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.

I was hopeless at sports when I was at school but I have always tried to keep active. I well and truly believe that keeping your weight down, even through it is hard at times, is the most important thing to do when you get older.
As I said up thread, one of my siblings and I were NC with my father and LC with my mother so I didn’t have responsibilities. However, I just don’t think anyone should ruin their lives for another person. You have children to love them not to make them unhappy.

Yes i saw that on the other thread. I agree re the weight - this has been the main issue with my mother and sister and latterly my father.

I think it's the boredom snacking that did for my father in terms of weight gain.

Not easy op. My mother is 80s quite demanding. Always something to sort or chase up. I think keep independent if you can in life. I just visit saturdays its plenty. Its tiring mentally negative negative

We could have got house clearance in but amongst the crap there were lots of things worth lots of money. And throwing out skip after skip of the rest was actually quite cathartic. The point is that PIL really really didn’t need to keep broken old doorbells or sawn off table legs, it was sifting through sixty years of stuff like that that made the whole scenario feel like a slap in the face. Completely avoidable.

Some fantastic options in the rented sector if you can go to £2k plus a month. - plus of course next to no maintenance or service charges. I know several people who have done this, banked their cash and the interest pays the rent

You are quite right, obviously, that no one can force us to give in to unreasonable demands from our elderly relatives. But I think most of us in this situation fall in to one of 3 categories, which make it very difficult:

1. Previously lovely parent who becomes 'difficult' due to ill health/dementia/lack of planning for old age (the 'cross that bridge' mentality) so it feels cruel to leave them to their own devices at this stage in their life
2. Parent who has always been unreasonable but fairly independent, so until they needed care etc the adult child has been able to just distance themselves from the circus and not had to directly challenge the behaviour. When parent becomes elderly and needs help they expect the adult child to come running whenever they call and the child feels bad about putting in stronger boundaries when parent is vulnerable.
3. Parent who has always been unreasonable and adult child has had a lifetime of being manipulated by them so they don't recognise that the expectations are unreasonable until it gets really bad.

I feel I am somewhere between 2 and 3. Surrounded by other family members who clearly can't do anything themselves because [reasons] but get upset and annoyed with me if I won't do more. All made harder because the unreasonable behaviour is always, and always has been, in private and the public persona is of a really lovely, easygoing old lady.

So with the weight thing, my maternal side of the family have always been "chunky". Always in the high BMI, "well built" - we're all tall, we have large hands, large feet, large hips, muscles etc. Recently my mum has been in hospital with various cardiac issues, and lost a lot of weight due to the illness. However the doctors reckon one of the reasons she bounced back so quickly and is back independent and mobile again is that she had a buffer of weight she could afford to lose, without compromising her muscle health. He thought that if she had been thinner and less "well built" going in to hospital, she wouldn't have been able to mobilise so quickly once the cardiac stuff was stabilised, and it was the early mobilisation that was key to faster recovery. So just an interesting aside.

Yes I think there really is a happy medium - far too much weight kind of has its own issues, but frail and skinny often does too - I reckon just being ‘slightly overweight’ is where I will aim for

I had literally just had a conversation with my husband about how I don’t believe our kids will have to look after us in our old age like we are looking after my parents. I feel like what we have been through with both my parents and my in-laws in terms of health and way of living has enlightened us to a degree that we will not be like that. Obviously bad luck and bad health can befall any of us but we have provisioned for almost eventuality that we would not have to burden ourselves on our kids. I’m also not sure our kids have the fortitude or grit to deal with anything as tough as we have had it due to how parenting and the world has changed for them. I feel like we really are the sandwich generation.

a location with shops and amenities in walking distance.

This is SO important.....

Luckily I have it, I am 70 and still healthy but am starting to feel my age, energy-wise. Got one of those shopping carts too lol - I don't have a car, live city central (in a beautiful area).

I do sympathise. A few years ago now, I was having to pick up the pieces with my parents and their living situation. It was a harrowing experience. They cut me off years before for having the audacity of moving away with my DH. It also involved neglect of one of my siblings and alcoholism. I can’t even talk about it still with people I’m close to. By reading your thread, I know how you feel that you don’t want to discuss the details so I’m just wishing you all the best recovering from this

Agreed. MIL who I mentioned above was quite overweight and was eating to the end. That probably meant she lived a couple of years longer… but her quality of life (inability to move and self mobilize) was poor in the last 3/4 years of life. There is indeed a happy medium. X

I come from a skinny family as does DH. Our DC are the same. My dad had to work hard to stay over 10 stone at 6' tall. When he became ill he didn't have anything in the bank. I'm certainly not under weight but if I'm ill my weight just plummets in days.
So there's definitely something in this.

One of the interesting things about my generation ( mid 50s) is a lot of us think that infirmity in old age is caused by some personal failing and the right diet, exercise and mental routines can prevent it. DH certainly thinks this. I mean I agree that it’s good to keep to a normal BMI, remain mobile and do mind exercises, but then I see my DPs 87 & 92 trapped in bodies that still just about function with failing minds that simply weren’t really designed to last so long.

Its good to do as much for your body as you can, but more importantly to recognise that a lot of this is just luck of the draw and unless you want to completely tarnish your DCs memory of you think about what adaptations and support you may need in later years and ideally get it in advance of actually needing it. My DPs are not awful people but I am now put in the position of having to put my own life plans on hold for them and thrust into spending more time with them than I would actively choose because they didn’t make adequate preparations, it’s easy to see their flaws.

@rookiemere excellent point.In fairness my parents were obsessed with healthy eating and exercise, and I mean obsessed. What they did not do was keep their minds active. They never read books, that was for dullards like me in their opinion. Crosswords, puzzles or similar were for boring people, During lockdown I bought them jigsaws as I thought it might keep them doing things together during the long days. Refused to touch them as they were for ‘old people’, personally I love a jigsaw just wish I had the time. Essentially they valued what they looked like, and yes they always looked great, over any mental stimulation. I also feel their incredibly bigoted views on everything and everyone cannot be good for you.

One skill which a lot of folk seem to lack whilst in the process of living and getting old which would help in old age is a love for one’s own company. To be able to find peace in being alone is a wonderful thing. A lot of people busy themselves with raising of children and work that when old age comes they don’t really know what to do with themselves and then seek out others to fill this gap for them and putting pressure on DCs to step up.

Yep, my FIL who is 86 is around 14 and a half stone and 5ft 11 . He is still very mobile, does lots of DIy, follows lots of things on internet, doesn’t have a carer or a cleaner . One thing though is he walks into town about 15 minutes up and down hills, and he still eats well, even if it’s ready meals with added veg, he eats a fair bit of fruit too, large glass of red every day and a handful of unsalted nuts- he’s on various meds but has been for lots of years . He does comment how poorly a lot of people his age eat , far too much sugar and living on sandwiches and cake etc and often not much protein at all. I do realise it can be the luck of the draw but diet I think can be a big part of it with the elderly as can mindset. He actually moved 150 miles last year from a totally dying village in Kent to Frome , which whilst not everyone’s bag is funky and has lots going on and is very community minded - Asa hes a bit of a GB News follower I did laugh at that , but he likes the fact it’s got life! he now has a medical centre, minor injuries unit and cottage hospital on doorstep, ( literally) plus cafes, pubs, restaurants, supermarkets, M&S food hall, and a 7/11 one minute walk away plus bus and train to Bath ( we live there) - he does drive but knowing he doesn’t have to has helped him mentally. Got a nice 3 bed bungalow with only a small garden at a good price and had a huge clear out. He’s already got all the gas taken out apart from his heating . Def thinking of anything that needs future proofing . Really admire him-

Oh god... I could have written this myself...

My empathy!

But part of that is the aspects of societal breakdown. There's a fine line between being happy in your own company, and being lonely. If I think about my grandmother, for example, she had close links to the community and to her church, and was very much part of the "ladies who do" set. So, for example, when a member of the church was widowed (and back then it usually was the men who died first), it would be the "ladies who do" who would organise popping in to the widow, bringing food, doing a bit of light housekeeping, organising transport to church and to the shops and generally "jollying along." And that community cohesion was important. It's definitely gone now, and with it, the casual community support that helped many elderly people through.

I wouldn't want to go back to a world where women couldn't work. I recognise that the skills that made my grandmother such a bastion in her community would also have got her very far in employment, had she been able to progress beyond being a war-trained nurse. She, and the women like her, could have changed the world. But the ebbing of the church from modern life has left a gap in companionship before personal care, in my opinion....

@roundaboutthehillsareshiningI agree community support has dwindled for many reasons including increase of retirement age. I also think longevity is part of the issue. Many people would be happy to pop into their neighbours and say have a cup of tea with them on a regular basis or do some shopping, but as people get into extreme old age the needs get much higher and in most cases best delivered by professional services.

They'd be happy to, but don't. Because the societal frameworks to do that don't really exist anymore. Most people don't proactively get to know their neighbours beyond a "hello", or are especially comfortable with their neighbours trying to proactively get to know them. And we don't do those community things anymore that would mean we'd meet people from across social strata - church, sports spectating, social clubs, etc.

Professional care has always been necessary, though historically delivered communally rather than at home. It's just that whole strata of older people who don't necessarily need professional support, but would benefit from a bit of companionship for their mental health, as much as anything else.

My parents are 80 and 85 and live wealthy and fucking miserable lives. They have no (maybe a couple) of friends. My father goes out daily for a walk but despises life and people. He hates reading and watches endless ‘A place in the sun’ and enjoys writing to the bbc and telegraph / times to complain about poverty/ people on benefits/ religion etc. of course he is entitled to the winter fuel allowance, free bus pass etc even though he is a millionaire. My mother is a bit better she will do art or jewellery courses but can’t have people or friends round because of him. They can’t stand each other - they live on separate floors. I am one of 3 siblings. We had an abusive and awful upbringing my all moved far away but I moved back on the promise of them being ‘better’ and more emotionally available. Bugger that. I live round the corner from them (they don’t know where I live) and their house is full of shit. They have an 8 bedroomed house and literally my mother has a wardrobe and chest of drawers in every room crammed with clothes. My father had two double garages built and it’s filled with hundreds of drills, string, wood - oh my god! The loft is bulging. Every room is full of storage that is full.

My parents always talked about money, inheritance and it was a way of keeping us inline and control. A decade ago I was like - shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. I’ll meet you for a coffee if you like but if you call me a name - I will leave. At some point they might need nursing. But I won’t be involved.

Us, we have a 3 storey house. Even now we are sorting out Xmas decs and constantly sorting and cleaning out as we go. I have one wardrobe- clothes don’t fit in there I can’t have them. I used to have thousands of books I don’t any more. I read a book and donate it! My husband and I have a master plan of retirement. Already got an allotment, rugby club and various other things but I do clubs and have a social life.

I think you are right. I fear my own future - no children, no extended family and possibly no community to get involved with either.

I agree with this too. My DF had a diagnosis that meant he was quite likely to need care and a care home when he got older. My DP did nothing about this for a decade and only started looking at mobility adaptations, home adaptations, carers then a care home when he was absolutely at crisis point at every step.

The human race has a 100% mortality rate and although some of us die very suddenly, a lot of people do deteriorate before they die, and it seems sensible to have a plan in place no matter how fit and engaged and individual is.

We do seem hard wired not to want to old age plan, as a species.

@HoraceGoesBonkersand one of the deeply not funny funny things about it is every solution I propose is roundly poo pooed then ends up being instigated a couple of months later when actually it’s almost past it’s usefulness and we’re on to the next crisis. I try to remember that some of this is down to DFs dementia and possibly DMs as well, but DF particularly has always been a belligerent sod so it’s very hard for me to remain calm.

For the sake of my own mental health I have had to detach as much as I can with regular visits.