt heavier.

Scarier.

More permanent.

The first major decision came when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

My mother already had memory issues by then, and suddenly I found myself helping make a decision I never imagined I would face.

The mastectomy terrified me.

The surgeon explained that one of the cancers was particularly aggressive. I remember hearing that without treatment she might only have months. I looked at my mother and struggled with a question that I would revisit many times over the years.

Was I doing this for her?

Or was I doing it for me?

At the time, despite her memory problems, she still loved life. She smiled easily. She laughed often. She enjoyed being with family.

So I told myself it was for her.

And I believe part of it was.

Over time, I've come to realize that part of it was for me too.

I wasn't ready to lose her.

Without treatment, I believed that loss would come much sooner.

Years later, another doctor told me she would have recommended a different approach.

Lumpectomies might have given us the same amount of time.

That conversation hurt.

Not because it changed the past.

Because it confirmed questions I had already asked myself countless times.

But I also know I made that decision with the information I had at the time.

And it would not be the last difficult decision I would face.

The decisions kept coming.

Could she still safely drive?

Could she continue living alone?

Who would manage her bills when she no longer could?

Should we hire help?

Should she move?

Where should she live?

Every answer seemed to create three more questions.

I wanted help.

I wanted someone to sit beside me and help sort through the impossible choices.

I wanted someone to share the responsibility.

But nobody did.

At the time, my daughter was only four months old and had been born prematurely. My son was still young. I was driving two and a half hours each way to check on my mother while trying to care for my own family, manage my children's needs, navigate my own health challenges, and somehow keep all the pieces moving forward.

I kept waiting for clarity.

Waiting for certainty.

Waiting for someone else to step forward and help decide.

Then one day I found myself asking a question that would stay with me for years.

What more has to happen before somebody decides?

Too many things had already happened.

My mother had left eggs boiling on the stove and forgotten about them. She came home to exploded eggs, smoke, and a pan so hot the bottom glowed red.

Her car had developed a severe gasoline leak. The smell was overwhelming. I still don't know how long she had been driving it that way.

One day she admitted she had gotten lost driving home from the pet store. A trip that should have taken minutes turned into nearly two hours of driving around a town she had lived in for more than thirty years.

She told me it scared her.

Bills were becoming harder to manage.

Food spoiled unnoticed.

People were beginning to take advantage of her.

And then someone entered her home and stole from inside the house while she was there.

That was the moment everything changed.

For the first time, I truly understood that I could not protect her from two and a half hours away.

When I returned to the house, I found more than the theft.

There were months of unopened bills stacked on the table. Some were already headed toward collections.

Food had spoiled unnoticed.

The trash had piled up.

One of the toilets had been clogged for who knows how long.

The signs were everywhere.

The theft wasn't the beginning.

It was the moment I finally stopped looking away.

For months I had wrestled with what to do.

After that day, the indecision disappeared almost overnight.

For the first time in a long time, I felt relieved.

Not because I wanted to sell the house.

Because I was finally doing something about a situation that had haunted me for months.

I had hoped to keep the house and rent it out. My husband and I both thought it might be the best solution. It would preserve her home and leave options open for the future.

But that plan required help.

And the help wasn't there.

After the theft, none of that mattered anymore.

I went to her house and asked her best friend and her husband to take her to the credit union so she could add me to the accounts and give me the authority I needed to move forward.

I contacted Realtors.

I put the house on the market.

Within weeks it sold.

Within a month she was living in a secure senior community near my family, where someone was always at the front desk and she was no longer facing the world alone.

There was sadness too.

I had grown up in that house.

My father had talked about keeping it in the family. He imagined holidays there, family gatherings, and a place we could always return to.

But that was his dream, not mine.

And more importantly, it was no longer practical.

The house could wait.

My mother couldn't.

I told her she would be close to the children.

That she would see them often.

That we could spend more time together.

She smiled.

The move itself seemed easy for her.

The confusion came later.

For more than a year she thought we had left her at a hotel.

She couldn't understand where her car had gone.

When we gave it to her grandson, she was angry.

Looking back, I think it was one of the first losses she truly felt.

The move, the house, even many of the changes in her daily life seemed to slip past her understanding. But the car represented freedom. Independence. The ability to come and go as she pleased.

Losing it felt different.

Years later, there are still decisions I revisit.

I wish I had sought another opinion before the mastectomy.

I wish I had more time to go through the house.

There are things that were lost because I could not do everything.

Some days those losses still hurt.

But I understand something now that I could not see then.

I made the only decisions I could under the circumstances.

I could no longer wait for help.

Standing in that house, sick to my stomach after realizing someone had been inside while my mother was there, all I knew was that I could not protect her from two and a half hours away.

And no thing was worth losing her over.

Reflection

Sometimes the hardest decisions we make are the ones we make for someone else.

Not because we don't love them enough.

But because we do.

When someone we love can no longer safely make certain decisions for themselves, we may find ourselves stepping into a role we never expected to hold.

A role filled with uncertainty.

A role where every option carries some loss.

Looking back, are there decisions in your own life that still revisit you from time to time?

Can you see the care, concern, and love that guided those choices, even if you still wish some things had unfolded differently?

Sometimes peace doesn't come from believing we made the perfect decision.

Sometimes it comes from recognizing that we made the best decision we could with the information, resources, and understanding we had at the time.

What decision in your life might need a little more compassion from you today?

A Gentle Invitation

Take a few quiet moments to think about a decision that once felt impossible.

Perhaps it involved someone you love.

Perhaps it changed the course of a relationship, a family, or a season of your life.

Instead of asking yourself whether it was the perfect choice, try asking a different question:

What was I trying to protect?

What was I trying to preserve?

What love existed beneath that decision?

Notice what arises without judgment.

The choices that weigh on us most heavily are often the ones made with the deepest care.

And sometimes, years later, the greatest gift we can give ourselves is the same grace we would offer someone else:

I made the only decision I could under the circumstances.

And I kept moving forward with love.

You are always welcome here.

WGG