May 23, 2026

She Just Walked Right in the House

I recently described our home to my cousin, who is 10 years older and has two teens close in age to my two teens with her husband, as “grand central station.” Her brother is seven years older than I am and is a single professional who lives by himself. Our moms are sisters and only 15 months apart and after they recently lost their dad following a journey through hospice care and being by his side in a devoted way, we just started noticing some behavior on their mom’s part that is just not like her.

She takes trips to my home several times a year from the area where I grew up which is about 2 hours away and engages often with our family as I have two other kiddos who are at elementary ages so we still do a lot of magic making around holidays and birthdays and there are many things my aunt can participate in with us. Not to mention that she and her sister (my mom) are close and Mom lives with us. So of course my aunt has always been welcome and continues to be. But some unexpected things are starting to come up now as she ages that we are suddenly navigating.

Today my aunt walked right into our house unexpectedly. I am someone with an open heart who will verbally extend an open invitation to close friends and family to stop by anytime, especially someone like this aunt of mine who has been involved in everything important in my life since I was born and with each of my children’s lives. She is soft spoken and never requires much at all to the point where my children and the dog will be vibrating the house with all the noise they are making and my husband will joke with my aunt, “You gotta stop making so much noise.”

We planned to be mostly home this weekend, especially with all the rain canceling a couple of scheduled sports practices and with the holiday Monday tacked on, providing a nice buffer. My dad steps in if I am not home or I am working and cooks for my aunt along with what he does for my mom and she seems to be expecting that now. She also sleeps a lot while at our house and just doesn’t seem like herself. She and my parents are in their upper 70’s and changes in the health of both the body and the brain certainly can be expected at this point. But we wait for official diagnoses as my cousins (her children) are getting her to her appointments and taking care of things at her home (which they have found to be in less than favorable condition and worse than the way she would ever keep it in years past).

So I find myself offering to have her come visit and stay, but there are expected and unexpected challenges unfolding with that, just like those that continue to unfold with my parents living with us for the last 5 years, and with everything that happened with my parents prior to that leading up to them coming to live with us.

But for now I feel able to open my heart and home to my aunt and to the needs she has right now. I am not certain how long that will last, how long I will be able to have her in lengthy visits (as her children live at a distance from her and from our home) and we want to get her back and forth safely. Right now we are waiting for doctors to make recommendations and we are waiting to see what will work and then, in the future, what might become impossible to support on our own.