agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Carolyn: We and our friends are aging. I have been aware for some time that we need to install a railing on our front stoop. My husband is against installing a handrail because of the cost. We have the funds.

He simply doesn’t want to use them for this home improvement.

This week a friend, recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s, came to visit with his wife. He couldn’t navigate the porch steps. I went to help him as he reached for a planter that I knew wouldn’t hold his weight. Near disaster averted. My heart broke watching him walk slowly into our home.

I felt we added to our friend’s emotional burden as well as endangering him physically. My husband’s response was that he is supposed to use a cane. It’s too costly to install a railing. We can help him navigate the steps next time, or his wife can.

We have always been the “entertainers” in our group. I want friends to feel welcome. Making it hard for them to enter our home and further diminishing their mobility, safety and sense of self seems unwelcoming at best and cruel at worst.

My husband and I regularly discuss your columns. I told him I’d be writing to you.

— Perilous Porch

Perilous Porch: We’re all aging, if we’re lucky enough to be north of the dirt line.

But we have choices when it comes to being or not being a jerk.

I believe your husband knows which one he’s choosing without my having to say it.

I’ll say it anyway. Your husband has chosen to be a jerk to your friend. A disabling illness comes with enough stress and heartbreak on its own without the added worries of pitching oneself into a flowerpot on what is supposed to be a life-affirming evening with friends. He might feel humiliated or scared or both and just stop coming. Awful. Your instincts on this are correct across the board.

If that doesn’t impress your husband, then I’m sure the lawyers and insurance experts in the audience see other implications of not making your home’s entry safe for anyone who comes to your door, health or friendship status notwithstanding.

Arguably most important, your husband has chosen to be a jerk to you. It is plain to me after less than a minute of reading that you are emotionally invested in your role as group host. It’s how you see yourself and it hurts you when your guests aren’t comfortable. That your husband would deny you the railing based on short money (“short” for someone who has it to spare, obviously) says he’s missing the point of who you are. Whether that’s by accident or design, I guess you’ll find out when you discuss this over your bran flakes.

You can offer, and I suggest you do, to meet him halfway or more: You take on the labor of gathering estimates for the work and finding ways to do it inexpensively, and, if he still balks, pay for it yourself out of your discretionary funds — which I hope you both arranged for early on in your marriage. If you didn’t, then, aging or not, there’s still time to set that up for occasions just like this. Not to mention, your husband’s stance is just bean-county and cruel enough to warrant a preemptive stash.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/21/carolyn-hax-railing-disabled-friend/

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

1. A railing isn't that expensive.

2. If their plan is to age in place, they're gonna need to upgrade their home infrastructure sooner rather than later - starting with that railing, but certainly not ending there. If Hubby thinks he can escape aging by not preparing for it, he's only fooling himself. There is no delaying the inevitable here.

My mum currently lives in a building where the average age of the resident is "senior citizen", and they still fought her tooth and nail when she advocated for a ramp into a single door of the building. People are fucking weird about accessibility and I have no idea why.

Yeah, I remember a story about a family with a young child who used a wheelchair and their neighbour fought them tooth and nail about a wheelchair ramp because it was "unsightly"

Magical thinking? As long as we don't have it we won't need it?

Yup. It is denial, pure and simple. The husband is a jerk about other people’s needs, but it is firstly about his own fear of aging and not wanting to think of himself as vulnerable, aka disabled as all of us are to various degrees with age if it hasn’t been our life time experience in various capacities. He probably needs a therapist to help him catch up with the realities of his aging body and learning acceptance of how to take care of it. He needs it pointed out that he's putting up an outsized fight against a simple railing, which means it’s not the railing that is the problem, and that the problem is bigger than he can deal with on his own--hence therapy. Which he will probably never accept. LW needs to demand he release his share of payment for that railing and get the railing done.

Dump hubby in the flower pot. Hopefully he makes better fertilizer than maintenance supervisor.

LW's husband should feel bad, and get a - proper, strong, safe - railing installed ASAP.

LW might want to point out that if friend gets hurt, friend's health insurance company may sue LW and husband...

Also, I am currently wishing ALL the injuries on LW's husband. What an arsehole! :(

My husband’s response was that he is supposed to use a cane. It’s too costly to install a railing. We can help him navigate the steps next time, or his wife can.

As Carolyn notes, LW's husband is choosing to be a jerk. It would be reasonable for LW to say both "we should definitely install a ramp, and you know we can afford it" and "it sounds like there's something other than the expense here. Help me understand this, please."

It sounds like either LW's husband is tired of them being the "entertainers" in their group, or specifically dislikes the friend in question.

If he dislikes the person with Parkinson's, especially if it's for reasons unrelated to the Parkinson's disease, what he's doing is wrong, but also telling him that he may need the ramp someday is unlikely to make a difference.

If LW's husband has told LW he's tired of hosting, and nothing has changed, he might be hoping that refusing to install a ramp will mean some of the parties are moved elsewhere. That's still not a good move, but it feels like a slightly different discussion.