My grandparents are getting really old and are really beginning to have trouble taking care of themselves. It can be tough to watch them struggle and despite the fact that they have a million family members that want to help them get through this, my grandfather who is stubborn as an ox is just unwilling to believe that he can no longer take care of himself and his wife. He is a man from the old school, but due to my grandmother's failing health has been forced into doing the laundry, grocery shopping, and cooking. Fortunately, they do have some money, so he does have a cleaning lady come in about once every other week, but I really don't think that she does too much because every time I go to the house all I can see is filth. That is my grandfather though, see he really likes his cleaning lady, so even if she doesn't actually do much cleaning, he is still happy to pay her since she is "nice". I guess they don't really notice how dirty it is in there, but when I go for a visit I always clean out my grandmother's coffee cup. The one she uses daily is made of glass, and I think that all she does is rinse it. It looks so dirty some times I am afraid to let her drink from it.
I tried for about a week straight to reach my grandparents by phone, and each time the phone clicked over to the voice mail immediately, which I know means that they are one the phone. The only problem is that they have call waiting, but I don't think that they even know how to use it because if you leave them a message on the voice mail, they don't ever check it. Well, I left one message and kept calling intermittently throughout the week, each time getting the voice mail immediately. Quite honestly, I thought something must be wrong, my grandparents never spent that much time on the phone. Finally, I gave in and called the Richmond phone service and explained my predicament and asked them to check the line. Well, sure enough the line was working, but it was off the hook. They didn't have a clue when I sent my brother over the next day to tell them.
I really hope that when I get older I will have the good common sense to let my family help me.