How I Make Travel With My 98-Year-Old Wheelbound Mother Fun
I’m excited by the library of fresh late-age memories I create for us both.
Courtesy Of Author I’ve swapped solo adventure travel for traveling with a companion — my 98-year-old mother, Gwen.
My mother might have occasional short-term memory loss, be confined to a wheelchair, and need help with personal care, but like me, she has always loved to travel and still yearns for it. I’ve made it my job to help her keep rolling.
During our best travel moments, Mum beams with pleasure, and I’m excited by the library of fresh late-age memories I’m creating for us both. But in our worst travel moments, we clash, we drive in silence, or I leave her to watch television while I weep in the next room. Why?
Through hard-won experience over the past 2 ½ years, I’ve discovered that being the real-time leader of our travel experiences, doing the driving or packing or pushing the wheelchair, and performing care duties from wake up to bedtime, are incompatible with being sanguine, even-tempered and finding fun.
Inevitably, as our travel days progress, I become frustrated with being on call as a carer all day, unable to do the smallest thing by myself, sleep-deprived, and physically exhausted. Mum, too, gets tired, demanding, fed up, and provokes me — after all, we still have a normal mother-daughter relationship.
“This is not why we travel,” I thought in a moment of reflection. These occasional tensions were not fun for Mum either. “How can I change this pattern?”
My reflection began with a ratio — fun/work. When the work of being on the road becomes too demanding, this ratio turns to a fraction less than one. Not good. I wanted it to be more than one — for both of us. Indeed, I wanted it to be 100.
At this stage of Mum’s life, being on the road helps reduce her frustration at her lack of independence and her sense of being a burden, while moving to new places provides me with respite from the drudgery of being a stay-at-her-home caregiver and my sense of entrapment.
Photo from Author
But this wasn’t at its core why we were traveling. We both seek from travel the things we always have — a sense of freedom and wonder, connections with new people, learning new history and culture, creating mutual memories, having fun together, and above all, not knowing what the next day will bring!
How could this wonder and fun become our dominant outcome? Was it different destinations or modes of travel?
“No,” I thought. That was not going to change our reality. The problem was crystal clear; I needed help.
“Let me do that!” said Xiao, Mum’s cheerful and ever-willing caregiver companion originally from China, who jumped up to make Mum a cup of tea in our hotel room after a full day’s sightseeing in Singapore recently. I could continue my conversation with my partner Andrew without further interruption, something he appreciated, too.
In the past year, Mum and I have been fortunate to benefit from Xiao’s amazing care services in Australia, but even more fortunate that she has joined us on different trips.
Photo from Author
Xiao has joined us on a car trip to Albany, a domestic flight to Broome to celebrate Mum’s 98th birthday, and this recent five-day trip to Singapore with my partner making a foursome!
As a solo independent traveler for much of my life, I’ve been surprised by how easily I’ve slipped into traveling in a group. It’s okay to have someone to talk to, to make suggestions, and to organize and lift stuff. Getting to this point has seen us muddling through and learning what works and what doesn’t.
In 2023, a friend who is an aged care nurse kindly accompanied us to London and the UK as a one-off subsidized trip for her and an experiment for me to see how we got on having a companion caregiver. With our daily outings and changeable itinerary, I had already realized that hiring a local support worker would not work.
My friend proved the model so well that I embraced having a travel companion caregiver but there was still a dilemma to resolve. Who would I ask?
“I drove from Port Hedland to Perth,” said Xiao, who had already been working for my mother for some months, but this afternoon before she finished her shift and I took over, we were chatting at the dining table over a cuppa — mum’s English Breakfast tea with milk, Xiao’s green tea and my black coffee.
She was telling us how she had left her well-paid country-based job in Western Australia to come to study aged care services in the state’s capital city.
“It took me three days!” It would. It’s a daunting journey of 1650 kilometers through barren and lonely terrain on an inland road made busy by thundering road trains.
“Were you driving alone?” I asked.
“Oh yes!” she exclaimed, laughing that aspect off. “But my car did not have air conditioning! And it was 40c!!”
“Wow!” I knew the implications of that — open windows, hot air making you sleepy on this long featureless drive. “I hope you stopped and didn’t drive tired.”
“Of course!” she exclaimed. “At each roadhouse, I bought a block of ice and held it on my lap! It was cold but the hot air through the windows turned it to evaporative air conditioning!” We laughed.
This young woman was turning challenges and hardships into amusing adventures.
Photo from Author
She had the right stuff. I immediately asked her if she’d accompany us on our adventures. Xiao’s companionship and friendship have meant easy-going days, release from morning and evening personal care (this is demanding, no two ways about it) and help with lifting stuff (there’s a lot of equipment to be hauled around with Mum).
Mum seems happier, clearly enjoying her company, and being less overworked and harassed allows me to have a sunnier disposition. As well, Xiao’s a keen photographer so getting better shots has been a bonus.
There are added expenses but the best reward, of course, is that I changed that ratio of fun to work. It surely tops 100 these days.
“We should go to China,” said Xiao recently.
“Why not?” Mum said. I agreed — it will be fun.
Pamela Watson is an author and solo African adventurer, surprised to be traveling with a companion, her 98-year-old mother, Gwen. She’s now on a mission to find fun and meaning through travel for her Mum and herself, and she hopes to inspire others to do the same.