This is probably a slightly strange way to think about caregiving. I know that. Most people who care for their parents are not generating expense ledgers simultaneously. I was, because that was who I was before I became a full-time caregiver and it was who I remained.
Patricia Okafor, at our first meeting, had said something I thought about a lot. She said that in her experience, family caregiving disputes often came down to one party having records and the other having feelings, and that feelings were genuinely important but that records were what moved things.
I had both, but only one of them could go in a folder.
The $74,280 was real. So was the 3 AM conversation in the hallway. So was the chair yoga Tuesday. So was the job offer letter I kept in a drawer.
None of those things were free housing. All of those things were twelve years.
ONE FINAL THING ABOUT AUNT CAROL
I called Aunt Carol in November, after the coffee shop meeting with Daniel but before the conference room meeting with Patricia. Not to report on Daniel or to lobby for her position. I called because she was my mother’s sister and she was grieving and I had not done a good job of maintaining that relationship during the busiest caregiving years.
We talked for about an hour. She told me about her memories of my mother — the way they fought as children and stayed close as adults, the trips they’d taken together in their forties. I told her things I’d observed in my mother’s last years, good things that Carol wouldn’t have seen.