Anyone else having to care for not amazing but not awful parents ?

[rookiemere]

After another taxing visit to my DPs, I am wondering if it’s normal for me to be so resentful and churlish about what I seem to be expected to do. They are very elderly and live an hour away, DM is now pretty much immobile and as we are in Scotland she gets four carers a day. DF who hadn’t done any household chores for years is managing to buy food and make their meals, but his memory is going.

I grudgingly got them to accept a cleaner for a whole 2 hours per week, but everything else falls on me, although of course they don’t want to be a burden . Lots of things starting to go wrong so I feel I or DS or DH, need to go up once a week, but I hate every visit with every fibre of my being. Today was pretty bad, as lots of accumulated paperwork and had to tell DM and DF that we weren’t going to be doing their gardening but we would find a gardener.

I wish I could just walk away and wash my hands of it. Thing is they weren’t bad parents, they did the best they could but have always been emotionally distant but financially generous. I have cultivated a very superficial level of relationship with DF over the years as he’s racist and misogynistic, but so are many people his age, but now having to spend so much time there, I find it almost intolerable.

I guess my question or point is on here I read about abusive and narcissistic elderly DPs and people are rightly told to cut off contact, or the other spectrum is those who consider it a badge of honour looking after their DPs. I am somewhere in between the two, and I just feel they are expecting a lot considering the type of relationship we have. I don’t know if I am making sense or if anyone else relates?

This ongoing obsession that it’s great for everyone to live until their 90s or whatever is very flawed

Agree completely

I think that’s a very normal feeling.

Some people have a strong emotional bond with parents, some don’t.

Some people are more cut out for caring, some aren’t.

Some old people are difficult in their old age and some aren’t.

Its just a case of doing what needs to be done and doing it with as much grace as you can muster

DH is trying to eliminate all UPFs from his diet and up the exercise so he can live forever. Having seen the outcome of this ability to live into your 90s, I am really not so keen. Also the amount of NHS time and effort on ongoing appointments at the doctors and hospital for mostly DM seem ludicrous when really she is just growing old.

@rookiemere yes she has an aid call button she wears on her wrist. Given the circumstances of her medical emergencies has been of zero help so far

1 she had a stroke when going to bed. Phoned me. My very capable adult daughter kept her talking whilst I called the ambulance.

2 varicose vein burst. We were still on holiday, We not able to get a flight home any quicker. She didn’t want to bother my eldest daughter. Ambulance control only sent an ambulance when she lost consciousness on the phone. That was more than 2 hours after she first called. She nearly bled out. Was given a blood transfusion and discharged next day with no one at home to care for her. We literally got off the plane at Gatwick and drove to her house. We had the conversation with her- do not hesitate to call . My daughter would rather to woken up than find her dead in a pool of blood. The clean up and insurance claim for decoration and carpets was big.

3 most recent her lungs filled with fluid. She had felt crap all day but instead of phoning the doctor waited until the evening. I had a gut feeling we were talking of more than a chest infection. Daughter drove me to her. Called ambulance on route. Again no ambulance turned up. Waited an hour with her called ambulance again. Was told at least another hour. Made decision to get her in car and drive to A&E. Instantly whisked to majors and put on oxygen. Basically she was drowning. Had the fluid pumped out of her lungs under sedation.

last 2 years have been very stressful

Yep, caring for df who is currently in a nursing which I put him in apparently. This wasn't the case, he choose because he couldn't cope being at home alone and the health professionals agreed. Physically he could cope, but not mentally. As soon as he had cancer, he gave up and suddenly couldn't do things for himself l. I have visited daily, and the negativity and the manipulation and guilt he makes me feel because I haven't offered to take him home and be his full time carer has effected my mental health enormously. He's become selfish and manipulative and a bitter old man. The irony is I wasn't close to him, he was a weekend dad. When his own wife was poorly, he couldn't cope and her daughter looked after her. I haven't visited in two days, and it feels great. I feel guilty of course, but I could easily walk away right now. I have done more then anyone and ever went sick off work to care him, in hindsight he probably didn't even need me that much but had convinced me he was going to die fairly soon. I was also grieving so easily manipulated at this point. Now I will be glad when it's all over.

So many of us get trapped in this Lagrange point, stuck between the equal but opposing forces of guilt and resentment😱

My own parents died very young but it's interesting watching people and their lives around me...one woman I know her mother was seemingly well but had a stroke and died a couple of days later. She was in her seventies. Another woman I know has a mother in her 90s in a home with advanced dementia. One of my grandfathers died of a heart attack in his sixties. The other lived well into his eighties but with Alzheimers and in a home. I'm really not sure prolonging life above all else is that appealing...but humans do seem intent to keep trying to cure death.

My Mum died at 92 but the last 2 years of her life were problematic - falls, hospital admissions, carers at home and then a care home for the last 13 months of her life. Infact, she didn't have a particularly long, protracted death and for that we were grateful.

But, really, had she died at 90 when admitted to hospital for chronic anaemia, a chest infection and a UTI all going on at the same time, then none of us (including her!) would have minded.

92 is no "better" than 90 in those circumstances.

My FIL is now 84 and takes 17 tablets a day. He has two types of cancer and Parkinsons, it's a really sad sight to see. And his 79 year old wife is his only carer!

Oh gosh yes, all the nhs time spent checking and testing people in their 80’s and 90’s for what purpose?
My dad has heart problems, they will not operate as he would not survive the operation. However the heart nurse still visits him at home once every two weeks to ask him the same questions. Why?

I really feel for you. Similar situation here with nasty father. It's a big taboo to talk about it in real life I find. My other thought is about arranging a funeral when the time comes. I guess that will be me. With hardly any family or friends I do wonder how this will work, particularly as I couldn't hear a celebrant saying how wonderful he was and how much he will be missed. What's the solution?

I agree. My mum is only 84, but has a condition that nobody will properly take hold of (she’s been passed from dept to dept and for the past few years they just do telephone consultations with me. Nobody has actually seen her). Yet they still call her in for regular bloods and checks. I haven’t taken her for over a year. She’s been bed bound with no quality of life for over four years. What’s the point in fussing over keeping everything else working. It’s just prolonging her dreadful life. She was so busy and energetic prior to this. I hate seeing her this way.

It's an incredibly hard public discourse for obvious reasons, because we don't want to sound like we're judging the value of an individual's life nor its quality, BUT the cost of prolonging life at all costs to both the NHS and social care is heavy, and resources that could be used to improve population outcomes/keep people from being off work sick for longer than necessary/genuinely improve quality of life for a longer term end up instead being focused on that effort. There are no easy answers but it's going to become a bigger and bigger issue for public finances.

Yep, caring for df who is currently in a nursing which I put him in apparently. This wasn't the case, he choose because he couldn't cope being at home alone and the health professionals agreed.

@Totallybannanas The rewriting of history is so frustrating, isn’t it. My Dad does the same, he says that I did/made him do X, Y and Z, and it’s complete fabrication!

I’ve told family members and close friends that he lies and they believe me because they know him well- but I’m sure that some of his friends and acquaintances think that I’m a nasty cow.

I genuinely don’t understand why they tell lies, it doesn’t help them and just causes resentment.

Why do you keep talking so badly about yourself? Stop it! Even if you stop doing everything tomorrow that doesn't make you awful Society sells us, especially women, a lie that we should love looking after people and be close to our parents.

From my perspective you just have to get on with it ,do what you have to do
I try do this ,without complaining, it’s not always easy,but she is my mother

You’re not alone, or unusual. I love my mum (dad died nearly four years ago) but I can get quite angry at how they could have done so much more for me and my brother growing up but chose not to (brother is a complete arsehole but that’s separate). She now relies on us and carers. I speak to her at least once a day and visit often (she’s 3 hrs away), but she’s spent the last few years telling me every day that she wishes she was dead and moaning a lot about everything, when actually she’s not doing badly at all.

I resent her sometimes and found myself today flicking secret Vs at her from the other side of the kitchen wall. Pathetic and teenaged but we all need a release.

I am unsure what I have to do. There are a lot of grey areas of things I could do - at the cost of my own house cleanliness, time to prepare meals and take exercise oh and earn money - but I don’t think should be expected of me.

I mean obviously I do the hospital visits, check there is enough food, not lying in filthy sheets and deal
with urgent paperwork, but I am not going to just get on with everything simply because I happen to exist.

My df has continued to make me feel guilty for not giving up my job and being his carer. I took sick leave early, because he wasn't coping and convinced me he was likely to die soon. That didn't happen. He then agreed to go into a nursing home, advised by the hospice. It's probably alot more premature, because of how he struggled to be on his own especially overnight. Today I had to listen to how he gave up his job to care for his mother. The truth is he hasn't walked out on my mum to live with his mum who then had a stroke. He also didn't have a mortgage, wife or family. How I have bit my tongue I do not know. This guilt tripping makes me even more reluctant to care for him. Twice I have given my job to care for my children. Why should I be made to feel like I have to do that again?

@Totallybannanas💐
It certainly teaches us how to not to behave when we’re older.

@Totallybannanas indeed. FIL’s favourite rant at his family is that he gave up his whole life to care for his elderly parents 25 years ago - there Is some truth in that but it made him both physically and mentally unwell and very bitter. Hardly a showcase of happy and healthy family dynamics. It’s so frustrating.

My Mother and I had a strained relationship for as long as I can remember! She married a agressive man, I was eleven at the time.They were abusers. When they got old, they were dirty lived in squalor! I visited them out of a sense of duty, it would make me feel physically & emotionally unwell. My mother used to smoke one after another, she never wore incontinence pads.So everything smelt of urine. She had a mice infestation as she was feeding them.It used to take 3 hours to travel to their flat.I hated going there it just brought back all the trauma from my earlier years.I thought I could make a difference when I visited so tried to clean the flat, make suggestions that my improve their life.They just ignored everything.They just gave up and would not care how it effected people around them.They are no longer alive, all I am left with a sense of why & sadness.I cannot forgive them for how they treated people.

You don’t have to do anything
Just decide what you can do, and do it
I go to my mother’s 3 x a week after work
and 1 day at the weekend
The other days I don’t go and try not to think about the situation
It won’t be forever

I have the same relationship with mine. Not there yet with needing care but I dread visiting. Even phone calls are strained with small talk. Sad but it’s always been this way. I imagine I’ll feel the same as you when the time comes

Something jad just clicked for me about something my mum keeps saying, which is that she is so grateful to have us living nearby (not said in a loving way but in a whiny guilt tripping way). It REALLY grates on me and makes me feel trapped, we don't want to move away but if we did we'd feel we couldn't. Then she goes on to say she is terrified of being lonely like her widowed mother was and how sad the memories make her. Well, the difference is that when you got married mother, you moved several hundred miles away, only went back once a year even after she was widowed and even though she lived in a tiny remote village and left most of the elderly care to your more local SILs, one of whom unsurprisingly resented that and you bleat about why didn't SIL like you. Now obviously my parents were fully entitled to live wherever they wanted and none of this would have been on their minds when they first married, they moved for work, perfectly reasonable. But it does make me feel a bit "stop whinging, you made those choices, they had unforeseen consequences, it's done now, stop trying to guilt trip me".

@clarrylove direct cremation. So many more people are doing it. Solves the issue. We did this for a family member and then a few of us when for dinner. We raised a glass but no crap about being an amazing person.