THIS is why I couldn't move to Sticksville!

This afternoon I got a call from Brother. He wanted to talk about Mother, but he didn't know where to start. So he just started.

Sunday he and SIL had gone out to see her impromptu. When they got there (midday) she was still in bed, more or less unconscious. She had been sick, vomited in the bed, and then fell back asleep in it. They pulled her out of bed, washed her, washed the bedding, and tried to talk to her. But she was pretty unresponsive, and had no interest in eating or drinking anything. They had a lot of trouble just getting her to eat some toast and drink some fruit juice. They stayed over Monday as well. (Brother had to take a day off work.) She wasn't much better, but at least a little. Today they left. But they are—understandably—really worried about her.

No shit. With a story like that, of course they are. So am I, now that they told me.

I asked if Brother thinks I need to move in with her to look after her. He doesn't know. He did say he thinks I'll have better success than he did in telling her to eat and drink (or stand up and walk for exercise) and having her obey. I said I was glad he had such confidence in my ability to be bossy, even as I reflected privately that of course he grew up with me permanently appointed by Fate as Older Brother (so the bossiness may have come with the territory). He tried to rephrase it a little more gently, but didn't exactly contradict me.

Also, on a more practical level, Brother and SIL still have regular jobs. I just do a little consulting, and it's not actually essential to keeping a roof over my head. So my schedule is more flexible than theirs, for the most part. 

Where we left it is that I'll go down and visit her this weekend. I'll assess how she looks to me, and then he and I will talk again. Today I told him that I have commitments which would make it hard to move any earlier than mid-May: in the second half of April I'll be in Scotland hiking the West Highland Way; and then there are activities coming up at the place I'm working in early May that I really have to be there to support. 

And after that? Well I think the company wants me to stay on longer and work on some more stuff for them. Also I would really hate to leave Beautiful City, where I live now. I've lived here or in the metropolitan area for almost 33 years at this point, or more than half my life. It's home and I love it here. But of course I love my mother too, and I'll move if it's the right thing to do. 

What does any of this have to do with the move to Sticksville?

You remember that back when I was agonizing over the question whether to move, I drew a table of reasons pro and con. One of the points in the table was—very explicitly— that "Mother is getting old" and that if I stayed put I would be "able to live with or near Mother if needed." I was imagining just such a situation as this. And now here it is, happening in real life.

What if I had moved? At this point I would have been there less than two years—probably not enough time for my New Boss to have fired me yet, and certainly not enough time for the Business Unit to have folded (the way I still think it's going to). So I would still be working, and wouldn't be able easily to get away. Moreover, I would never have pulled my 401K out into an IRA, nor even really looked at it. Since it was invested in some very aggressive funds, the last couple years of gloom-and-doom in the stock market would probably have wiped out a lot of the gains it had made at the time I liquidated it... with the result that I wouldn't have it to fall back on (the way I am using it today). In short, I would be stuck two time zones away from my Mother, with no reasonable way to help and no prospect of breaking free any time soon.

Good thing I didn't move, isn't it? 

UPDATE as of Sunday, April 2: It looks like Mother just had a cold or the flu, nothing worse. That could account for the vomiting, and the lack of immediate interest in food. But by the end of the weekend she was reacting normally and eating full meals again. So I think it just took a few days for her to get better.

Still, she'd be better off if someone lived with her.