I cannot recall which Marx brother’s film features the phrase: Sanity clause? Sanity clause! But there ain’t no sanity clause!
Ain’t that the truth. I was forcibly reminded of this fact this week when the cheque for the re-mortgage of my mother’s house arrived from the solicitor’s after they had extracted their pound of flesh. They did this by a direct fee of £1,200, some of which was for counselling which I did not receive and some extra for duplication of the work which I had already done and sent to them in land registry searches and so on. They charged me for a bankruptcy search, which they must have known was futile as they have been acting as my mother’s solicitor since my father died, you’d think they’d have noticed if the cheques had bounced.
The Solla advisor then compounded the misery by sending in a bill of £500. So it has cost me the thick end of £2,000 to re-mortgage my mother’s house. I sent the Solla advisor an email suggesting for future clients that they increase the amount they advise families to extract from their inheritance to cover the costs of the experts advising them to sell their birthrights for a mess of pottage in the first place.
It is a sad fact that a mental illness is a wonderful opportunity for some professions; they see the relatives as a cash cow. That would be me. Given my past history just during this last nearly two years that I have been blogging my mother’s dementia, I have made the decision to let go the money and wave it goodbye without a fight. My other half is all for me taking on all concerned and giving them a run for their money. I am taking a rather more long term view of the situation. When I was so ill as a teenager that I didn’t speak for a year I was advised that I should avoid stress in the future. Given which I should certainly not have married the person I did, immediately cared for his dying mother for five years at my own cost, etcetera and so on for the rest of my life. Especially I should have avoided the last two years.
However, despite the conditioning of the rest of life, previous to this, an influence to which we are all subject, learning has, as we used to say when I was teaching, taken place. Noting my frequent hospital trips for me in the first year of caring for my mother, it was with no reluctance at all that I handed over care to the agency and got a bit of my life back. Yes they are horrendously expensive but what I am paying for is retention of sanity. Not hers, that ship started slipping away round the curve of the earth twenty years ago at least. Not my other half’s, as I become aware each time he drives us there, swearing all the way as he tries to control the entire road and every driver on it all the way to the horizon.
The boat I am keeping afloat is mine alone. There may be a lot of bailing out going on and I am certainly holed in several places but there is no keelhauling occurring and I am not going to walk anyone’s plank. I am staying in the vessel with the sails set to moderate and I am proceeding towards the destination with most of the crew intact. The cabin boy, who appeared initially to have jumped ship, is actually being towed in the lifeboat and the ship’s mate is lashed to the steering wheel with the supply of rum. Nevertheless, thanks to the mental acuity of the captain, entirely achieved by cautious selection of which naval battles to engage in, progress is being made. We are still all at sea but focussed on the voyage well enough to ignore the sirens and sea monsters.
And when we reach Christmas Island we may find with the interference of native solicitors, hired by hopeful relatives, that there ain’t no sanity clause, though I have a feeling the expectant natives may try to invoke one.
All of which may make no sense at all until you finish the game and put the lid on the box and remember that the name of the game is Last One Afloat.
I will not be weighed down and sunk by the guilt that comes from putting a relative in a ‘home’. I will not be overbalanced by trying to do all the care myself and trying to run two houses fifty miles apart. I won’t have much time to look after myself and trim my own sails but I will have just enough. And sadly, thanks to the professional ‘trip advisors’ I will be a lot lighter in the ballast.
And when I have floated to the end of this ocean I can make landfall and finally help the mate and the cabin boy too.
Or to put it in plain English: quis custodiet ipsos custodes? They have to look after themselves first, then they can help everyone else.
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