Two worlds colliding - the perfect storm

One of the interesting things about my generation ( mid 50s) is a lot of us think that infirmity in old age is caused by some personal failing and the right diet, exercise and mental routines can prevent it. DH certainly thinks this. I mean I agree that it’s good to keep to a normal BMI, remain mobile and do mind exercises, but then I see my DPs 87 & 92 trapped in bodies that still just about function with failing minds that simply weren’t really designed to last so long.

Its good to do as much for your body as you can, but more importantly to recognise that a lot of this is just luck of the draw and unless you want to completely tarnish your DCs memory of you think about what adaptations and support you may need in later years and ideally get it in advance of actually needing it. My DPs are not awful people but I am now put in the position of having to put my own life plans on hold for them and thrust into spending more time with them than I would actively choose because they didn’t make adequate preparations, it’s easy to see their flaws.

I come from a skinny family as does DH. Our DC are the same. My dad had to work hard to stay over 10 stone at 6' tall. When he became ill he didn't have anything in the bank. I'm certainly not under weight but if I'm ill my weight just plummets in days.
So there's definitely something in this.

Agreed. MIL who I mentioned above was quite overweight and was eating to the end. That probably meant she lived a couple of years longer… but her quality of life (inability to move and self mobilize) was poor in the last 3/4 years of life. There is indeed a happy medium. X

I do sympathise. A few years ago now, I was having to pick up the pieces with my parents and their living situation. It was a harrowing experience. They cut me off years before for having the audacity of moving away with my DH. It also involved neglect of one of my siblings and alcoholism. I can’t even talk about it still with people I’m close to. By reading your thread, I know how you feel that you don’t want to discuss the details so I’m just wishing you all the best recovering from this

a location with shops and amenities in walking distance.

This is SO important.....

Luckily I have it, I am 70 and still healthy but am starting to feel my age, energy-wise. Got one of those shopping carts too lol - I don't have a car, live city central (in a beautiful area).

I had literally just had a conversation with my husband about how I don’t believe our kids will have to look after us in our old age like we are looking after my parents. I feel like what we have been through with both my parents and my in-laws in terms of health and way of living has enlightened us to a degree that we will not be like that. Obviously bad luck and bad health can befall any of us but we have provisioned for almost eventuality that we would not have to burden ourselves on our kids. I’m also not sure our kids have the fortitude or grit to deal with anything as tough as we have had it due to how parenting and the world has changed for them. I feel like we really are the sandwich generation.

Yes I think there really is a happy medium - far too much weight kind of has its own issues, but frail and skinny often does too - I reckon just being ‘slightly overweight’ is where I will aim for

So with the weight thing, my maternal side of the family have always been "chunky". Always in the high BMI, "well built" - we're all tall, we have large hands, large feet, large hips, muscles etc. Recently my mum has been in hospital with various cardiac issues, and lost a lot of weight due to the illness. However the doctors reckon one of the reasons she bounced back so quickly and is back independent and mobile again is that she had a buffer of weight she could afford to lose, without compromising her muscle health. He thought that if she had been thinner and less "well built" going in to hospital, she wouldn't have been able to mobilise so quickly once the cardiac stuff was stabilised, and it was the early mobilisation that was key to faster recovery. So just an interesting aside.

You are quite right, obviously, that no one can force us to give in to unreasonable demands from our elderly relatives. But I think most of us in this situation fall in to one of 3 categories, which make it very difficult:

1. Previously lovely parent who becomes 'difficult' due to ill health/dementia/lack of planning for old age (the 'cross that bridge' mentality) so it feels cruel to leave them to their own devices at this stage in their life
2. Parent who has always been unreasonable but fairly independent, so until they needed care etc the adult child has been able to just distance themselves from the circus and not had to directly challenge the behaviour. When parent becomes elderly and needs help they expect the adult child to come running whenever they call and the child feels bad about putting in stronger boundaries when parent is vulnerable.
3. Parent who has always been unreasonable and adult child has had a lifetime of being manipulated by them so they don't recognise that the expectations are unreasonable until it gets really bad.

Some fantastic options in the rented sector if you can go to £2k plus a month. - plus of course next to no maintenance or service charges. I know several people who have done this, banked their cash and the interest pays the rent

We could have got house clearance in but amongst the crap there were lots of things worth lots of money. And throwing out skip after skip of the rest was actually quite cathartic. The point is that PIL really really didn’t need to keep broken old doorbells or sawn off table legs, it was sifting through sixty years of stuff like that that made the whole scenario feel like a slap in the face. Completely avoidable.

Not easy op. My mother is 80s quite demanding. Always something to sort or chase up. I think keep independent if you can in life. I just visit saturdays its plenty. Its tiring mentally negative negative

Yes i saw that on the other thread. I agree re the weight - this has been the main issue with my mother and sister and latterly my father.

I think it's the boredom snacking that did for my father in terms of weight gain.

I was hopeless at sports when I was at school but I have always tried to keep active. I well and truly believe that keeping your weight down, even through it is hard at times, is the most important thing to do when you get older.
As I said up thread, one of my siblings and I were NC with my father and LC with my mother so I didn’t have responsibilities. However, I just don’t think anyone should ruin their lives for another person. You have children to love them not to make them unhappy.

Ah this answers my question about how you coped.

I am probably about to have a conversation with my sister along these lines. Years ago she kept saying to my mum 'dont worry me and husband will look after you when you get old, if we have to well sell our house and yours a buy a big place where we can all live togther' - grandiose much?!
Now it has come to pass and the reality is she is ill and old, her husband is ill and old - they are probably only 10 years off needing extra help in the house themselves due to their life limiting conditions. Ah well. I am letting things bumble along for now as I cant be dealing with the fallout at this time of year but come January i am back to LC and getting a second phone!

Hi thanks for your reply.

Actually before we discovered the retirement complex near us we were already considering downsizing with a move further in to town and getting a 3 bedroom flat (one for us and one each for hobbies - his is rail modelling and mine is crafting) with a balcony. They do still have service charges though so i dont think we will avoid that. So i guess the main thing to consider is the contractual side of things.

It's fantastic that you are doing so much and getting so much from life.

I feel it is largely an attitude as much as anything, but, I would guess that you have aways been fit or at the very least have implemented a lifestyle change at some point that has led you to where you are now?

How did you cope with your own respective parent's aging process?

As you say things can change at any time but it sounds like you have considered things and are able to bring in what you need when you need and have talked about it with your kids.

I have empathy for the people posting here as i can see how easy it is to get sucked in to things, especially where there are patterns of co-dependancy, depression, long term illness and so on. It all must be even harder if you actually love your parents and they undergo a personality change as a result of age/illness.

I feel it may take more effort not to be subsumed and maintain boundaries than either giving in or walking away from it.

I am close to the latter with my family and will do it if i feel i need to as I'm not inclined to repeat generational family patterns. Having said all that, let's see where I am in another 5 years.

No advice OP, just solidarity. I am going through something similar and it’s draining.

@DemonsandMosquitoes

This is the same old story isn’t it? You do not have to put up with it. Parents will only demand their children help if the children will do it. For various reasons, one of my siblings and I are LC with my mother and the other sibling did not want to (quite rightly) do care. My mother soon realised that nobody was going to do care for her and had carers in before moving into a nursing home. You just have to be prepared to let things fail.
You do not have to spend ages clearing out a home. When my aunt went into a home, we got house clearance in.

PIL lived with a ‘cross that bridge’ mentality. Complete and utter denial of ageing. Refusal to spend any money despite having nearly £1m in the bank. Their expectations were ridiculous as they began to struggle. Particularly of SIL who had been foolish enough to live next door. We hit a new low as things progressed with SIL and BIL hauling naked FIL out the bath towards end of life. Cleaning shit off the hall carpet. They wouldn’t pay for carers. FIL died and MIL is now in care costing over £4k a month with never a word of thanks for the whole year it took four of us every weekend to clear
the house rammed with sixty years of crap. No planning. No order. Indescribable.
It’s left a very bad taste and a very poor legacy.

DH won't hear of it

@Sofasu despite you being desperate to move?

My mother never lost capacity but became very frail and couldn't deal with negotiating with carers / surgery / hospital. We found the GP surgery in particular very difficult to deal with even when they had the LPA.

Yes I agree with you. As I said my children have offered to arrange care if we need it but not do it. We don’t expect anything from them but I think they will probably do a few phone calls. A man in our street has his care managed by his son who lives abroad for most of the time.
We have been on a program of house improvement.

I wish we could make this something we talk about more. I do not want to put my kids through what my parents have done to me.

This really resonated with me.

My parents spent most of their lives running themselves ragged to help/bail out/protect other people- usually members of the extended family (frequently my siblings or aunts/uncles that we never saw unless they wanted something and were frankly unpleasant to my DP most of the time) but sometimes friends and even people they barely knew. When I was younger I thought that, although it sometimes inconvenienced me, they were truly amazingly good people. As an adult, and with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that most of the time they were enabling people who repeatedly made bad decisions, rather than actually helping in the long term. Doing this seemed to become their identity and looking back I think sometimes their intervention wasn't actually needed or requested. All of this meant that they didn't have any time/money/energy to do normal things like seeing friends who were not having a crisis, having hobbies, travel etc or spending time just doing nice things with friends/family who were not in crisis. They were always very derogatory about people who did normal, nice things ('Don't they have anything better to do?) Mum is now alone and has no hobbies or interests, has made no new friends since she was very young and doesn't want to start socialising now. Her real friends, from when she was younger have either passed away, are unwell themselves, or she has lost touch because she never had time for them and of course the people she spent her life helping are not interested now she isn't of use to them. Her expectation is that someone capable (ie me) will put their own life on hold and drop everything to look after her/deal with any crisis she has etc as she did so many times for other people. This was never discussed, but clearly assumed so absolutely no plans have been made for old age and everything that goes with that. Helping other people is so central to her identity that she still wants to continue to do this but via me. She would, I'm sure, see this as being a good person and passing the baton down to the next generation. I see it as the start of a cycle of dependence and obligation that I am determined not to pass on to my own children.
My mum insists on living in a house that is far too big for her (and expensive to heat/maintain) because she doesn't like change but also because someone might need a place to stay. Almost all of her cupboard space is filled with things she hasn't used for years but that might be needed if people came to stay/she hosted a big family gathering/someone might want to borrow. Meanwhile things she uses every day are stacked on work surfaces or shoved in the bottom of her wardrobe. She has a spare room full of things other people have left with her because they don't have room (including a set of shelves full of books belonging to an elderly neighbour who may or may not still be alive, taken in for safe keeping so he could have them back when he was ready, when his horrid daughter insisted he went in to a home). These things are all making life harder for her, but she will not even consider changing any of it. Her house is in a fairly isolated location with no public transport/local shop/amenities but she will not consider moving to a location where she could access more things for herself because she wouldn't be able to have as many bedrooms/huge drive for people to park/space to store all her stuff.
I think it would be much better if we could normalise families talking properly about plans for old age, and for people to streamline their living spaces (not just downsizing, but reducing 'stuff') before they reach the point where this is too physically and emotionally difficult.