It’s a vicious cycle. “Why did I sleep all day?,” my MIL asks me on Saturday. The doctor even said, “Because you’re 92 and you need to stimulate yourself.” But that’s exactly what she refuses to do. I gave her a book, Eat Pray Love. “I started to read it—it’s weird.” End of that. I tried getting her jigsaw puzzles, puzzle books, something to keep her mind going and prevent her from just sitting there and doing nothing. “No thanks.” Even when we ask her to go out with us, she won’t. So the situation is frustrating. I know it’s frustrating for her. She’d like to not sleep all day. And it’s frustrating for me because I have an answer she doesn’t want to hear—that she needs to make an effort.

Characteristics don’t mellow as we get older, they just get exacerbated. When I first met her, she was younger than I am now and she was very much like this…unmotivated to do anything for herself, happy to have people wait on her, entertain her. She likes to “hold court.”

“I don’t know why I sleep all day.” You started as soon as you moved in with us, I remind her. She blames me—it’s because I don’t give her the stimulation she needs. If she could help me clean the house, maybe I’d have time to stimulate her. I guess it’s my fault that she doesn’t have a hobby, too.

We go another round the next day. At 3:30 pm on Sunday, when I’m starting to think about preparing dinner (including her request for banana loaf for dessert), she first came out looking for lunch. “I miss her,” she tells me. Who? Her home aide, who not only fixes her lunch during the week, but serves it to her on a tray, in her room! I do set up her breakfast, usually because then I can run off to the gym—my only me time of the entire week, but I calmly explain that her Saturday and Sunday walk to the kitchen for lunch is the only exercise she gets, ever. Of course, if I told her we were going to the hairdresser, she’d be dressed and ready before you could turn around! That she’s motivated by. Work with me here, I plead. How can I help her if she won’t help herself…except to that banana loaf?