Two worlds colliding - the perfect storm

[BlueLegume]

I have had several threads on here and found lots of support for the most part. I won’t repeat my story at this stage but I had a real moment of clarity this week about the situation I have found myself in with my elderly parents.

It dawned on me that having left my hometown and my parents 40 years ago I have forged a life elsewhere, and a busy life at that. A life I love(d). I realised, stupidly, that I assumed my parents life was as busy as mine, and fulfilling. They certainly talked the talk about how busy they were.

What has emerged over the past years of having to be more involved with them from a crisis situation is that they really did not live life to the full, no hobbies, just miserable in each others company in a house they did nothing to other than hoard crap from the middle aisle at a well known supermarket .

They retired 30 years ago and seem to have done nothing to keep active even though they had the means to. My aunts and uncles in the same area seem to have lovely social lives and are thriving in old age. Mine always looked down on their peers as silly people ‘keeping busy for the sake of it’ - but it has meant they have kept their world more open.

Mine are now in a place they do not like, father in a nursing facility mother just unable to cope with anything.

Anyway my point I suppose is that I am not truly surprised. They could never cope with anything big decisions. My mother has always thrown a strop when she has not liked a situation and in the past we tended to all just do what she wanted so she never had to learn any coping skills. So no surprise she cannot cope with this phase of life. Over many years we have tried to listen to their moans and come up with solutions but they always knew better so frankly have ended up exactly in the mess of their own creation.

I have made significant changes in my life so that old age will be more manageable. I wish we could make this something we talk about more. I do not want to put my kids through what my parents have done to me. I am healing now but they definitely broke me with unreasonable expectations.

Absolutely agree on the technology front. DF had a manual job, but when he retired he went to classes to learn how to use a computer. He was able to email, Skype and shop at amazon and kept touch with his kids and grandkids. He tried to show DM how to do it but she’d refuse. DM wouldn’t even learn how to read her texts on her Nokia brick phone 20 years ago. DF used to do the crossword in his newspaper every day and say you had to keep your brain active and use it or lose it. Even after his strokes when he couldn’t write very well.

DM is the one that ended up with dementia. Entirely anecdotal and I’m not sure whether cause or effect - was her reluctance to learn a very early symptom of her dementia 15 years ahead of her cognitive decline? Will never know but I still do my daily Wordle and nag DH to keep up with technology.

The speed of tech changes are a problem. My DH is 76. He worked at the cutting edge of technology all his life so had a head. start. He's kept pretty much up to date and knows everything there is to know about computers but even so he gets flummoxed by a smartphone sometimes.
@funnelfan My mother did the same. She and dad went to classes in using computers. It meant that as she became housebound she could keep in touch, play games on her iPad and so on. She would have been 90 this year.

I do get frustrated with people my own age (67) who don't keep up. Computers were in common use 30-40 years ago and smartphones were everywhere long before I retired.

It does depend on your job though, @Sofasu . They were in use in my workplace, as a teacher (though only one in the corner of the classroom). They weren’t in lots of other workplaces- factory workers, carers, electricians etc. I have friends in their late 50s who didn’t use them at all at work and so didn’t use them at home. They find a phone is enough, and email is a challenge. The kind of people who have a single family email address- SarahJimSmith1968@etc.

Anyway. I’m working hard on my health and mind to avoid becoming my mum. She keeps trying to get me to sell her absolute rubbish preloved valuables. All the bad behaviour described so far, and more. Keeping Up Appearances is in no way funny when it’s your life 😬

@BlueLegume please remember that your highly trained desire for approval is not working for you anymore, the rules have changed. You are in a stronger position now, you’re no longer the dependent child subject to their tirades. You don’t have to be polite.
You can say, ‘Don’t be silly Dad, why would I do that?!’. ‘Oh Dad you are funny. I won’t be doing that.’

You don’t have to be nasty, but you certainly don’t need to show deference.
‘Don’t be ridiculous you’re showing yourself up.’ may even be called for.

“You’ve had your fun with DH”?! Is it some kind of teenage and / or holiday romance?! Your marriage sounds a hell of a lot more credible than their marriage. Even if it wasn’t, who are they to judge!

Their attitude has nothing to do with dementia, just sounds like entitlement that’s been reinforced by getting older and this increasing their beliefs it’s ALL about them. I would be going super low contact with your mum, dad and brother

@BernardButlersBra spot on. In reality they have always been like this. They think everyone else has their adult kids doing everything for them therefore I should. A lifetime of “well Mrs Jones son comes round every day “. Great but that doesn’t work for me living an hour away and having done so for decades. They have always stayed where they grew up which is fine but there was no employment for my career 40 years ago so I moved for work. My father was ok with it my mother not so. I found out a few years ago he’d placated her sayIng that I’d told him I’d move back to be near them as they got older. Lies. Really speaking it feels like they’d banked on me being there in there old age - without communicating as such - and now they are disappointed.

i liken it to people who haven’t paid properly into a pension being disappointed when they want to access said pension and there’s not much in it. They’ve made loads of assumptions made zero plans and now it’s me that’s the villain.

I am a convenient villain for one of my siblings as me being me makes him look really good.

Thanks all 💐

We always find so many similarities on these threads it's unreal! Mine also had delusions of grandeur, mega uncomfortable old furniture, and would buy really shitty household appliances that would often had to be replaced quite quickly as it broke or didn't work.

I realised fairly recently that many of the times my parents had been apparently mindlessly rude were actually so they could portray themselves in a more positive light to their peers.

So being total arses both time I gave birth was so they (particularly my mum) could appear to be involved grandparents, being snide about my house and car was so I'd get versions they could boast about, making nasty comments about photos I'd sent them was because she wanted more impressive ones to share with her friends and relatives, etc etc.

I think some of it stems from them moving countries before I was born (my Mum moaned endlessly about living here) and wanting to appear to be more successful than they actually were, as well as being well behind their peers financially because of travelling around a lot.

I was also pretty staggered that I was meant to be their old age help despite no discussions or plans.

I don't speak to my Mum anymore at all. I had been feeling a lot better about it since realising the motivating factor was her public image. However, I had to go to a family funeral last week and, despite being told repeatedly to leave me alone by various people over the last 18 months, my Mum kept trying to sit next to me so it looked normal...

@HoraceGoesBonkers I never mention the terrible often replaced household appliances, how did you know?

I do love the 'we will be better' sentiment running through this thread. We will age magnificently, we have a choice and we choose with warmth, humility and self reflection.

I also have to say that in my 20s I probably, wrongly, thought every ones family was mostly clustered around normal which was normal for my upbringing. There were a few rogues, very enmeshed or noncontact but most were see your parents because they were annoying but they love you. Blah, blah. Blah.

But as you get older you realise the spread of normal is huge and the number of pretty awful parent child relationships is phenomenal. So now in my 50s I certainly treat all glowing or dismissive grandparent tales with scepticism. I listen between the lines for the duty visits, the disappointment, the golden child portrayal. And particularly at many funerals there's a lot politely left unsaid. Not everyone is fooled.

@OldTime the funeral thing made me smile. On a somewhat lighthearted note the recent funerals of elderly relatives I have attended - let’s say over the past 10 years - a few lovely and very much reflecting the nice person I recognised. More than many I attended if I hadn’t had the order of service in my hand and recognised fellow relatives and mourners I genuinely did not recognise the person being eulogised and on several occasions thought I’d turned up at the wrong service.
Now I understand we are respectful on such occasions but honestly can it not be kept dignified but honest when ‘Jim or Susan’ were definitely not the ‘most amazing parents’ they were not the ‘kindest people you’d ever meet’.

Sometimes silence is really golden.

It seems to be a common theme that parents have made an assumption that an adult child will essentially become their carer in later life, but this has never been communicated (so no opportunity to say no before the event).
It has become very clear that my parents assumed that as 'the sensible one' I would do anything they needed as they got older. So now instead of acknowledging everything I do for DM, she is annoyed with me for not meeting her expectations of how things would be. It seems like every time I see her I am told that 'other people have family that do everything for them' or 'Doris's daughter moved in with her you know'.
Infuriatingly, Mum also refused to keep up with technology (despite using computers every day in their work) on the basis that Dad would use e-mail/internet if absolutely necessary but wherever possible they'd do things the old fashioned way. DM has had problems with her vision for a while and for years people have been suggesting technology that will help her to be more independent (eg. voice activated messaging, apps to read texts to her, audiobooks etc). She always refused because she said she didn't need it and Dad helped her. So now that she is alone and not in a position to learn new skills, she needs help with lots of things that she could have managed for herself if she had learned when it was suggested to her. It doesn't seem like a big thing, but on top of all everything else she needs help with it's exhausting.

The similarities are uncanny. We are building a beach house an hour away. Somewhere for my DH and I to spend weekends and downtime and eventually retire there ourselves. It’s no mean achievement in our family and we have done very well for ourselves, we are proud and have worked hard. Mention the beach house to my dad as a topic of conversation (you would think as someone previously involved in the construction industry would be interested) and all he can say is ‘well we will get to see even less of you now’… conversation shut down.

Keeping up with technology is not always a positive- DM had embraced iPhone/ iPad use, but it has been a nightmare (and caused huge arguments at times) with scammers and trying to keep her safe along with keeping track of spending on the latest supplement/ clothes which all needed returning when she really had no insight 🤦‍♀️

@JumpLeadsForTwo i really wish DM would let go of the tech. It’s very hard to assist her, long distance!
As for the funeral point… I often find myself mentally writing Mum’s eulogy, mentioning her determination, attention to detail and high standards and various other qualities that sound good on paper but add up to being a bit of a nightmare to live with!

To be honest and you are such an amazing community-I just want to let my lovely sister be very dignified at our parents funerals. She is much better at that than I am. I want our brother to rose tint the eulogy as I anticipate and I will just have a screen with Hyacinth Bucket as my homage.

Before I am flamed this is hopefully a lighthearted sign off - for now. Solidarity and sympathy you are all such a tonic.

This is just in case it helps anyone else with similar parents, but we had a couple of unpleasant surprises with finances that came out after my Dad died.

Firstly, mum had, a few years ago, cancelled a life insurance policy. She had mentioned she was cancelling this "because the financial advisor said to tell my children" but didn't reply when I asked what it covered. It turned out that the remaining life insurance policy wasn't enough to cover the funeral, which was by no means elaborate, by quite a long way. She then got me to pay for a couple of funeral related things and tried to weasel out of paying me back (part of a long pattern of avoiding paying back expenses).

I also found out that a luxury item with ongoing costs that my parents had bought and had stopped using years ago had actually been bought on credit. This was when I still lived at home as a kid and was struggling to afford sanpro and clothes.

I wasn't expecting to inherit much from my Dad, I thought he'd have left a small amount of cash like £100-200 or so, or one of the ornaments he'd collected, which were unusual but I don't think worth that much, but had sentimental value.

However, we got sent a somewhat vague signed list of items to be distributed, with a year on it (the year Dad went really downhill) and no other date. Which had Dad's hobby items that I don't think Mum wanted to keep.

We got one nice but low value item which was apparently earmarked for one of my two kids, and a box of one type of item related to another hobby no-one in my household does, that wouldn't let anyone actually take up the hobby without significant extra spending (think 2 pairs of old ski boots with no skis or other equipment).

Everyone else in the extended family got stuff from Dad's hobbies, but didn't really match with their own interests.

I think a lot of this was so she could tell people she was dividing Dad's possessions but it was so odd, with no thought to what enjoyment people were going to get out of the items.

I was pretty upset about the whole thing at the time particularly as my Mum decided I'd be so grateful that she'd contact me and tell me I needed to start going to family gatherings again.

I'm more sanguine about it all now, it did feel really shitty at the time though.

Sorry for the ramble!