Being judged for not visiting Dad in care home.

[YouKnowNothingAboutUs]

If you have a relative in a home, do you judge the relatives of other residents if you don’t see them often? Well please don’t!

Just ranting really.

Visiting DF today in his dementia home. A relative of another resident (she was visiting her husband) commented ‘I’ve not seen you before. I’ve never seen anyone visit Richard’.

I actually saw her a fortnight ago and I said hello then.
My usual day to visit is a Friday after work, rather than a weekend, so if she doesn’t visit at 3pm on Friday she won’t see me often.

However, I actually don’t visit often for numerous reasons.

Firstly he didn’t give us so much as a backwards glance after my DP got divorced.
We had little contact from around age 10 and when I was around 18 years old he moved abroad.
He has never known when our birthdays are or how old we were.
She asked if I was Jane. I’m not Jane. Jane is the first born and golden child. Everyone in the home knows about Jane.
He actually has 3 children but no one will have heard about myself or our other sibling.
When he moved abroad I did visit him age around 20.
I then visited him a further 4 times over the years taking DH, then DC to meet him. Expensive, long flights when we are not high earners. He never visited the U.K.
Jane never flew over to visit him, our other sibling went three times.
Finally around 12 years ago he returned to the U.K. for good. He lived quite close to Jane so visited her often. I think in the last 12 years he had visited my house twice.
He never phoned and the only time I saw him was when I drove the 100 mile round trip to see him, the only time I spoke to him was when I called him.
I have a number of chronic health conditions that mean I am in pain, I am exhausted, I struggle working part time, I’m a carer for my terminally ill DH and we have a child with SEN.
So, visiting someone who I happen to be related to, but who never gave me much thought, is never the top of my list.
My siblings don’t visit.
I go as a duty visit.
I go when the guilt I feel about another human being being in such an awful place gets too much.
He is my father who I desperately wanted the father daughter relationship with, that other people have had with theirs, but I will never have. I mourn for this often, and have done for decades, but I don’t need to be judged by someone who very obviously had a different relationship with their father.

Not sure if I feel better or worse for getting that off my chest tbh. All I keep hearing in my head is ‘I’ve never seen anyone visit Richard’.

I feel that I should clarify that. We were 'lucky' that my MIL's dementia journey was relatively gentle. She retained her sweet personality throughout, and bar just a couple of short episodes of very uncharacteristic anger, it remained a poignant kind of pleasure to sit with her, even when she was mostly gone. It was upsetting but not distressing or horrible to witness her decline.

But there were some people in her home who very much had not retained 'themselves' and whose behaviour would have been very distressing for loved ones to witness. Should I suffer that way, I really would not want my DDs to visit me, and I intend to let them know that while I'm okay. I'd rather be remembered as who I am, not who I might turn into in that kind of scenario.

I think visiting family with dementia gets increasingly difficult. I wouldn't judge anyone.

Some people have nothing else to think about

Yes, good message for the op.

Just smile and ignore. There are all sorts of people you come across - busy bodies, chatter boxes, perhaps she is also a bit senile. Who knows. Don't take it to heart, just be pleasant and move on. My mum spent 18 months in a home, you get all sorts there!

Hello, nurse in a care home here.

I never ever judge families who don't visit the residents.

There are so many potential reasons that they don't. The resident I see could be a completely different person to what they have been earlier in life. They might have been abusive, they might have been a bad parent, or it might be too hard for families to see them in their current state.

Be kind to yourself, your feelings are very valid and you don't have to visit out of duty if it makes you sad and uncomfortable. Thinking of you

The OP who has made no such comment to another visitor.

You Might want to read the OP before launching in to lecturing them next time.

HAND.

No one has the right to make any judgements. I think you're really good to go at all.

My mum has Alzheimer's and is in a care home. I live 300 miles away so I barely get to see her. We were incredibly close before the disease got her and part of me feels so guilty that I don't go much, but logistically I can't. Plus she has no idea who I am and that's very hard to handle.

She sounds like a nosy bitch.

I would just stare at her and ask her what it has to do with her. When she starts waffling I'd ask her again what it has to do with her.
You don't owe an explanation to anyone.

@MegaClutterSlut ” I don't think he would visit me if roles were reversed though. “
An excellent point. Doesn’t sound like he’d be rushing to visit you.

You do what’s right for you, OP and ignore anyone else’s opinion.

I don't judge. I can never know what is the background to people's lives.

My DF was a thoroughly unpleasant man. Misogynistic, controlling, spiteful, violent. I went NC when I was 16, and if he had been in a home I wouldn't have visited him. We had no relationship. We disliked each other. He made my childhood a misery. I owed him nothing.

I'm not ashamed of that. It is no-one else's concern.

Don't let other people's opinions have any impact on you. You visit or don't visit for your own reasons, and have to live with your conscience. Don't allow others' uninformed views to worry you.

I work in a care home and we have some people visiting relatives daily to some visiting once year or not at all. We don't judge because we know families can be complicated and welcome families when they do come. The only thing that does upset us is when family who only visit once or twice a year just come in to moan and criticise us when we go above and beyond for their relatives.