My parents are late 70’s and 85. In fairly good health and reasonably comfortable financially.
My main concern is how my mother will cope when my father dies.
She’s incredibly dependent on him to manage finances and things like central heating controls, driving, turning the TV on and off and other basic tasks as she finds it too complicated. I don’t think she has any cognitive problems but it’s a combination of laziness, anxiety and enjoying being looked after by my father. She has always been the queen in their relationship.
Their adult children including me, tiptoe around her as she can be volatile, and stubborn and always has been. She is a black and white thinker and incredibly lacking in self awareness.
She told me recently that she has no wish to learn anything about her finances but that I will have to sort it out for her when my father isn’t around.
My other siblings aren’t as local to them as me apart from a brother who has a high flying career and is and therefore ‘too busy’ to help- my mother’s words.
I’m a single parent with 3 children and two of them have additional needs and I work 4 days a week.
I feel resentful about her assumptions and frustrated by her refusal to take any responsibility. I feel I don’t have a choice but to step up when the time comes. How do others manage the resentment? I feel selfish but I do help them out with small tasks already and make an effort to see them at least twice a week. I also take them on holiday sometimes.