In August last year, my father had a stroke which paralysed his right side, reduced his speech to a whisper and demented him rapidly. He could not comprehend why we kept him in hospital, was upset that he could not go home and it became increasingly difficult for him to think coherently or execute simple tasks like playing a board game.
Then he started to forget more and more: people, places, things which happened in the past. Any conversation was lopsided. He could only listen, with difficulty, as his hearing impairment became almost impregnable, but he could not tell us anything. His answers were elliptical, never more than a few words. Soon he would answer only yes-no questions. Drinks had to be thickened for him not to choke.
My mother, herself already 88 years old, had all of a sudden to deal with all household payments, the Inland Revenue, financial demands by the hospital, which also urged his swift transfer to a nursing home, and with a host of standing orders which had accumulated over the years.
Most were long obsolete but depleted my father’s and her pension income regardless. She stood in front of my father’s neatly filed, collected accounting, and wouldn’t know which binder to look into first.
So I became my father’s legal guardian and could see from close up how old people are tricked into unnecessary expenses, from insurance policies they wouldn’t need to donations they had no idea how to stop, from useless investment products pitched to them by their bank, to punishing tariffs from utilities, to telecommunication services.
They were paying for instance for a landline which didn’t work and a cable TV they never watched. My father had memberships of clubs he never visited and credit cards he never used. Receiving a substantial pension, they both did not notice. All this changed drastically when the costs of a nursing home made cuts inevitable.
I was surprised to find out how fiendishly difficult it is to terminate standing orders. Financial advice: avoid them if you can. They work to the payer’s disadvantage. What is paid already is, as a rule, fiendishly difficult to get back, even in case of an error.
I found a place in a nursing home close to my mum’s flat. She managed to walk from her home to the old people’s home in less than 10 minutes. The old peoples’ home was owned by the municipality of Vienna. It was a friendly place, inviting, clean, with views over a small adjacent park and a 16th-century Jewish cemetery.
My father, a nursing case on a 24-hour basis, was accommodated in the hospital ward of the retirement home and looked after by the most caring and friendly staff, all of them without exception immigrants from neighbouring Eastern European countries.
They behaved towards their patients with respect and affection and trained expertise. Anyone who argues against immigration should know who else could fill low-paid jobs. Brexit-UK never bothered to find an answer in the first place.
Such luxury didn’t not come cheap, of course: €6,500 per month if privately paid. For those who could not afford such princely sums, i.e. almost everybody, the municipality picks up the bill in exchange for 80 per cent of a patient’s pension and one’s NHS support payment.
A lot had to be paid additionally: nappies, drugs, drips, the hairdresser and nail jobs. I was grateful that my dad’s collected pension exempted my mother’s living costs.
He was clever enough to anticipate when to stop accumulating wealth and when to start spending. He had managed to enjoy all his assets in his lifetime- Andreas Weitzer
We all took turns travelling to Vienna to see my father on a daily basis. My mum could not have done this alone. Particularly when things got more difficult. Shortly after Christmas, my father started to refuse food. He would draw his lips tight and refused to eat.
One person after the other was at the receiving end of his refusal. My mother first, then some of the nurses. Only the prettiest seemed capable to feed him.
Until this stopped too. He would still eat with me and my youngest daughter when it was her turn for a week in Vienna. Then, at the beginning of April, nobody could persuade him anymore. Within a few weeks, his weight dropped from 96kg to 46kg. He increasingly looked like a skeleton. Then he stopped drinking too and had to be drip-fed. All the while, he never complained about his predicament or pain.
It was warm enough by mid-April to take him out in a wheelchair. He would have a beer, even a glass of wine with me. “Our” café already knew our order: beer for him, espresso for me. He was hanging in his chair observing the passers-by.
I bought him a large screen telly but was not sure if he was only watching, intensely as he did, or if he could hear bits and pieces too. Last week of April, the nursing home’s doctor called me. She said that he would have only a few more days to live.
We gathered around his bed and held his hand on a 24-hour basis and talked to him, not minding if he answered or not. The kids of my oldest daughter, his great-grandchildren, could still elicit a smile from him. With the rest of us, only his eyes were smiling when we entered the room. Then he did not look at anyone anymore.
I was three days on a sofa next to him holding his left hand, the one which was not paralysed. The nurses brought me food, put a blanket over me when they saw that I had dozed off, and came every hour to tend for him. It was terrifying to see how long his body endured. He was still breathing regularly, but his limps started to shake when he was awake.
Or rather when his more rapid breath and half-open eyes suggested that he was not sleeping. Then he started to breathe more rapidly, with a wheeze. Then all of a sudden very irregularly, and then he stopped and his oxygen mask was not steaming up anymore. He died at 7.45pm on Saturday, April 29.
I have in the meantime learned that not even his T-shirts could be taken home, because it was all part of his estate, in the hands of a notary public not yet nominated by the courts.
My mum will get a widow’s annuity, about 50 per cent of my father’s pension. It will be paid to her account, as my father’s and her joint account is for the time being inaccessible. My father did not own any financial assets at the time of his death, and no property. Wisely he has gradually sold all his shares and gilts in his lifetime.
He was clever enough to anticipate when to stop accumulating wealth and when to start spending. There’s enough money left on a separate savings account to pay for his funeral. He had managed to enjoy all his assets in his lifetime. From an investor’s perspective, this is a marvellous achievement: he had not saved a penny too much.
Andreas Weitzer is an independent journalist based in Malta.
The purpose of this column is to broaden readers’ general financial knowledge and it should not be interpreted as presenting investment advice, or advice on the buying and selling of financial products.
andreas.weitzer@timesofmalta.com