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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m just not going to take the bait of this PP. Of course I have long been happy to visit my parents, do helpful chores for my parents, make their life pleasant in all the myriad ways that a loving and respectful child can make their parents’ life better. I want good things for my parents and will do quite a lot to make that happen.

HOWEVER there is a huge difference between that and dealing with the absolute my-life-taking-over shitshow created by otherwise intelligent adults with resources, who must have known known full well that they were declining, or would inevitably decline, and yet who refused to take any actions to deal with this realistically. (This is the OP, by the way.)

For example, a year ago I asked my parents to let us hire a geriatric care manager to help deal with their increasingly complicated situation, which was starting to fall apart, and my mother wouldn’t work with this experienced, Highly professional person. God I wish I had that care manager now. My Dad basically needs 24/7 care STAT and it’s falling on me to arrange it and take care of him in the meantime, which means being away from my children and my husband and my work and everything. I could just let him end up in a crappy nursing home and let them live out the consequences of their actions, but, you know, I actually love these people and feel compassion and want to help.

At least my mother isn’t resisting anymore in terms of getting care in the home because she obviously cannot take care of him. She is physically unable to do all the work of trying to change diapers, deal with medicine management, etc. She’s clearly exhausted and did so much for so long but at some point it just isn’t tenable. With my dad’s situation, we are way past the point where the problem is my worrying about an adult choosing the risk of having a fall. My Dad seems to be in a progressive neurological deterioration that’s been going on for the past five years but now has reached the point where I fear he is bedbound or close to it. The medical crises have been coming one after another, faster and faster, and this last one… How will he come back from? No plans have been made to deal with any of this.

My family is not the kind where multiple generations live together or right close by and all help out. We are the kind of family where everybody moves hundreds of miles away. This all could’ve been very different. My father-in-law moved into a continuing care community and is having a very nice life there, making friends and hanging out, and as he starts to decline he will have help right there and a plan for where he will be. We visit him and hang out with him and it is nothing but pleasant. I am so grateful for his adult decision making and his clear eyed acceptance of reality. That’s how I want to be.

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I'm in almost the exact situation and just wanted to say I think you are right in your assessment of the situation.  You are a good daughter, but you have to set boundaries and take care of your own little family.  No one should be making you feel bad about your role in this situation.[/quote]

NP. Yes, I want to echo this. OP, I am appreciative of your own clear-sightedness in this, and how you balance empathy with kindness. I know this thread is likely to go on for several pages with people "I can't understand"ing and "I would never"ing, and you know what? May they never have to understand. May they never be in this position. It's awful, it really is, and you are right it naming it that way.

I haven't myself seen any aging process done well. (We don't do it well in my family, for sure!) However, my sweetheart's parents have actually, for real, managed to clean out and go through an estate sale of the farmhouse they lived in for 40+ years, out in the country. They loved that place. They said goodbye to it and have already sold it, and they are moving into the nearby town when the last bits are over (that is all purchased too).

I have such respect for this elderly couple. They have been kind and thoughtful their whole lives, and this was so hard, but they managed to do it. They are on a waiting list for a community with step-up care, and they will already be downsized. She said if they had waited a few more years, they wouldn't have been able to do it, but it was important to them not to do o their boys what was done to them as parents aged.

Oh, my god. Bless them. On their own terms, and kind and thoughtful to the core. So very brave. What a gift. What an incredible role model, too. [/quote]

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