Trying to write all of this down as it is totally consuming my head, my world, my life. I just want to put this out there to see if anyone else is in similar circumstances.I am a 57 year old woman and support my elderly parents, my dad is 91 in January and my mum is 87 they live in their own home still and with lots of help look after themselves. I live approximately 20 minutes away. I know it is amazing they still live on their own but it’s what goes on beneath that layer. My dad is ex-military and is very Victorian in his ways. He has never had patience and I have never had a very good relationship with him, I could never ask for advice growing up he would just shout his opinion at me. He has no means to reason with anyone, he has fallen out with many people over the years including his brothers and sister, we’ve been sat in the car when I was little down small country lanes when he has refused to pull over even getting out of the car to confront the approaching vehicle. I just remember cowering in the back seat.
It’s very much a 50’s environment my mum has done everything for him over the years so now the only thing he can cook is toast and boiled eggs.She says it is her fault. They are both so stubborn, my mum chunters about him all the time and blames him for everything, he is as deaf as deaf but will not admit it. I very much feel even at 57 I have to conform, I have known for the last 30 years it was expected of me to look after them in their older years.They have been very private with their finances it is only up until the last couple of years I have taken over all their bills and banking for them. But everything I do is nothing, that is what is expected of me. I am there to be called up on 24/7. I have been dreading winter some weeks last winter I would go everyday taking stews and food when my mum was ill. I take my mum shopping once sometimes twice a week as a minimum, I take care of them better than I do of myself!
My only sibling, brother was killed in a motorcycle accident 37 years ago when i was 20 which was devasting to us as a family but my parents stuck together my mum was the only one who ever talked about it my father never did. From that day, for 37 years, all I have ever done is pacify and make sure they are ok. I have briefly mentioned this in later years and my mum looked at me as if I was stupid.I had my family within 5 years of the accident and I have always hoped that helped them in a way but my mum just shook her head when I suggested that recently. They live approximately 20 minutes drive away from us, my kids have all left home now, 2 have moved away and 1 lives close by. My father is very Victoria in his ways, you have a boss and they are the king, “get in with a good company and they will look after you.”I feel this is just not the way
They have a slanting conservatory my dad put up in the 70’s which is fine in summer but in winter the rain pours through the glass panels at the top. It is horrendous and needs taking down but because he put it up it is marvellous so everything in there if its not covered in plastic gets drenched every time it rains.
Over the last 8 years my mum’s memory has been declining but she will not admit to this either everything is riddles and she just says it’s fine forget it for now. You wouldn’t know anything if you talked to her in the street or had a quick conversation with her. Things have been going missing for years but she will not let me put a camera up and my dad refuses point blank to have a security camera inside the house. He says “as long as I’m in this house no one will come in”.It’s crazy because he falls a sleep with his false teeth hanging out and would not hear anyone coming in. Money gone missing too, she has hidden it over the years and it mainly turns up but she forgets where she has put it and blames him for taking it. She just says it’s fine she’ll just get some more out of the bank. I’m 57, I got a degree when I was 50 but I don’t even recognise that person now. I remember when I finished and I got my certificate and got a 2:1 she said “thank god for that you’ve finished” I know it was because she saw me doing lots of work towards it and I was working at the time and had 2 children at home but it meant I couldn’t always go straight there. At that point we were expected to go every weekend and weekend’s where the days I got a lot of my degree work done. I remember one Sunday calling to say we couldn’t go, I’ll never forget this and she said OH, as if I was being a bad daughter.
She will call me every day via facetime in a morning as soon as she gets up in her dressing gown and I can tell what mood she is in straight away and I have for years picked her up said things to cheer her up but it’s so hard it gets you down too. She will call me saying ‘aw I have a problem’ and I just have to drop everything. One day she decided she needed a new dryer, I had a massive job on at home but she expected me to drop everything and take her to curry’s to buy a dryer. I explained that we could order one online and it may come quicker and it is still sat there in its wrapping at theirs as they have never needed it yet but I had to do it there and then!
I try and pre-empt what they will need and when we go shopping I will put extra milk and bread in the trolley for her to go in their freezer.It has been nothing in the past to get a phone call to say they need bread or milk if we are passing, we are never passing and they know that! I bought extra milk last week and put it in her freezer and she said “I don’t fxxking want it “. I just ignored her and put it there because they may need it.
On several occasions on an evening we will get a call from my mum panicking she can’t find her hand bag and I just have to go with my husband 9 pm / 10 pm at night to find it luckily I stitched an air tag into her purse so it’s not been too hard to find. We can’t tell my dad that is why we are there; she won’t let us as he will kick off at her so we have to pacify the situation.
A couple of months ago I went to take him to the doctors, as they don’t drive now, for his blood test and he said they were having problems with the toilet.I had a look when I got back and it looked to be blocked, I tried to fix it but called a lovely plumber who came around quite quickly. The plumber said it was the drains that were blocked and because the hole for the drains was outside next door I had to speak with the people next door and I managed to find a jet wash company who came later that day and cleared the problem.We had to wait several hours for them to come, I cancelled all of my arrangements for that day and my mum spent the time worrying that she may have put some clothing down the toilet and following me around when I was trying to work on my laptop asking me what I was doing.When the jet wash people had been, and fixed it early evening, I set off to go home, my dad did not move out of his armchair all day except to get himself some food, and my dad got his roll of money out of his pocket and opened it up and passed over the £20 note and gave me £10. I wish he had never given me any money, my time to him that day wasn’t even worth £20.It’s all so strange, for years we had to go every Sunday and he would give the children and me £10 pocket money and as the kids grew up and at college if they didn’t go it was to him as a lack of respect to him, they didn’t want his £10. You didn’t get any pocket money if you didn’t go, it was as if it was a bribe to get us there!
He shuffles everywhere with his stick and says he doesn’t need anyone to look after him. My dad won’t let my mum apply for carers allowance for looking after him because he doesn’t need help. They are both so stubborn, I spend my days getting their shopping in, medication in, paying their bills how can he say he needs no one to look after him? He will not wear incontinence pads and uses rags of cotton cloth instead which are useless as you can smell him some days. Because he doesn’t have a sense of smell he cannot smell it, I cannot broach him on the subject as it was cause hell and he would be shout at me. I’ve bought different types of incontinence pads in the past and my mum has put them in his room but he just will not use them.He has a small rain tub outside which he wees in as they don’t have a downstairs toilet but the subject has never been broached because what he says goes I dread the day I have to empty it down the toilet. He gets up in the morning gets his breakfast, sleeps, watches TV goes on his exercise bike and does nothing else.
He has in the last couple of weeks been saying he is going to live until he is 100, I hope he does but I just don’t know if I could physically and mentally look after him all he does is talk about himself, he was saying on Sunday how well he had done, he came into this world with nothing and the house next door but one has sold for £190K and he has done so well. He cannot understand that his house has no central heating will need rewiring, the garage will need knocking down as it is falling down and there is so much work that needs doing. Everyone comes into this world with nothing! All he has ever done is botch jobs to keep things working. He cannot understand that if he needs care in the future that money will have go to pay for that care, he just expects me look after him. My mum fell years ago in the village and when she got back he’d said something like if something happens to you who will look after me? We took them for their anniversary meal a few weeks ago because my dad said he wanted to go. He struggles to sit in the car and on the way, back he just kept saying to my mum ‘I’ll get you there” as if we had done nothing, we picked them up, took them basically do everything for them so they are able to stay in their own home but he never seems grateful or recognises this.
I have for years when I’ve gone out picked my mum up so she could go out for a ride. On Sunday I said I had to pick my daughter up from the station yesterday and did she want to come. She said she would like to and I said we wouldn’t have time for lots of shopping because I needed to get back. Then when we went she sat in the car and must have said 8 or 9 time she didn’t realise we weren’t going shopping she didn’t know. I said I had said we didn’t have time but she just kept saying she didn’t know. Her memory is definitely failing but she will never never never admit that. She blames my dad for making her like that. I know he won’t help because he will just shout at her but everything is riddles.
In the summer when we were driving out of the supermarket car park an elderly gentleman was walking with his stick following who looked like his daughter and she had left him and he stumbled and looked like he was going to fall.I panicked and he seemed to get his footing. I was upset to see this and my mum said that his daughter had not been brought up correctly.I was quite shocked at what she’d said, it makes me feel my kindness is just expected and taken for granted at times like this. Most of the time I look after them better than I look after myself!
My husband knows what it’s like but I have no one to talk to, I don’t think anyone would understand they would think I was crazy. My fried doesn’t see her parents for a couple of weeks at a time but if I missed a week I would be disowned!! This would have definetly been the case in the past up until the last couple of years he could of at any time turned on something I had said and told me to get out and leave and go.This seems crazy now, I never cause arguments as I know what he is like I have to conform. A couple of years ago he kicked off at me one Sunday, we take our dog with us and he gets out a packet of digestive biscuits every week and gives the dog maybe a third of a packet. Because our dog had been poorly that week I’d asked him not to give her lots of biscuits and he kicked off saying ‘no one will tell him how many biscuits to give a dog, there was no money coming to our house’ My husband was sat across the table from him and I think that was the first time he had seen how bad he could get. I was upset but thankful that someone else apart from my mum and me had seen this.Up until the last couple of years I have known that at any point he could have kicked me out and cut me off but I have still pacified them cause that’s what a good daughter is supposed to do.Lots of years ago he had ago at me and I had to leave because he gave the kids lots of sweets I had asked him not too and my mum said she knew I would take it like that as if it was all my fault. I have had therapy in the last year but it was costly and I can’t afford it now. It helped at the time, my doctor doesn’t want to know they say I should go home and practice mindfulness. The only thing I can control is my eating and just either seem to binge eat or eat nothing! I just feel it’s totally consuming some people my age I know think I do nothing all day.I was made redundant just after covid and at the time I thought it’s a nice thing that I am able to look after my parents but however much you give they just expect it and things have got worse over the last 4 years. We don’t have lots of money. I don’t know if it’s because winter is coming but it’s making me mentally ill, when I have a couple of good days getting on with things at home my head is my own but I am so low at the moment I just wondered is anyone else was in a similar situation. I am sorry this is such a long piece, I know one day I will be devasted to think I won’t be able to talk to them when they have passed and I worry that the situation puts me in a victim mind-set which I never was when I was in my younger years.I feel bad writing this and sorry it is fragmented and I am maybe a bad person for this, I just worry how I will be able to cope mentally over the next 10 years or so. I feel drained.