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Elderly neighbor doesn’t know how to do life

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A couple years ago I got friendly with some neighbors, an older couple (mid/late 70’s). The man was in the military and his wife, we’ll call her Nancy, is a semi-retired lawyer. Unfortunately, the man died a year ago and left his wife alone in the house, with no children and very few extended family who aren’t in the local area. Shortly after he died, she started asking me for help, mostly with computer/technology related things like sending emails or using her cell phone.

After a couple instances of helping her, it dawned on me that she has absolutely no clue what the fuck she’s doing, with anything. She uses Earthlink Webmail (email), which is so old even people with AOL tell me she’s behind the times. She has no clue how to attach or download a document, print said document, put something on a flash drive, and she’s barely able to use a search engine. On top of it all, she’s paying a ridiculous amount of money for this shitty email service, when she could just use Gmail for free.

Her issues aren’t just with computers and technology, but also simple adult-level life tasks. I finally realized that her husband obviously did everything for her, paying bills, fixing things around the house, handling finances, you name it. When her husband died, she told me she didn’t even know if her house was paid off or not. My suspicions were confirmed when I met her sister-in-law who stayed at her house after flying in for the funeral. Her SIL (who was even older, in her 80’s) privately told me she was worried about Nancy and how she was going to cope. I spent countless hours with her trying to show her basic life skills.

Now it’s all finally coming to a head, because she’s selling her house and moving out of state. Yet, she can’t accomplish half of the things she needs to because she either doesn’t know how, or needlessly stresses herself out over little things to the point that she gives up.

The most frustrating part of it all is that she is very stubborn and takes very little advice. There have been so many instances where I steered her in one direction or another, she refused to listen, and then she ends up acknowledging I was right all along, after having already screwed herself. Yet the cycle never ends. She’s constantly worried about having enough money to live on, yet just today she said she’s considering chartering a private plane to fly her and her two dogs to her new locale after the house sells, because she refuses to take a greyhound bus, and refuses to put the dogs on an airline with her, and doesn’t want to drive her expensive Mercedes sports car cross country.

Speaking of the car, I told her to sell it and use the money to pick up something cheaper and far more reliable with more utility, and also have a little cash leftover to put towards more important matters. Did she listen? Nope. She says it’s “her baby” that her husband bought her and doesn’t want to part with it. I suggested a newer, low mileage Toyota Corolla that I saw on carmax, but she said 45k miles is too high and that it would break down between here and her new place.

So I basically give up. I’m in my 30’s, and my parents themselves are her age or older. Yet as terrible and stubborn as my parents may be with certain things, they know how to send a fucking email and they don’t need advice on how to budget. What’s sad about Nancy is that she’s a college educated lawyer with significant experience, but somehow made it through life without so much as paying a gas bill.

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