my sandwichgeneration life sage part 1
For years I thought I could do it all, I had a career I loved, I could manage my time since I was self employed and my passion was to help people achieve their home ownership dreams!!! I still love doing this, it makes me joyful when the entire process works and everyone succeeds.
I decided in my late 20’s after many failed attempts at relationships to finally be super clear, and really focused and visualize, articulate and be sure about what I really wanted...
Will it ever be the end? Remember in the first instalment, my mother, who is a generation younger than my MIL, still lives in our home. Admittedly, she has been her twenty-five years and has not required any sort of long-term physical support except the occasional broken foot, twisted ankle and other such ailments that keep her from walking her beloved Schnauzer.
The empty chair, the empty suite, no pitter patter of tiny feet, the nanacam is off and the meals don’t need to be on time. We miss her, our children have only known a life with her present. Fortunately, they have grown and one is away at university, while the other is adjusting to the changes in routine by becoming more independent in many ways. Life as we used to life it daily has changed and nothing will ever change it back. This is the part where we get to count our blessing. Our beloved Nana is still living, we can still see her whenever we want and no matter where she is physically, mentally she is just different now.
Tragedy Strikes, Part 2
Fast forward 4 years, marriage, we welcomed our first child into our lives, it was a magical time, I worked a lot, realizing that babies are super portable, and she was amazingly quiet and happy. We enjoyed our weekends skiing and visiting the in-laws then tragedy struck, my FIL became ill and as any good doctor began eliminating all possible problems until he was sure he could not fixt this himself. He finally reached out for help and after exhaustive tests was sadly unable to fix the grave illness that would eventually take his life before the year was over. In October we witnessed his tragic passing. He had 4 grandchildren by then all of whom he had visits with two of whom were barely 1 year old. We had moved them both into our home just before his passing and in between hospital stays, the home became theirs as well.
Now let me describe our home for you; my mom lived in the main floor she moved in as soon as we bought it with her partner at the time and a couple of dogs, all good. Our young family now tree in total lived on the second floor and my mother in law now became the sole resident in the third-floor suite.
Let me describe my home, before we married, we both lived with our family and after meeting we decided to look for a place to live together… we spent a few months planning for our first big ski holiday in Whistler… a week before we left, the perfect home for us came on the market.
We did not know it right away, and really were not that keen, but my mom the uber-realtor insisted it was perfect for all of us. We took a massive leap of faith, engaged everyone in our family, and cashed in all if our savings, rrps’s leveraged our lives forever to the bank and dove into the home ownership market. To this day I am surprised we still have any friends, our first few months were a blur or paint, plaster, peeling, and surprises of all kinds, most of them good ones. We bought our last home first!
