Life After Mother, Five to Ten Years

“For the next five to ten years,” my cousin said to me over lunch in Wenatchee, Washington, while I was paying my mother’s relatives a visit. We were discussing how the family has spent much of the last decade managing several deaths, while several more family members — including me, I must reluctantly admit — are into what are euphemistically called the sunset years. 

Pondering my cousin’s timeframe, I understood the ramifications. After spending more than a decade attending to my father, my mother, and my own affairs, I’m finally becoming reacquainted with my mother’s side of the family, who are collectively coping with their own long-term health and property issues. As for me, my father died in 2015 and, as his only close relative, I spent two years managing the end of his life and settling his affairs. 

About the time I closed that life chapter, my mother had a stroke, which started a chain of events that led to her death two years later and, once again, I was the only close relative to shoulder the burdens that accompanied the end of her life. Her relatives’ only involvement was to mouth empty platitudes like, “I’m sure you and your mother will have many, many more years together.” None even visited to pay their respects, let alone offer assistance.

While I was attending to my mother, an aunt died of Alzheimer’s, and less than six months later, an uncle — my mother’s brother, the woman’s husband — died of cancer. That meant the couple left overlapping wills, and while the family navigated that legal maze, they personally organized four huge estate sales to dispose of the couple’s household. Another aunt gained possession of the house and her son — the one I had lunch with — and his family moved in, through an arrangement I’ve never been privy to the exact details of.

Next came my mother’s death, and my five years of living “life after mother” continues with still more work to come. Besides me, her survivors include her sister, brother-in-law, a niece, and the nephew I had lunch with. The sister has Parkinson’s and how much longer she can remain at home, under the care of her husband and daughter, is a subject the family is understandably reluctant to address.

This aunt, my uncle, another aunt, my two cousins and I are all over fifty. Between us we have five houses filled with the impedimenta of our lives’ journeys. The family being in the apple business, there’s also an apple orchard, and what will happen to it is one more decision someone is going to have to make.

This is what my cousin meant when he spoke of, “the next five to ten years.” He’s now experiencing, with his parents, similar issues to what I went through with mine, and our extended family is looking at a future that covers much of the same terrain that I’ve spent the last decade traveling.