So bloody exhausted waiting for someone to die 2

Re. feminist issue, say it sister.

Did anyone else give a whoop and a go-girl to @StiffyByngsDogBartholomew and @Tara336 when they announced that they were going to what they needed to do for themselves for once. PLEASE stick to this - go to the gym, turn off your phone, do whatever you need to.

My DD was very ill for two years and that state of alert and raised cortisol aged me greatly, especially since it segued into a similar state for my parents. It's like what they said about Covid - that we can deal with threats if they are concrete and short-lived, but something amorphous and ongoing means that our cortisol gets raised and never properly depletes.

oh my, dead parent envy - I have this and I'd never say it out loud to anyone but my DH. His father died of a heart attack aged 81, having previously been frail but looked after by his wife - DH wouldn't have been able to name his GP or heart condition. Then his brilliant utterly independent, tennis-playing tech savvy mother died three years later of a very swift cancer (three months). Really horrible but had a very firm expiry date. She did all the downsizing and decluttering when his father died, with pretty minimal help from us.

Yeah, I'm envious and because DH is brilliant, he agrees. Doesn't say anything like, oh you're so lucky to have them alive, you'll miss them when they've gone or any of those pious things that occasional posters on here say.

Ha, so only his children are allowed to shop for him, and even when the neighbour offers he’s wouldn’t dream of asking for anything other than a pint of milk? That’s why he was angry about the “interfering” - he’s embarrassed to inconvenience his neighbour, right?

Dh took df, 90’s, back to his flat last Friday and did a supermarket shop to last until we go this Saturday.
Dsis has rung today to say df says he has no food ( he should have).
Apparently ndn asked if he needed anything and df said just milk. Dsis rang ndn and asked if df could add a couple of extra items to the list and df is furious with dsis for interfering.
Tbf df is cross about everything anyone does all of the time. He sees his dc as minions.

I think my dsis hit the nail on the head when a friend’s parent died and dsis admitted to dead parent envy!

Have spoken to DM today she's visiting DF in the care home who has another chest infection, its being treated?! The agreement was we would let nature take its course but apparently since moving from MH unit to a care home we apparently need to agree to this all over again?! Surely that can't be right?

Anyway because today he's with it she's going to not say anything and let it be treated and is considering asking DF what he would like, I said that a bad idea as how with it is he? And will that set him off on another rage when he isn't so withit but remembers the conversation.

elderly parent care is a feminist issue. That nobody gives a fuck about

Agree with this. My Uncle drives community transport for the elderly. When he refers to the relative’s caring and managing their everyday needs the default collective term is “the daughters”. No husbands, brothers or sons. The men have conveniently absented themselves from the situation. Because it’s working for free.
Meanwhile we lose 4-8 years life expectancy caring. It is not a blessing, a privilege or fulfilling. It’s emptied me out.

brutally pruned since saplinghood and in winter resembles a towering fist. Very apt analogy!

An elderly lady,( I’d guess at least 80yrs) in front of me stopped to talk to a friend. I couldn’t help overhearing - friend asked how her mother was! She replied shed just had her 101st birthday…my thoughts turned to the probable daughter/grandaughter in her 50’s/60’s no doubt doing all the running about! The running about was probably done by the daughter you saw, in her 70s but looking 10 years older (my dad is 101)

We stopped responding to that one after the 2nd time I called my boss to say I needed to timeshift, drive to his house an hour away via the supermarket and get there to find the freezer full if ready meals I used to audit both dad’s food and his medicines. I kept a spreadsheet on which I listed all the food in the house, and used formulae for rate of use (he was a man of habit) to know how much of everything would be left on a particular day. Then checked his cupboards about weekly. It was better than the previous system (Monday “I’ve got enough food to last till Easter”, Thursday “I’m Completely Out of bread and steak pies”) but it was an admin load I could have done without

No, not really. The needs, not just physical but for love and company, are greater than children can provide. You’ll end up needing attention on a par with a newborn, and you know what that takes out of you! No matter how decent and kind you are, no-one can give you that much.

FIL got sepsis from a UTI and refused treatment for it. He was in incredible pain from cancer that had spread to his bones. He wasn't tolerating any form of pain relief and the resulting vomiting and diarrhea was causing diabetic hypos. He just decided he'd had enough.

@StiffyByngsDogBartholomew I get it. When FIL was alive we dreaded the 7.30/8am phone call. Just as we were getting ready for work it would be "I'm too poorly to go to the supermarket and I've got nothing in". We stopped responding to that one after the 2nd time I called my boss to say I needed to timeshift, drive to his house an hour away via the supermarket and get there to find the freezer full if ready meals and the only thing they actually needed was bread and milk which MILs sister round the corner would have been happy to get from the local shop. Was hard for DH to drop for those as he is self employed and people might have booked a days leave for him to come and do a job at their house but I eas WFH and had a sympathetic boss who was happy for me to make up the time.

@StiffyByngsDogBartholomew it doesn't matter that it's a horoscope - it's obviously struck a deep chord- go with it!

the first website I opened today was my horoscope, usually it would be BBC news but I need all the validation I can get

@RescueRespect thank you, yes it certainly frustrates me that the staff at the care home assume that my DF is deep down an absolute sweetheart and would never have behaved like this before dementia, in all honesty pre dementia he was even nastier he just can't think that fast now or speak most days. The staff in the MH unit where DF was kept while sectioned said they had witnessed him deliberately trying to trip up other patients and was trying to control the newer more inexperienced staff.

I think caring for or dealing with dementia takes over your life and its not something that's easy to stop as SS, GPS and carers are all too happy for you to do all the work, I had to fight for help and I found educating myself on the obligations/law and what to say and when helped. Obviously that was time consuming and took months of hard work but it paid off. But you are fighting (you shouldn't be) a system that is ruled by budgets and is short staffed so if they see even a glimpse of you coping or that you might "manage" they will leave you to it.

My DF became dangerous and was not adverse to kicking, hitting and using his walking stick as a weapon and in my case trying to burn me. SS told us to not leave DM alone with DF as she was in danger, there was no end date for this and they expected us as a family to take turns and be there 24 hours a day 7 days a week! I tried working from their home, DF thought I had stolen his laptop and tried to snatch it off me...it was my own work lap top. In the end we had to tell SS we were not continuing as we were in danger, had homes and families we wanted to be with.

This had an impact on my marriage, my work and my health. I came closest breaking point before Christmas as I was just exhausted and ground down by everything. I stood outside our offices (I work for DH) and cried because I just couldn't handle anymore stress. I deal with service work for our customers and some people are lovely others not so nice and since COVID ive noticed a change in people's behaviour for the worse. I cried and told my husband I don't want to work for him anymore, can't cope and I'd rather have no money then do it anymore. If I'm honest I think its just that everything had just been too much and I'd tried to keep going and I finally snapped.

He has spoken to DM i will not be helping her empty her house, decorate or reorganise she will have to get someone in (I had emptied two bedrooms and redecorated them for her). She is to stop telling me how I should feel about DF and if I don't want to see him,/hug him then I will not be. My DH is brilliant because he did it in such a way she won't argue. I'm so grateful for that as I can begin putting myself first now 🙏

I'm sorry just place-marking. I didn't realise there was a new thread and need to read it all... it's such an important but undiscussed truth.
Plus just to add - the title is exactly right in my view.

That is very true about people being 'orphaned' in mid-life years ago - when I think of my own family, three of my grandparents died when my parents were 37, 43, 47 (smoking played a large part in that). However, I am very glad I knew my other grandmother for longer, although she did develop dementia in her 80s and become a shadow of herself. Longevity is worthless if it comes at the price of mental and physical devastation.

Nice of you to say “eloquent” @popularinthe80s because I’m not sure my word vomit was particularly eloquent! You are so right about the old family dynamics though. I think it’s so interesting how the decline of an elderly parent always seems to cause the adult children to revert to their positions in the family, i.e. the eldest has to step in and the younger ones try very hard to stay out of it. Unless the elder ones are male, in which case the daughter has to do everything no matter where she is in the birth order. In my husband’s family, there are no daughters so their poor niece/cousin is being roped in to fulfil the role of daughter (not me or BIL’s wife as we are not of their culture - guess I should feel relieved instead of noticing this minor snub).

My husband, as the younger child, is very much trying to stay out of it and not have much hand in the decision making. Unless, of course, this is all happening via WhatsApp and he isn’t telling me about any of it. That is possible. At this stage I really don’t know whether he is keeping things from me on purpose, whether he just doesn’t think there’s any point in telling me, or whether he just doesn’t have the energy to speak about any of it 🤷‍♀️

@Ilikeyoursleeves you're absolutely right. That poor woman.
@Valleyofthedollymix I've never thought of it like this before - that this is an unprecedented moment in history, and one we're not evolved for.
Everyone - I think it's the swings of emotion that are so difficult to bear. This morning at 4am I was furious and wanted it over. Half an hour ago, talking to my mum's (excellent) doctor, I was in deepest grief and would give anything to keep my mum going forever. And then, as @Jellycats4life and everyone else so eloquently describe, all the day-to-day politics of old family dynamics have to be contended with.
It's a total headfuck.

I was at a funeral over Christmas for one of DH's relatives who had had dementia and had been poorly for ages. She was from a family of 7 kids. The eulogy was all about how she was the sibling who cared for their elderly parents most of her adult life. She ran them everywhere, took them to all the appointments and latterly lived with her elderly mum to look after and care for her.

I don't think it's a coincidence that she is the first of the 7 adult children to die.

I was waiting in a queue at the post office before Christmas.
An elderly lady,( I’d guess at least 80yrs) in front of me stopped to talk to a friend. I couldn’t help overhearing - friend asked how her mother was! She replied shed just had her 101st birthday…my thoughts turned to the probable daughter/grandaughter in her 50’s/60’s no doubt doing all the running about!

I'd actually add that I don't think you necessarily have to have a very troubled relationship for the state of being a child to go onto long. My parents tried and weren't ostensibly bad parents but their religion and judgment hangs over me and I still have feelings of living my life in opposition to these.

When someone's parent died I used to write, tritely, in condolence cards that you never feel old enough to be orphaned. But actually I now realise that the opposite can be true - that you get too old to be a child. And then it's complicated by the fact that you're a child (carrying all the complexities of that relationship) and you're having to act as their parent (organising them, making decisions, hands-on caring) without having an official title.

I think it's fascinating how many of us are going through such similar emotions and thinking thoughts that someone up thread aptly described as 'taboo'. Unless we're a uniquely odd group of people (which I don't think we are), this means that these supposedly taboo thoughts are prevalent but just squashed and evaded.

Why? Partly because the majority of those going through this are women, I think it's also that it's all relatively new in human history. I think we're not evolved to welcome death because for so many millennia you had to strive to avoid it before the age of 40.

The only time I've heard it said out loud was by David Sedaris. He wasn't directly responsible for the care (or overseeing of care/admin) of his father but he had a difficult and complicated relationship that couldn't resolve while he was alive. I heard it and then sought it out and keep it on my phone to share:

"It used to be that people's parents died in their 60s and 70s, cleanly of good old-fashioned cancers and heart attacks, meaning the child was on his or her own by the age of 45 or so. Now, though, with people living longer and longer, you can be a grandparent and still be somebody's son or daughter. The woman across the road from us in Normandy was 80 when her mother died - 80. That, to me, is terrifying. It's disfiguring to be a child for that long. Or at least it is if your relationship with that parent is troubled. For years, I'd felt like one of those pollardesd plane trees I'll forever associate diwth Paris, the sort that's been brutally pruned since saplinghood and in winter resembles a towering fist."