To feel pissed off that the responsibility for my parents lies with me?

[Weathergames]

My parents are 80 and 70.

My mum, the 70 yr old was always healthy but in the last few years has had a lot of health issues including cancer.

I am a single mum, have 3 teenagers, work full time and live 100 miles away but can be there within 2 hours.

My sister lives in Europe and realistically is a day away and we don't really get on. She has a husband and kids and they both earn shitloads.

When my mum had cancer I was privvy to a lot more info via my dad than my sister and worried a lot more as my dad seems to panic a lot, and confides in me which is fine but tells me not to tell my sister (traditionally "daddy's girl".

My mum had a had a serious health issue yesterday. My dad emailed me (he's deaf so cannot do phone calls) and asked me not to tell anyone. I left it 24 hours and then did tell my sister as I felt it was unfair for her not to know.

I am now acutely aware I will be responsible for my aging parents as she is in a different country which actually is quite shit?

[ajandjjmum]

My DBro and I have a deal - he is a couple of hours away, and doesn't get home regularly. But he knows that I will tell him what is going on, and won't try to pretty up the truth. He can then make a judgement on whether he needs to visit urgently or not. Mind you, we get on well, and we have had over 20 years of parental ill health to work on our system!

And during the last couple of weeks of my Dad's life, he dropped everything and came home, which gave me untold support.

[lurkerspeaks]

You have my sympathy. It is shit.

My advice - make them play by your rules or you leave them to get on with it eg. you tell your sister what is going on (not fair to exclude her).

My rather harsh frame of mind came about as for a period of time last year I was trying to support my Grandmother to continue living at home. She wouldn't cooperate at all (I work full time in a massively demanding job with loads of antisocial hours and had recently had a hugely devastating personal bereavement)

Crisis point came one day when I was pre-night shift (and in the middle of a horrible run of about 10 days of work) and I phoned her to ask her what groceries she wanted. She wouldn't tell me so I had to drive to her house to physically check what she needed. Then drive to the supermarket. Then I had to do her washing and a bit of basic cleaning as the house had dipped well below the dysentery line.

The irony was that Ocado were bring my groceries that afternoon and my cleaner had been the previous day (cleaner at that point was also doing my washing as I was so stressed and time short).

In the midst of all of this (I still remember trying to hoover and being so unbelievably tired) she decided to tell me how amazing one of my siblings was as they had send her a postcard. A fucking postcard from their home 300 miles away when they hadn't even seen my Gran for 9 months. Yet that was classed as wonderful whilst she wouldn't even show me the consideration of allowing me to organise a cleaner, or give me a shopping list in advance. It doesn't help that said sibling only works about 8 hours/ week and Gran is constantly going on about how busy they are as they have two kids. I'm afraid my response is never polite.

I'm afraid I snapped that day and basically told my Gran that either she allowed me to help her in a way that wasn't going to kill me which might involve some compromises (cleaner, online groceries) or I wouldn't help at all… and that it wasn't all about her. It didn't go down particularly well but she behaved a lot better after that.