Caregiving Daughter

Once we realized how bad Mom’s driving problems were, I told her that she didn’t need to worry about driving.  Now that she lived with us, we could take her where she needed to go.  She seemed content with this arrangement, saying that she “didn’t understand these crazy old roads anyway.”  The only time she did want to drive was to meet the kids when they got off the bus at the end of our long driveway.   Since the kids came home before we did, I thought this would be a good idea.  Plus it gave Mom something to be responsible for and a reason to keep track of the time. 

This arrangement was working fine in the beginning.  Mom enjoyed seeing them get off the school bus, and I didn’t have to worry about them walking home in the rain or bad weather.  After a few months, there came a time when I had to travel out of state for a few days for work.  Since I wouldn’t be there and my husband leaves very early for work, Mom was helping out by also taking the kids to meet the bus in the mornings.  One morning, they got to the end of the drive and saw that the bus had just left and was heading down the road.  My kids (ages 10 and 11 at the time) knew that if that happened to me, I would try to catch up with the bus or meet up with her later on her route.  They told Mom to hurry and try to drive to catch up to the bus.  Mom started down our road, going faster than she was used to.  Our road is gravel, and when she came to a section where the gravel was loose, she started to fishtail and lose control of the car.  She kept turning the wheel back and forth to stay on the road, when finally my son yelled for her to put on the brakes.  Thankfully, she was able to bring the car to a stop before they ended up in a ditch.  Nervous and shaken, she drove them on to school.  She made it back home, but only after driving around and trying different roads before she found our house.

When I husband called me and told me what had happened, I felt terrible.  That is the worst feeling knowing you are hundreds of miles away and you can’t be there to help your family.  My husband was so worried that he stayed home from work the next day so he would be there to see the kids off in the morning.  We were very lucky that nothing terrible happened to my mom or our kids that morning.  We knew we could never let anything like this happen again.

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