New and old superpowers
One of the biggest surprises has been what it takes to help my mother, and how much power I all of a sudden need to wield.
The thing about parenting your parent at the end of her life is that it’s remarkably like parenting your child — only you don’t have any legal authority to do anything. To help my mother make decisions about her care and living situation, I need to speak with her doctors; understand her financial situation and set up online banking; arrange for repairs to her apartment before she moves out; find and vet caregivers; visit potential nursing facilities and put her on waiting lists; make arrangements to sell the things she no longer wants; and fill out a metric ton of applications for assisted living facilties, housing vouchers and financial assistance.
Luckily my mother decided that I am the lesser evil, and gave me a comprehensive Power of Attorney (POA). Lesser evil, because the only thing she finds more distasteful than me making decisions on her behalf is some unknown judge determining her fate, as she heard happened to another patient. She and I had previously talked about how awful it would be for me to get the call that she’s been found dead in her apartment, and then having to battle the authorities to make decisions about the disposition of her body and estate. We hadn’t done anything about it yet when she went to the hospital earlier this spring, and I immediately hit the wall of silence that German doctors rigorously maintain to protect patient privacy. After a few rounds of being told that they could tell me nothing, my mother asked me to send her a POA template, signed it and had it witnessed by her doctor and a nurse.
And presto: that POA slices through German bureaucracy like the proverbial hot knife through butter! Want the real talk about her diagnosis and prognosis from her doctors? Wave the POA. Want to negotiate with her landlord? POA. Want access to her bank account? POA. Want to get her pension information? POA. Want to interview potential caregivers or tour nursing homes? POA. Want to set up online banking? POA. Having Power of Attorney is my new superpower, and I am not afraid to use it to advance all the things that need to fall into place for my mother to live as well as her cancer and circumstances allow. If I have one piece of advice to offer from the experience so far: make sure you have power of attorney.
I also have another superpower that I hadn’t appreciated as such, and that works remarkably well in Germany: my Ph.D. Not because it’s in any subject that has practical bearing on this life-stage experience, but because in German society and language academic degrees are styled as part of the formal address. And formal is the default setting in German language and social norms: you address a new acquaintance as “Thou” rather than “You”. Even the customer service chat bots I have encountered in conducting various online business for my mother start out by asking if they should “duzen” or “siezen”, using the verbs that establish how two speakers proceed in navigating the formal or informal address code.
In German you call people by their highest degree or other honorary title, and so I am “Frau Dr. Scholz” to all and sundry when they first encounter me in person, on the phone or in writing. Advanced degrees are so venerated, the last time I renewed my passport, the German honorary consul in Portland suggested I stick it in my passport.
So there it is, and I should receive a very cordial welcome indeed at the border. Most Germans are conditioned to assume a stance of deference, respect and — by very helpful extension, given my reliance on the kindness of strangers in these matters — helpfulness. It’s almost as magical a superpower as the POA, this Ph.D., and has been making up for the fact that my German is rusty, and that I am learning the intricacies of the German social safety net in a hurry. I may sound like the 16 year old I was when I left Germany, my vocabulary having pretty much arrested at that age, but everybody sure is being very helpful. Thank goodness and the Regents of the University of California for that handy three letter superpower!
