Reply to How do you deal with gnawing guilt?

Forum Index » Eldercare

Reply to "How do you deal with gnawing guilt?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You are not alone in this OP.  [b]I had two whole years of tough decisions, second guessing, putting my life on the back burner, constant guilt and massive anxiety when I was trying to do the best by my mom. [/b]

To be clear your parents moved to Independent Living but your dad needs Assisted?  Are they in a place where they can both move to Assisted together, even though your mom doesn't need it yet?  It took my mom several weeks to adjust to any move I made with her, and unfortunately I went the Independent>Assisted>Memory Care when [b]in retrospect I should have skipped Independent.[/b]

Break the decisions and the chaos into one step at a time.  Triage whatever can be back burnered.  Once you get them stabilized somewhere you'll be able to breathe but I do call this time in our parents lives as "the calm between the crises".  You'll get through this but you need to remember to put your own oxygen mask on first.  I lay some fault on our elderly parents for not planning better.[/quote]

OP here.  Thank you for this.  I am living a parallel life.  Two years of constant worry and being pulled in many different caregiving directions.  The only person who gets ignored in my life is me.  Everything bolded above is how I feel all the time, every day.  I'm relieved to know others feel it and can put to words what I just can't seem to.  Makes me feel heard and less crazy.

I also feel I went Independent when I should have gone straight to Assisted with my Dad but the complicating factor was my mom who is independent and I didn't want her to move from being in her own home to being around people who she couldn't relate to at all.  She was already a reluctant traveler.  However, she can stay in Independent while my Dad moves to Assisted and we can take it month by month.  If she decides she wants to join him in his place, great.  If she wants to have uninterrupted sleep at night but hang out with him during the day, she can keep her own unit in Independent for now.  I'm letting her decide what she wants and I'm more or less making the decisions for my Dad.

Thank you for posting your thoughtful response and helping me feel less alone.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics