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[quote=Anonymous]More so psychologically. I've noticed since she retired a year ago that she's ALWAYS talking about her health. She's becoming as bad as my grandmother had been when she was in her 80s, before she died. They're both very religious Catholics so one would think they'd be more at peace with mortality and try to spend their last years on earth volunteering at a soup kitchen or something, but it's the total opposite.

I try to change the topic when we talk--ask her about plans for vacations with my father, plans to move to a smaller, easier-to-manage house or condo or plans to return to work part-time but all she wants to talk about is health. And the crazy thing is, she's actually pretty healthy. I wish she'd at least talk about exercise, but she doesn't even do that. It's just getting so hard for me to listen to. My in-laws are the same age and nothing like this, and if I even try to say something positive about them, my mother gets snide. These people aren't even wealthy or anything, they're just busy and don't talk about every ache and pill and doctor visit, or who's dying or dead.

Looking back, I wonder if this was sort of in the making all along. I think both of my parents have trouble actually just being happy. They seem more comfortable when they're around people who are having it rough, like it's a badge of honor to suffer or be around suffering. I feel like I'm going to need to limit contact for the sake of my own family's sanity but I know that's not going to be possible because they're getting older and someone has to make sure they're ok. Even dinner conversations leave DH sitting there nodding, waiting to go home because they just badger us with negativity about the state of the world. If not that, it's again, all about health. When I call her now she asks the same questions about GC and then it's onto health and who is sick and maybe we have a this or that running in our family because cousin so and so and great-grandma had something similar... ugh! I end up cutting off the calls because I start to feel like I'm wasting my own precious time. For those of you who are dealing with this, have you seen any turn-around, or does it really just get worse? Is it even possible to get an older parent to realize that this is an awful way to live out your life? [/quote]

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