first time in an age but aibu about my sister (I know I am)

[FunnysInLaJardin]

mum and dad are in their 90's. Mum broke her hip last week and came out of hospital today. She is dads main carer as he is housebound and has dementia. My sister was supposed to come and look after M&D this weekend. She has manic depression (what a family!), which has been controlled for years. Today she rang me in a right state to say she couldn't come and look after M&D as she wasn't coping at all.

She asked me to ring mum and tell her. So on mums first day out of hospital i was tasked with the message of telling her she would have no care this weekend. I live abroad and so while I can come home, its not just like driving up the M1 etc.

I shouldn't be angry with my sister, but am. We have never been close, in fact I cant remember the last time she rang me. I am angry that she landed this on me and asked me to tell mum that she couldn't come.

AIBU? Please tell me that I am as I feel a right cow for feeling like this!

My point being, Goblin - very few people's circumstances are as black and white as you seem keen to paint them.

Goblin maybe start your own thread about all the selfish gits who leave their families behind and move abroad. I promise I'll post about the 150 years of constant emigration in my family

Funny you're welcome.

Psst it's ummed and ahhed!

I think it is fine to choose not to become a carer for your elderly parent/s. I will not become one just like the OP and others who live abroad and choose not to return home when the care is needed. However, as I will not be caring for my parents myself I will definitely not be getting annoyed with my siblings if they don't care for them either. I would contact the social worker or relevant social care person and leave my sister alone in this instance.

Well, Goblin I certainly did not consider it any kind of privilege to look after my aging DM who was incontinent, irrational and increasingly difficult to cope with due to many health problems, until she went into a nursing home. Our relationship was pretty much wrecked by then, but it did get better in time.
But I do not feel in the slightest bit guilty about it - if she hadn't gone into the home, someone would have been dead within a year or two and it probably would NOT have been her!
(My own family totally supported the decision as they saw what it was doing to me). But then I never liked wearing a martyr's crown.
And neither would I expect or want anyone to sacrifice their life for mine.
So, OP your sister's illness left her unable to help, I see that, but I don't see why she couldn't at least tell your DM that she couldn't do it. So for that last bit, You are definitely NBU.

goblin damn right it's a callous society and you're at the bloody helm with your comments.

I think children do have a duty to their parents, not necessarily to do the personal care themselves, but to see that they are all right and have the help that they need. It's not just those that move away - my grandfather has 8 children most of whom live nearby and the only one who looks out for him or takes anything to do with him is my DM.

I think that it's very sad to see children sail off without a backward glance and wash their hands of their parents, off living their own lives. And some of the attitudes above are awful - I hope my DC wouldn't see me as an inconvenience and want me packed off to Switzerland to be euthanised!

But it doesn't sound like this is situation in the OP. OP is still caring and taking responsibility. However I think YABVU to be angry with your Dsis in this situation for having mental health problems. You may as well be angry at your DM for breaking her leg or your DF for having dementia. None of them is to blame for their health problems and actually I think you have a duty to all 3 of them and they all need your support.

Who is looking after your dad and mum. Your dsis is ill therefore cant. (Yabu and yanbu re this). But the important matter whos looking after them. Can you get home from abroad just this weekend to look after them and arrange care either private or social services.

I'm a bit confused tbh.

OP says ''... i was tasked with the message of telling her she would have no care this weekend.''

But later ''They now have a carer each, so the day to day is sorted.'' and '' ... my other sister who does most of the care come to that.''

So they have carers each plus there's a third DC who does most of the care. I think YABU to be angry at your sister OP. If anyone had reason to feel stressed and angry it would be the sister who is living nearby and doing the care IMO.

However, i don't subscribe to the idea that children should somehow build their lives based on the premise that they are to come home or never leave the area in order to be carers for their parents. I would hate to think that any of my children do that. And yes, to the point about partner's parents. My DHs parents live in London, my DM is in the midlands. What do we do if/when they all get old and frail? Selfishly stay living together, or split up and go do our caring?

I think you are being unreasonable re your sister and sound v lacking in any compassion for her, someone suffering from a mental illness. Found the phrase ,,,'a deep well of nothing' describing her quite telling.

I think perhaps you do feel guilty that you are not there and this is contributing to your anger with your sister. I also think depending on where you were living you could perhaps have come home to help your parents this weekend.

Re goblins comments, I think yabu too but coming from a much more compassionate viewpoint.

Everyone IBU

• You are BVU to be angry with your mentally ill sister (but i think you know that anyway). You cant really be pissed off with someone for not doing something which you have an equal responsibility to do but are also unable to do for a different reason.

• Goblin IBU to think that no-one should move out of shouting distance of their parents

I think YABU to be angry with your sister. If you don't think that you have any responsibility to care then neither of your siblings does either. So it is a non-issue. Either you think you should all do it or none of you.

At the moment it is, like most families, worked out between siblings; if you don't do it, and think that is fine, for whatever reason, you have no right to expect anyone else to do it.

I think goblin makes some good observations -especially about the sadness of the generation left behind. Of course we don't want our DC to limit their lives on our account and of course it is a huge waste to do the sort of care that some have talked about on here but it doesn't mean there isn't a problem when we choose otherwise.

Actually KeyserSue put it more succinctly!

KeyserSophie even - sorry

I married a furriner and now live abroad. We do worry about how we will cope with aged p's :(

The problem is that with two partners of different nationalities, you're going to have two sets of parents in two different countries. I don't think there are any easy answers.

Op, are your grandparents having enough carer time? My gm is in her 90s and now has four visits a day with a team of two (on top of family visits.) there may be more help out there than is currently being accessed. Age concern are great and can help.

I too think you're displacing your own guilt onto your depressed sister. And I don't think you should feel guilty at all. Let go of the anger at your sister. It won't help anything. She can't even have a conversation with her mum or your other sister - so she's not right in herself.
Do funds allow you to get on a plane and go? ignore any arguments about whether you should have to or not. Do you want to go? Is anything stopping you that's an issue you're trying not to face up to?

Gosh OP, it's only a simple phone call!

Will your othersister now have to look after them this weekend?

How far abroad are you?

Of course it's not like driving up the M1, but depending on where you are you could easily get there for the weekend, help out & stay a while longer& havesome time with your parents.

I think you are getting a really hard time here, funnys.

It's very easy for people to come on & take the moral high ground when they haven't been in the situation of having an elderly/ill/frail parent a flight away from you. I've been there & you can't just jump on a plane every time there is a crisis.

My mother lived a plane flight away & had Alzheimers & had to go into a home as she was beyond being able to be looked after at home any more and needed 24/7 care, which I couldn't do as had young DC then + OH who was away a lot for work.

I flew to where she lived, put her in the home (one of the worst moments of my life), stayed nearly two weeks & she seemed to be settled. I left, flew back to my home & half an hour after I had got in had a phone call to say that she had gone missing from the home. There was no way I could have turned round & gone back - there weren't any flights for a start. Luckily she was found within a couple of hours & was OK.

Unless you have been in this situation it is very hard to understand the frustrations & practical difficulties of it.

And to those of you who will ask why I wasn't living in the same place as my mother, it was because there was little or no work available &earlier in her life she (and my father) had actively encouraged me (& siblings) to move away. She was always vehement that she did not want to 'be a burden' in her old age.

IME people divide quite neatly into 2 categories in situations like this: people who help out, and people who don't. This is not necessarily correlated to where they live.

People who don't have endless reasons and justifications about why they can't help out, which they feel they need to reiterate at every opportunity. Those of us who do help would prefer it if they just said nothing or spoke the truth - they don't help out because they don't want to.

So here we have 3 sisters: one who helps, one whose mental health prevents her from helping and one who is outraged at having to make a single phonecall. Which is being unreasonable?

Would you have asked someone in a wheelchair to just put their parents first for the weekend and get out of the chair? Because what you have asked of your sister is the same. Except that the anxiety you caused your sister may have made things worse for her.

Sorry, but YABVU! So your sister's health problems are not a valid reason for her not to care for your DM, but your choice of where to live is? It's a difficult situation, no doubt about that, but you and your DSis are equally responsible for looking after your parents. If your sister can't do it for health reasons, of course it falls on you. And if neither of you can do it, then you need to work out a solution together.

I had a sister like you goblinhat, I lived abroad for 8 years when my mum was in her 60's and working and able to look after herself etc. I came back 17 years ago and looked after my mum in her last years (despite living the other end of country) and my sister living in the same small town. She never lifted a finger and was emotionally cruel to my mum - she said to me once "I was the one who had to do everything when you were abroad" - everything meaning the odd lift here and there etc. She couldn't even be arsed to come to the hospital the day she died. Sometimes living abroad and is not trying to get out of helping, it's a practical fact. OP - see if you can get some help for your mum through local agencies, email her DR etc, good luck, there is often a feeling that adult children who live abroad don't give a toss, that could not be further from the truth.