The snow came. Not as deep as predicted, but enough to complicate everything in our area. Road clearing has been slow, though improving. My apartment complex is one of the good ones — they cleared our internal roads early, even if it meant piling snow behind our cars. That’s one of the reasons I live where I live and pay what I pay. They do the basics reliably.
The aide I have scheduled for today, tomorrow, and Thursday lives far from town, and her complex hasn’t cleared their internal roads at all. She’s stuck, and there’s nothing she can do about it.
Now, I *do* have another aide who lives right here in my complex. Very convenient. No travel issues. No snow problems. But even with that convenience, I asked the agency to take her off our schedule. Because proximity doesn’t make someone the right fit for caregiving — whether it’s dementia care, elder care, or special‑needs care.
This is the same aide who wore a distressed, fuzzy, open‑face balaclava for her entire shift — the kind of thing that made her look halfway between a person and a plush bear. My dad kept looking at her with confusion, trying to figure out what he was seeing. And imagine someone helping you with intimate care while dressed like that.
She’s also the one who left broken hair bands all over my couch, stepped over things on the floor instead of picking them up, added dishes to a full sink, and did the bare minimum before sitting on the couch for the next two hours. That’s not caregiving. That’s just occupying space.
And then there’s my weekend aide. She’s young, probably from another country originally, and not 100% familiar with American ways — I still need to teach her how to cook eggs, what toast is, and that hot dogs are not breakfast sausages. But she never stops working. She sweeps, mops, does laundry, keeps the sink clear, and is gentle and patient with my dad. She’s almost perfect.
And then there’s my snowed‑in aide — the one I rely on because she’s so good with my dad, and just a genuinely nice young person. I might not see her this week. She called off today, and I declined a replacement. I certainly declined the one who lives across the parking lot. Later I learned just how snowed‑in she really is. Her complex hasn’t cleared anything, and they’re not required by law to do so. She hopes they’ll get to it, but I’m not holding my breath.
So if she calls out again tomorrow, I’ll accept a new aide. And then another the day after. And the day after that will be someone new to replace the one I removed. Last week, Sunday, today — a lot of callouts and no‑aide days.
But I’ve been doing this for 16+ years alone. I can cope. I can push through. We’ll be okay. It wears on me harder now, but that’s life. I even dug my car out of the snowbank behind it. Old‑school type, me. That’s just how we do it.
And at the end of the day, this is what family caregivers do. We adapt. We absorb the callouts, the weather, the mismatches, the last‑minute changes, the days with no help at all. We keep the household steady because someone has to. We learn to shovel out cars, rearrange schedules, teach new aides how to make toast, and say no to the ones who aren’t right. It isn’t easy, and it wears on us, but we keep going. Not because we’re heroes — but because this is our person, and this is the life we’ve built around their care. Family caregivers bend so the whole system doesn’t break.
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