Would you let your adult child or parents live with you?

[hunter]

47. Of course. My grandma was the most disruptive person I've ever known...

...she could afford good nursing homes but good nursing homes would refuse to keep her. (She'd been removed from her own home as a danger to herself and others. The police and paramedics had dragged her out kicking, cussing, hitting, and biting. Frighteningly she had guns but it wasn't in her nature to kill for meat unless she was hungry.)

Then mostly she lived with my parents.

It was either that or drop grandma off in the wilderness. But that would have been cruel to the wildlife. And she'd probably have returned home anyways, riding a grizzly bear or wild horse, carrying an even larger baggage of chaos with her.

My mom has told me and my siblings that if she's ever as bad as grandma to throw her in a volcano. My grandma put my mom through hell. If we'd ever thrown my grandma into a volcano it probably would have spit her out unharmed and crazier than ever.

Seriously, my grandma understood only a few things in life: horses, dogs, wild animals, and hot metal. Ordinary human interactions, except for the wild animal kind (including sex when she was younger) were entirely unimportant in her personal universe. She was a feral creature unless she was working with animals or welding. She made a career of welding, starting on the family ranch, switching to the shipyards during World War II.

She lived long enough to see my wife and I married. I was terrified that she'd disrupt our wedding somehow, especially in church, but she only said a few wildly inappropriate things to various people (including the priest...) and seemed to have had a good time. I believe she was observing the human wildlife.

My wife and I both come from families that take care of one another. We've had friends and relatives living in our own house and we will again.

Who knows? Maybe someday I'll be that crazy relative. I've been close to that a few times, but first they have to catch me... I'm pretty resourceful about food and safe places to sleep. I've lived in my car in a church parking lot, an empty apartment when a family I'd been living with ran off because they couldn't pay the rent They didn't tell me, and it was just before final exams. I came back and they were gone. So I camped out a few weeks ready to jump out the window if the landlord showed up. Then I lived in a garden shed in someone's backyard.

Seriously, my kids and parents and various other people are welcome here anytime if our dogs approve of them, they can tolerate the usual chaos, and they don't smoke. The smoking, I can't do anything about that. Intellectually I can tolerate it, but my body's biology responds with very severe asthma. (I'm already taking enough hard-core meds for that.)