I cannot help but feel frustrated with friends who act so bent out of shape when they have to help their elderly parents

[Anonymous]

OP is grieving. She’s the wrong person for these friends to complain to beyond passing remarks. It’s like when my friend complains to me about which place her mother wants to be taken for brunch on Mother’s Day. My mom is dead, so my appetite for that kind of thing is limited. I get that it’s my friend’s reality and I want to be supportive, but I can only give a little bit along those lines. I try not to complain about parenting problems to my friends who desperately wanted kids but wound up not having any.

Some people who vent don’t think about their audience beyond it being a pair of ears to listen. Some conversations have right and wrong audiences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My parents were neglectful and abusive, which not everyone knows. I complain

How so? Have to admit I see posts on here claiming that a parent was ‘narcissistic’ (buzz word for everyone now) and also ‘neglectful’ but when they describe the parenting it strikes me as fairly typical 70s parenting, eg hands off. One poster said her parents were ‘neglectfully abusive’ because they left her alone after school and during the summer. That was many parents in the 70s where I grew up, but kids loved it. Freedom.

DP but I said upthread I have parents who were abusive. By which I mean they hit me and screamed at me and didn't get me needed medical or dental care. However we were middle to upper middle class and my dad was a prominent businessman in the community and people did not know what it was like inside our house. I actually did not realize that what I just described is abusive until I was in my 20s because it was so normalized within my family and got labeled as "corporal punishment" (it wasn't -- my parents hit us in anger and sometimes not even in response to things we'd done -- these were not controlled spankings, plus the screaming and medical neglect cannot be defended). When you are a kid you just accept what you're told and unless there is an intervention you may not even get it. I remember at one point intervening when my dad was hitting my younger brother and thinking after that that my dad was abusive towards my brother but still not getting that I was abused.

You seriously have no idea. I don't complain about taking care of my parents but I do sometimes complain about them generally. They are hard to deal with. I wouldn't complain to someone who had just lost a parent but I would complain after a year or so because my parents are a stress and a burden on me and I should be able to complain to a friend about that. It's not a comparison -- I am not talking about their parent and if they wanted to talk to me about their grief I'd listen and not compare to my own situation. But just as they are entitled to their grief over losing their parent they love who took care of them, I am entitled to my grief over never having had a loving and caring parent at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP is grieving. She’s the wrong person for these friends to complain to beyond passing remarks. It’s like when my friend complains to me about which place her mother wants to be taken for brunch on Mother’s Day. My mom is dead, so my appetite for that kind of thing is limited. I get that it’s my friend’s reality and I want to be supportive, but I can only give a little bit along those lines. I try not to complain about parenting problems to my friends who desperately wanted kids but wound up not having any.

Some people who vent don’t think about their audience beyond it being a pair of ears to listen. Some conversations have right and wrong audiences.

It really depends on what "recently" means.

If you lost a parent within the last year I'm going to be careful about how I talk about parents around you generally. But at some point that grief becomes part of your reality and is not something you can expect people to dance around. It's just part of your experience and you cannot expect people to simply never mention their parents in your presence (or to lie and tell you how great their parents are when they aren't) for the rest of your relationship.

If this is something you are struggling with I highly recommend seeing a grief counselor. My DH and I both lost loved ones during Covid (he lost his dad and I lost my brother) and it was hard in part because our grief felt totally subsumed by the collective grief over Covid. People not only grieving people who died from Covid (our loved ones did not die from Covid so their deaths were kind of collectively ignored even by family and friends to some degree) but also over struggles with parenting and isolation and medical anxiety and police brutality and you name it. Grief counseling was enormously helpful in helping us figure out how to deal with that and realize that it was possible for us to grieve our family members and to find ways to talk about our grief without needing to place it in opposition to the collective grief and trauma others were going through.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My father passed recently and my mother died when I was young.

Their complaining strikes me as selfish and tone deaf

YOU sound very selfish, ignorant and judgemental. It's NOT all about you ALL the time.

[Anonymous]

If you haven’t been responsible for an elderly parent dying of cancer, handling daily caregiving or coordinating care/coverage while you work, taking them to medical appointments, arranging hospice, etc. then you don’t understand how hard it can be…especially when money is tight and you have other responsibilities.

If you haven’t had to deal with an elderly parent with dementia, you have no clue what the special kind of hell it can be…especially when they aren’t capable of recognizing the initial stages and are paranoid and angry…or when they disappear, etc.

It’s easier to lose your parent in an accident or heart attack than to suffer alongside them for years or decades while being the primary caregiver. Trust me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP is grieving. She’s the wrong person for these friends to complain to beyond passing remarks. It’s like when my friend complains to me about which place her mother wants to be taken for brunch on Mother’s Day. My mom is dead, so my appetite for that kind of thing is limited. I get that it’s my friend’s reality and I want to be supportive, but I can only give a little bit along those lines. I try not to complain about parenting problems to my friends who desperately wanted kids but wound up not having any.

Some people who vent don’t think about their audience beyond it being a pair of ears to listen. Some conversations have right and wrong audiences.

It really depends on what "recently" means.

If you lost a parent within the last year I'm going to be careful about how I talk about parents around you generally. But at some point that grief becomes part of your reality and is not something you can expect people to dance around. It's just part of your experience and you cannot expect people to simply never mention their parents in your presence (or to lie and tell you how great their parents are when they aren't) for the rest of your relationship.

If this is something you are struggling with I highly recommend seeing a grief counselor. My DH and I both lost loved ones during Covid (he lost his dad and I lost my brother) and it was hard in part because our grief felt totally subsumed by the collective grief over Covid. People not only grieving people who died from Covid (our loved ones did not die from Covid so their deaths were kind of collectively ignored even by family and friends to some degree) but also over struggles with parenting and isolation and medical anxiety and police brutality and you name it. Grief counseling was enormously helpful in helping us figure out how to deal with that and realize that it was possible for us to grieve our family members and to find ways to talk about our grief without needing to place it in opposition to the collective grief and trauma others were going through.

In the last month, yeah, so not appropriate and tone deaf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you haven’t been responsible for an elderly parent dying of cancer, handling daily caregiving or coordinating care/coverage while you work, taking them to medical appointments, arranging hospice, etc. then you don’t understand how hard it can be…especially when money is tight and you have other responsibilities.

If you haven’t had to deal with an elderly parent with dementia, you have no clue what the special kind of hell it can be…especially when they aren’t capable of recognizing the initial stages and are paranoid and angry…or when they disappear, etc.

It’s easier to lose your parent in an accident or heart attack than to suffer alongside them for years or decades while being the primary caregiver. Trust me.

Why do you assume losing a parent and also dealing with elder care issues are mutually exclusive? I have dealt with all of those things. Many people do. And that does not make losing a parent easier, and it certainly does not make it any less tone deaf to complain about having to visit a parent when a friend has just lost theirs and is still grieving.

Some of you are so very clueless

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My father passed recently and my mother died when I was young.

Their complaining strikes me as selfish and tone deaf

YOU sound very selfish, ignorant and judgemental. It's NOT all about you ALL the time.

You sound nuts

[Anonymous]

OP, it sounds like you should just gently know because of your own grief, you are not the right person to hear this. Set a boundary, but give grace.

I was going to write you a long post about the living hell it has been between my parents and inlaws-some easier than others, but it's not worth it. You simply need to know some people are dealing with more challenges than you could possibly fathom. You have a right to your grief and they have right to theirs. It's OK that you cannot be empathetic, as long as you fake it enough to say you overwhelmed by your loss and wish you could be more supportive.

[Anonymous]

Maybe one day, OP, you'll realize that others can have just as traumatic or painful a life experience, or worse, even though it looks different.

Don't be so quick to judge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, it sounds like you should just gently know because of your own grief, you are not the right person to hear this. Set a boundary, but give grace.

I was going to write you a long post about the living hell it has been between my parents and inlaws-some easier than others, but it's not worth it. You simply need to know some people are dealing with more challenges than you could possibly fathom. You have a right to your grief and they have right to theirs. It's OK that you cannot be empathetic, as long as you fake it enough to say you overwhelmed by your loss and wish you could be more supportive.

Stop projecting

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My father passed recently and my mother died when I was young.

Their complaining strikes me as selfish and tone deaf

Some people are tone deaf and selfish and can only think of their own experience. The posters on this thread show that. Any normal person would know not to go on and on about HOW HARD they have it with their parents to someone who just lost a parent. Duh.

But unfortunately message boards like this attract many socially inept people.

[Anonymous]

OP, I grieved when my parents died, but I also experienced great relief since I experienced 10 years of their decline.

You and your friends are having different experiences. Remember, not everyone's parents are rainbows and sunshine. You may be experiencing much more grief than your friends may end up experiencing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You are fortunate to have parents who loved you and were kind to you.

I took care of several that were neither kind nor loving, although I also heard real apologies from some. The only one I did not care for was truly homicidally violent. It is difficult, but it’s a privilege to care for our aging family. My grandmother could be demanding and selfish, but she was wonderful in so many ways. She did so much that was good, and she survived terrible trauma. I would cut off my arm to have her back.

Like OP, I am sick of the self pitying, entitled, TikTok diagnosers who don’t care for their families. Give someone a DSM-IV or ten minutes on TikTok and they will diagnose you too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you haven’t been responsible for an elderly parent dying of cancer, handling daily caregiving or coordinating care/coverage while you work, taking them to medical appointments, arranging hospice, etc. then you don’t understand how hard it can be…especially when money is tight and you have other responsibilities.

If you haven’t had to deal with an elderly parent with dementia, you have no clue what the special kind of hell it can be…especially when they aren’t capable of recognizing the initial stages and are paranoid and angry…or when they disappear, etc.

It’s easier to lose your parent in an accident or heart attack than to suffer alongside them for years or decades while being the primary caregiver. Trust me.

Why do you assume losing a parent and also dealing with elder care issues are mutually exclusive? I have dealt with all of those things. Many people do. And that does not make losing a parent easier, and it certainly does not make it any less tone deaf to complain about having to visit a parent when a friend has just lost theirs and is still grieving.

Some of you are so very clueless

You were the primary caregiver for years on end while juggling a FT job and parenting? It’s a lot.

I was relieved when my mother finally died after a year of pain and suffering with stage 4 cancer. It was brutal. Horrific. That doesn’t mean I don’t miss her. But I absolutely believe it would have been easier for her as well as on me had she been killed by a bus or a heart attack.

Daily caregiving for someone who is struggling isn’t the same as periodic elder care. If you haven’t lived it, you just don’t know.

Regardless, why should your feelings matter more than anyone else’s?