I've been the only member of my family caring for my aging mother. I like it that way because my only sibling is borderline PD. She doesn't want to help and I don't want her to help. WIN-WIN.

However, after lunch with a dear friend I learned that her siblings and the siblings of her husband have hurt feelings about the inequity of help they received while caring for their aged parents. Seems none of them are speaking to one another over these bad feelings. The parents have died and the bad feelings have persisted.

Is this common among Mormon families, not common at all, or familiar to any of you out there?

Pooped Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I've been the only member of my family caring for
> my aging mother. I like it that way because my
> only sibling is borderline PD. She doesn't want to
> help and I don't want her to help. WIN-WIN.
>
> However, after lunch with a dear friend I learned
> that her siblings and the siblings of her husband
> have hurt feelings about the inequity of help they
> received while caring for their aged parents.
> Seems none of them are speaking to one another
> over these bad feelings. The parents have died and
> the bad feelings have persisted.
>
> Is this common among Mormon families, not common
> at all, or familiar to any of you out there?

Pooped,
It's very common. So common, that is has nothing to do with being Mormon or any other religion

It's part of human nature.

As a nevermo, but someone who has had plenty of experience in this area, I think this is an area of life [an INEVITABLE "area of life"] our American culture does particularly badly overall.

No one I know of was socialized to learn what needed to be learned before this actually began happening in a particular generation (especially when the often negative effects directly target another, usually younger, generation, who become the caretakers).

Some of us did/are doing this well, but probably the great percentage of us struggle/are struggling when this happens.

Along the way, plenty of people in a given generation have real and ample reasons to feel hurt and betrayed in a wide spectrum of very real ways.

From my experience, my observation is that these are the times when "family harmony" (which can be, in many families, a more or less superficial, thin but "attractive," shell, covering up some central and important "home truths" which often have never been addressed before) can be stretched to the failure point.

One example of this would be lingering feelings of years-old injustice among siblings, or siblings and cousins, of the same generation, who (despite their own important, nuclear family, responsibilities) are suddenly responsible, as caretakers, for those who are incapacitated or dying.

(As anyone who has done this knows, caretaking can be an endless, twenty-four-hours-a-day responsibility, in which personal priorities, and the priorities of spouses/partners and offspring, suddenly are superseded by literal matters of someone else's life and death.)

This is often a time when deep family secrets are revealed--and some of these can be extremely disorienting and disruptive to individuals within a family, especially those who, literally, "didn't have a clue."

For many families, and beyond the obvious caretaker tasks which must be tended to every hour of every day, the sudden immensity of a given family's REAL history (the "sins," the betrayals, the sometimes actual crimes like theft or sexual misconduct) can be extremely disorienting--and all of this is heaped on top of the physical and psychological exhaustion of those who are doing the round-the-clock care of people who are dying, hour, by hour, by hour.

These are the times when the actual truth of what actually did happen (years, or even generations, ago) often comes out, and we (as a culture) just "don't" (to my knowledge) prepare people for these different streams of often overwhelming emotion, previously hidden facts, and sheer physical exhaustion which suddenly converge.

Former "family harmony" can be the first to be affected (often soon after the first caretaker is selected or identified).

It would be to our benefit if, as a culture, we began much earlier to educate ourselves, and our offspring, more about this process, to at least put people on notice that this has the potential to occur, to lessen the overwhelming impact when it does occur.

Tevai Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> (As anyone who has done this knows, caretaking can
> be an endless, twenty-four-hours-a-day
> responsibility, in which personal priorities, and
> the priorities of spouses/partners and offspring,
> suddenly are superseded by literal matters of
> someone else's life and death.)

My oldest sisters after a lifetime of loving each other now hate each other.

They both disagree on my father's care. He has dementia and acts like a prepubescent child. He is in very good health in his 80s. My mother has complained to me about how hard he is to look after but doesn't want anyone but her looking after him.

My oldest sister wants someone else other than our mother doing it. My next to oldest sister supports our mother. I don't know what to do since I've been estranged for 2 decades and only just reconnected. These people are completely different now and they don't push their religion anymore. It must be because the temple of my mother's narcissism is crumbling under the weight of my father's dementia.

I think it's very common in all families.

I have two other siblings, one is downright hostile-antagonistic to the point that an estranged relationship exists. After the passing of my father, the sibling (that is not estranged) laid into me for causing a lot of the family disharmony problems. It really blew my mind because all was forgotten of this sibling's problems with drug dependency and antisocial behavior. Of course, my TBM mom blamed me as well for spending too much time with my dad (we shared a lot of interests and hobbies). I agree that it's normal to be angry and want to blame somebody for what he/she feels.

Hope my experience was helpful and I wish you the best of luck.

I wish my parents were still around to disrupt things. Although as I'm now getting older myself, it might be a race to the bottom!

I really do miss them though. It will be nineteen years this year they've been gone, and that is a long time.

My parents both died when they were still quite capable of taking care of themselves. My older brother had a stroke when he was 42 and is disabled, but is still very capable of doing a lot of things EXCEPT driving. He spent most of his days at my parents' house. If he had not been around, they may have ended up in a nursing home. My mother did have to be in the nursing home a few times, but only for 3 or 4 days after hospitalizations for infections, but my dad never spent any time in a nursing home. They did have some home health, but not for long.

He drove to the farm the day he died. My older brother always went with him. My mother was ready to eat dinner when she just died when everyone left the room. She had visitors all day (at the nursing home). She died with a fork in her hand. My dad died at home a few hours after I last talked to him on the phone.

Our problem has been, for one, inheritance, and second, our disabled brothers. We have one brother who is mentally disabled and physically disabled. Our older brother watches out for him. They can't live together. But all hell broke loose when our parents died.

My older sister's family doesn't talk to the rest of us except my 2 kids. They were very close to her children and I am not going to get in the middle of the mess. My sister would disown her kids if they speak to me. My little sister did something unacceptable when I lost my job. I think she is an alcoholic or shall we saw I know she is. She holds down a job and has for 28 years, but she drinks all night every night.

Anyway, TOMORROW, my daughter will be getting married and, guess what, every one of my siblings is coming to her luncheon afterwards. Only my older sister and her husband will go to the temple with her. Our hope is that everyone will keep their cool FOR my daughter. I told both my sisters I want them there.

I've been shocked by how families react to older parents and death. My boyfriend said it would never happen in his family. His dad died 3 years ago. Drama ever since.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/2019 03:58PM by cl2.

Your comments made me aware that the big drama in my family will probably come after my mother dies. My sister ALWAYS tried taking control when Mom wasn't around. She's the oldest and figures that being the oldest entitles her to always have the last word.

My sister wants nothing more than our mother to die ASAP (she's been saying this, only to me, for the last seven years) because she wants her inheritance and my making sure Mom gets regular medical attention is throwing a monkey wrench in her projections for Mom's demise. She's extremely angry that she still has to wait for that payout date. Of course, she doesn't say these things to her pals because she knows it will make her look horrible and greedy but she cannot hide her feelings from me.

My sister also has health problems of her own and her children (3) expect me (I guess I'm the designated family health care provider) to also care for their mother. I had to put my foot down. I told them that there were three of them to help out their mother and only one of me caring for their grandmother. That went over like a lead balloon. So when my mother dies I know my sister's kids expect me to take over caring for my sister. Won't happen. I know it will create an irreconcilable split in the family but I plan on heading out of Dodge as soon as my mother passes. I just don't care any more what they think of me. My niece already told her mother that she wants to put her (my sister) in a nursing home and she's only 66 years old. Niece doesn't like caring for her mother and her brothers aren't doing much as it is.

cl2, congratulations on your sweet daughter's wedding! I hope that day is perfect for you and everyone is thoughtful and kind.:)

About 15 years ago my MIL moved into our house. Some days it is a struggle. She is extremely TBM she doesn’t say much about the church bull maybe the no response has worked. Her son and my wife’s brother he and his wife are moving to utah soon. I hope for some relief from watching MIL but it won’t happen. There have been dinners at my house but they haven’t said too much even when they notice I have a adult drink. I just don’t care what they think sometimes. It’s still a pain.

I think it's a universal human problem. My brother and I were able to come to a harmonious agreement about my mother's care, but I've seen friends go through difficulties.

One friend was very attentive to her elderly mother for years. But the time came when my friend wanted to retire and move away. So she put her mom (who was in her 90s) into assisted living and told her brother that he and his family needed to step up -- and they did.

Ideally, family members can work things out, but it isn't always equitable or without bumps in the road.

My experience is there was harmony when the adult children were the center of attention and got a share of the assets annually.

When the "older generation" needed their assets and the caregiver asked for help, harmony ceased to exist.

Was the prior harmony real? I have to say no. It was an illusion.

My parents didn't seem to suffer with this problem. Their parents were basically healthy and independent until only months or weeks before they died. Two of my grandparents had terminal heart attacks and died quickly at home. The other two had cancer that went undiagnosed so they died relatively quickly once they got the diagnosis. So my parents and their siblings (my aunts and uncles) never had to do much, if any, care taking. The hospitals also let the dying stay much longer than today if they knew someone was going to die very soon. Now days the hospitals kick out almost everyone after three days, dying or not unless they are in ICU or having extensive surgery.

These days technology and pharmacology advances are keeping the elderly alive much longer but not always in enviable physical situations. This problem may have always been around but I doubt it was so wide spread and drawn out an issue.