This is the thing I think Daniel never understood, not fully, even after he said he did: the reality of being in the house was not just the appointments and the medications and the physical tasks. It was availability. The continuous, low-grade sense that something could happen at any moment and that I was the person who would deal with it. Not occasionally. Always.
He offered help, sometimes, over the phone. “Why don’t you hire someone?” He wasn’t wrong that this was an option. We looked into it. Part-time home care aides ran from eighteen to twenty-four dollars an hour in our area. Mom’s income and assets didn’t qualify her for Medicaid at the time. Private pay for regular home aide hours — say, four hours a day, five days a week — would have run between fourteen and nineteen thousand dollars a year. That was more than she had available beyond basic expenses and it was more than I had available. We hired some respite help eventually, a woman named Theresa who came on Saturday mornings for four hours, and I paid half of that and Mom paid half and it kept me sane.
I logged it in the folder.
Daniel, around year six, had a difficult stretch with his business. He mentioned this to me in a phone call and I said the things you say. I didn’t think much about it at the time. I filed it under “Daniel’s life has complications too” and moved on.
AN EXPENSE SHE NEVER CALLED A SACRIFICE