Season to Share: Grandparents in their 70s caring for 4 grandkids in cramped house where everything's broken
Life already was plenty challenging for Catherine and Otis Hall, with their daughter, her disabled husband and four grandchildren crowded into the septuagenarian couple’s three-bedroom home.
Then, one day about a year ago, their 35-year-old daughter started complaining that she felt sick. It was the beginning of a series of heart attacks that left her permanently incapacitated in a hospital bed.
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With their daughter unable to walk or speak and their daughter’s husband recovering in their home from a stroke of his own, it has fallen to Catherine and Otis to parent their four young grandchildren, who range in age from 1 to 9. And to do so in a deteriorating house.
Their Boynton Beach home is cheery, hot and crowded. The hub is a living room where a crib competes for space with sofas, shelves and a coffee table, while a box fan whirs in the open doorway.
Like their owners, the home is aging and stressed. The air-conditioning has been broken for months. The shower in the hallway bathroom floods, rendering it all but useless. Before school, the children often wash up in a sink instead.
The dishwasher is busted, too. At night the Halls close the screen-less windows to keep bugs from infiltrating and grit out their nights in the stuffy heat.
Working three jobs to get by
What isn’t broken is the couple’s determination to keep everything together. Otis, 70, holds down a part-time job at a Chick-fil-A and does landscaping work on the weekends. In his spare time, he earns extra money as an Uber driver.
Catherine, 71, spends her mornings getting the eldest two children to school, then cares for the youngest two at home. She keeps the house clean and prepares the meals. The three oldest children share a bedroom – the two girls, Joneyah, 8, and Jontyia, 3, squeezing into one twin bed, the boy, Jimmon, 9, in the other.
“It’s not easy,” Catherine says, “but I thank the Lord for taking me through it.”
When she can, Catherine gets over to Bethesda Hospital East to visit her daughter. The children she doesn’t seem to recognize. But once Catherine placed the baby, Hor’Hyrum, on the bed with her, and Catherine could feel her daughter's body heave, as if trying to speak.
And even though she can't communicate, Catherine is convinced her daughter still recognizes her.
“There’s something about her eye when she’s looking at me,” she said. “I’m thanking the Lord she’s still alive.”
Catherine wishes she could see her more often. But she also worries about how to care for her long-term. If her daughter is discharged from the hospital, she is likely to need full-time care and specialized equipment to keep her alive, things the Halls can hardly accommodate in their cramped home.
With limited income and expanding needs for their grandchildren, the Halls need significant help. Their home requires major improvements, including plumbing fixes, new household appliances, a new air-conditioning system and a truck for Otis to transport his landscaping equipment (he often has to rent a U-Haul).
Joneyah needs corrective surgery to fix a hip problem that makes one of her legs longer than the other. All of the children need new clothes and shoes as they grow, as well as a new computer for their studies and toys for the holidays.
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The Halls' Wishes
The Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County estimates the Halls need $45,000 in donations to create a suitable home environment for their four grandchildren. That includes money for a new air-conditioning system, plumbing work to fix a leaking shower, new furniture and household appliances. The family also needs new clothes, computers and Christmas toys for the children, and a truck for Otis Hall to transport his landscaping equipment.
Nominated by: Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Charity: Boynton Beach grandparents need help caring for grandkids
