MIL in home hospice care, feeling stuck

Fellow dads, my mother in law has entered home hospice care. She requires 24 hour care, which will fall to the family to provide because we simply can’t afford to pay a professional. She could have weeks or months left.

My wife has two sisters who live significantly closer to MIL than we do, but for a couple of reasons the burden of care feels like it’s falling hardest on us.

1. Wife is a SAHM, and I work remote 3/5 days of the week. This makes us very mobile.

2. The other two sisters both work full time. One has a teenage child. The other is an empty nester.

However, we have a toddler. Maintaining her activities and routine mean shuttling her back and forth to and from our hometown.

Further, any time my wife is responsible for her mom, I have to be responsible for our daughter. This makes establishing a work routine and keeping up with my tasks difficult due to constant context switching.

It feels like the other two sisters both have the luxury of giving us the their availability and we have to fill in any gaps, with no flexibility on their end.

It also feels like it’s wrong to have our child in a situation where she is having to watch her grandmother slowly die and be cruel to those around her.

We are a no TV household. Our child only gets tv when at a grandparents house. When at MIL, the tv is on 24/7 (all she does is watch tv). We can engage our daughter to keep her away for a time, but the TV is a constant presence and draw. It is only on child appropriate programming when the MIL relinquishes the remote. I feel the need to protect my child from the environment I feel forced into. At least MIL has finally quit smoking.

I’m not sure what I’m looking for here. A kick in the ass and a “this is life dude, lean in and be her rock”? Commiseration? I just needed to scream into the void.

Thanks for listening.