I blame Escape to the Country!

[Mini712]

Is anyone else in the same situation?

My parents retired 12 years ago & decided to retire to Dorset. At the time, I was pretty upset that they were moving away from me and my young family but accepted their decision.
During those 12 years they have had an amazing retirement, living in a beautiful part of the country and travelling the world with fancy holidays & cruises galore! But more recently their health has started to fail so they can’t do as much anymore and Mum in particular is feeling a bit isolated which as meant they now want to see us more. They come and stay with us regularly(usually for at least a week!) every other month but we live 3 hours away so we can’t just pop in for a cup of tea.
I am now feeling guilty as I don’t want them to feel lonely but also resentment as it wasn’t me that moved in the first place!
Last saw them 2 weeks ago when they stayed with us for a week but now getting pressure from Mum to see them over Easter. Should I cave in and see them even though I had planned to spend Easter with hubby & sons?

By the way I have a brother but he rarely calls them, let alone visits or has them to stay

Any thoughts would be appreciated ❤️

And if there's no-one local? @ForestBather

Then the family member can get their skates on and go around their neighbours and contacts and sort matters for themselves...
It certainly would highlight that faraway offspring are not putting themselves forward for the role ..

Please sort out Lasting Power of Attorneys (1) health/welfare 2) finance/property and get them registered with the Office of the Public Guardian - this could take at least 6 months. Without it you’ll have a headache if one of them has a stroke and is declared as lacking capacity.

We're getting on a bit (72 and 77) and certainly wouldn't want to impose on our neighbours as we become more infirm.

People here are great, friendly (meeting outside for drinks at the weekend) and we all keep in contact via a WhatsApp group, but it just is not realistic or fair to rely on their kindness if you are infirm.

As it happens we now live close to one of my daughters and one of my sons but they have their own lives and work so we would not want to call on them too much and very rarely have done, other than a bit of shopping if offered when we had covid or flu.
There would be no problem with asking them to help us to organise people to come and care for us if necessary in the future, but we wouldn't want them to take on these onerous tasks themselves.

To ask a difficult question: do they actually want to stay together - is separation and relocation a possibility for your Mum?

I don’t think that is on the cards but thank you for the suggestion. X

If I had a pound for everyone who told me I should put my elderly relative in a home I'd have quite a few pounds. As if you can just tell an adult of any age with capacity that they have to do something or live somewhere because you think it is for the best.

I think it is very hard for someone to appreciate that the need for help can come on very suddenly and without any apparent warning.

One minute DPIL were pottering along quite happily making plans, the next DFIL had a massive stroke and died, DMIL had to be moved into a care home. DFIL had been covering her advancing dementia. Without him there she wasn't safe to be left alone even for a few hours.

This all took place in the space of a week. Thankfully they had plenty of loving and willing family close by to deal with the fallout. From a distance, in an unfamiliar area this would have been far far worse.

No, you can't force someone to face the reality of their situation. All you can do is spell it out for them.

Then you need to accept your mum has made her choice and firmly insist she stops the guilt tripping behaviour. Once you've had a word about it, literally hang up/walk away if she starts. You don't have to tolerate this crap from her. We all have our lives to live and we're all free to make our own choices. If your mum chooses to stay in Devon (or wherever, can't remember, sorry) she doesn't have the right to insist you give your life up to help her.

I'd stop these week-long visits too, as well as the frequency of them. Never mind whether you can cope, it's too much for those you live with to have their home invaded by visitors every 7 weeks, it's intrusive. You can't possibly have that much annual leave so they're staying for a week whilst you're working, meaning you're coming home and having no downtime because you have house guests. That's going to take its toll on you and means you have less emotional energy to give to your friends, partner or children. Bet you spend a week prepping before they come and a week recovering after. So it's really taking 3 weeks of your life out of every 8 weeks. It's too much. Twice a year is plenty and if they want to stay for longer than 3 days, it's in a hotel.

At that point, as she's miles away, is not their carer and can do nothing about whatever it is, OP will hopefully have the sense to put her phone on Do Not Disturb after eg 10pm until she wakes next morning. There are many ways for OP to uphold her own boundaries.

Another perspective on older people moving to a rural area is that they often want things to be ‘happening’ but don’t necessarily realise that the fair, carnival, choir, festival or cricket club is probably beginning to creak at the seams for lack of volunteers.

The voluntary sector is suffering an overall decline in volunteers post-covid (NCVO).

Older volunteers gave up during Covid
Work is more demanding
More people are working longer into retirement.

So the village life that they move for can dwindle away quite rapidly if a few key people move away or throw in the towel.

You can be expected to do this, but you don't HAVE to. They do cope if that happens. And it can help to force some action to happen!

I've had mine admitted to hospital via A&E, the anguished calls from friend about when I'd get there etc. Golden balls sibling refusing to do anything.

A) My phone was off as I was working so I didn't find out any of this until eight hours later.
B) I couldn't drive at that point for medical reasons so I couldn't physically get there anyway, let alone do something useful!

It meant they finally figured out someone local having a spare key, fitting a keysafe and keeping a hospital bag packed. They had to acknowledge that choosing to live near friends meant they were making the friends responsible for this. Hospital staff can update you via phone, you don't need to be there.

Realistically, even though I'm now driving again, I can't just drop everything and dash off for every minor crisis. It's a five hour round trip away, I have a child at primary school and a full time job, I can't not do those things.

Actually no. I expect even my single siblings to have made the effort and forged relationships with good friends, who they could call on for help in these one-off situations. It doesn't matter if you spend a day unwashed in a hospital gown until friend can get to the hospital with clothes and toiletries after work, the world doesn't cave in, no need for anyone to be hurrying down the motorway at 2am.

Even if you did want to help out, it'd be the occasional one-time event that wouldn't have a drastic impact on your own life. In someone elderly with multiple ongoing health issues, it'd be all the time, until eventually you'd lose your job from the amount of unexpexted time off you'd had.

People with family who lives far away or family they're not close to are in the same position as those with no family at all, they have to get on and make the best of it, largely on their own. Perhaps with social services providing some life-or-death type daily/weekly help during a fixed slot of time, if they're ill enough to qualify.

Well, I have asked my parents to give me the contact details of their neighbours. So far not forthcoming. Sometimes parents just don't help themselves!

I don't like the idea of putting anyone in a home, though get that sometimes it's necessary for their safety. That's why I encouraged my parents to think about moving closer, so that I could help them stay in their own home for as long as possible. In the end, they should be making choices for themselves, but have to recognise that comes with limitations. As for their expectations of their community, I wouldn't mind taking my elderly neighbour to the supermarket once in a while but would be annoyed if it was expected regularly. My parents are an hour plus from the nearest supermarket.

Maybe the neighbours don’t want to be responsible for your parents? I’m sure they have busy lives and may already be burdened with caring responsibilities.

Yes, but they seem to be happy to be called in an emergency, if they just need to go around and check if everything is okay or not. That's hardly being responsible for them. They have a good relationship with their neighbours for that sort of thing and would do the same for them. They're about the same age.

Their plan to rely on the goodwill of the community is a terrible one but they might have to find that out the hard way.

When my MIL was terminally ill she became friends with the young single mother nextdoor. She had 3 kids, one with some special needs. She needed to work but it wasn't possible with the children so MIL paid her for care. She pop in after taking kids to school, help MIL with personal care, check if she needed shopping or prescription picking up. She'd come back and make her some lunch and then back in the evening. The kids would sometimes come with her, particularly the little one and the eldest, who was about 10 or 11 would go to the corner shop if she needed something. It worked really well for both of them but unfortunately I think that is probably a rare instance of things just coming together.

What a great post Iwasafool lovely to hear how that arrangement worked positively for both parties.

Don't forget the neighbours can put their own boundaries in place too!

We'll happily pick up milk or bits of shopping for ours and keep an eye on their house if they're in hospital but we don't do lifts to the hospital or take them to the supermarket.

I think yours is a healthy attitude. It’s so easy to get caught in the lobster pot that is caring , and so hard to escape.

We have one very elderly neighbour who really pushes things. If he sees one of his neighbours getting into their car, he plonks himself in the passenger seat and demands a lift. Then appears confused/ deaf if you tell him you are not going his way!

They should put their own boundaries in place too. If I'm going to the supermarket and they don't need physical help with their shopping, I don't mind if they tag along. But they can fit in with me when I'm going anyway.

An emergency trip to the hospital once is one thing, regularly is another. If my neighbour knocked on my door now and was stuck and urgently needed a lift to the hospital, I'd take them. If they did the same on the regular, they'd have to sort out something else.

I'm happy to be helpful to others but there's a limit.

It was a very good arrangement. When MIL died we bought the neighbour an expensive item that she wanted, I can't remember offhand but maybe £1,500 or something like that. I think she did genuinely get on with MIL but obviously the loss of income must have been a blow.

This is so true, and I think the volunteer sector has suffered greatly since Covid. People want things to be provided, but many can't or won't see the correlation between the event/activity happening being dependent on people coming forward to make it happen! It's always up to someone else to organise it.

In fairness, there are often reasons (mobility issues, etc.) why some people can't volunteer, but with people having to work longer and so many who have caring commitments or similar taking up much of their time, it's had an impact. Years ago, the whole community pitched in to make something happen, but that was then and this is now. Things have changed.

Of course if faraway parent has done the true Escape To The Country experience there might not be any neighbours - other than the hens they all seem to be so keen on keeping. Are hens good in a crisis?

I suppose parents who have gone full ETTC dont necessarily want to admit, even to themselves, that it cant last forever. Hence the unwillingness to engage with conversations about 'what happens if' especially as it is a good chance of being 'what happens when'.

@Iwasafool

If I had a pound for everyone who told me I should put my elderly relative in a home I'd have quite a few pounds. As if you can just tell an adult of any age with capacity that they have to do something or live somewhere because you think it is for the best.

This. ^ I would rather live in a tent on the moors than live in a care home. No fucking WAY would I be shoved into a care home, or any kind of residential 'community living' for the over 60s. I would rather swallow bleach, stick pins in my eyes, and shit in my hands and clap.