Retirement and "Old Folks" homes. My rant.

tam120

I hope I'm a long way from that but if/when the time comes I don't want to live with my daughters. I don't want either of them to have to take care of me. I do want them and the grandkids to visit. I hope I've built a strong enough relationship with them that they won't just put me there and forget about me. I don't even want them to consider having to take care of me, to disrupt their lives like that, I feel guilty already!

pinkgigi

You could not possibly judge other people.

My father died 15 years ago, and my mother decided that I should 'look after' her after that. I was a single mother working full time and she 'competed' for my attention with my children. She clearly doesn't like my daughter. My sister at that stage took a back seat. When I married again, she tried to break up my relationship. When my husband got sick I gave the responsibility for my mother to my sister because I couldn't care for them both, work full-time and be a parent to my children. Now my husband is dead, she says my widowhood doesn't 'count' because we weren't married long enough.

Now my mother had made some poor decisions in her life that has left her very ill and infirm, and we had to make the decision last year to put her in a home. It is NOT a dumping ground, after all it cost $600k to get her in, it is clean, there are lots of activities, she has a balcony and a lovely view. She has company and friends. She has slight dementia, but she is also damn mean. She doesn't like my daughter, but fawns over my son (he is a boy after all). It would not be safe to have her in my home or let her stay in hers, she was always falling over, forgetting her medications, not eating etc. She had carers and food delivered, but it wasn't enough.

I visit her a couple of times a month, but only stay a short time, before the nastiness and blame starts. She likes to tell my sister that I never visit. I only visit when I feel emotionally strong because she upsets me in the passive-agressive way she has all her life. If you have a big family and can share the load, good on you. If you have the money not to have to work full-time like I do, good on you. Oh and my son battled 2nd stage cancer last year, and I had to go through that without any family support.


I have to forgive myself for putting myself first, if I ran myself into the ground it wouldn't help anyone, and I'm the only person my children have.

Some things in life are sad, it's just the way things are. You cannot compare people's lives or people's tragedies.

GG

Shannon023

You could not possibly judge other people.

My father died 15 years ago, and my mother decided that I should 'look after' her after that. I was a single mother working full time and she 'competed' for my attention with my children. She clearly doesn't like my daughter. My sister at that stage took a back seat. When I married again, she tried to break up my relationship. When my husband got sick I gave the responsibility for my mother to my sister because I couldn't care for them both, work full-time and be a parent to my children. Now my husband is dead, she says my widowhood doesn't 'count' because we weren't married long enough.

Now my mother had made some poor decisions in her life that has left her very ill and infirm, and we had to make the decision last year to put her in a home. It is NOT a dumping ground, after all it cost $600k to get her in, it is clean, there are lots of activities, she has a balcony and a lovely view. She has company and friends. She has slight dementia, but she is also damn mean. She doesn't like my daughter, but fawns over my son (he is a boy after all). It would not be safe to have her in my home or let her stay in hers, she was always falling over, forgetting her medications, not eating etc. She had carers and food delivered, but it wasn't enough.

I visit her a couple of times a month, but only stay a short time, before the nastiness and blame starts. She likes to tell my sister that I never visit. I only visit when I feel emotionally strong because she upsets me in the passive-agressive way she has all her life. If you have a big family and can share the load, good on you. If you have the money not to have to work full-time like I do, good on you. Oh and my son battled 2nd stage cancer last year, and I had to go through that without any family support.


I have to forgive myself for putting myself first, if I ran myself into the ground it wouldn't help anyone, and I'm the only person my children have.

Some things in life are sad, it's just the way things are. You cannot compare people's lives or people's tragedies.

GG

Hugs to you! :flowerforyou:

ninerbuff

Hearing some of these stories shows me that there's obvious differences in culture when it comes to how parents will be taken care of. I've never judged anyone, I was just irked about the 10 minute visiting time if those were he children who visited. I do know that there are some people that can't be lived with.

significance

ninerbuff, if your elderly relative needed 24-hour nursing, would you give up your job and live on welfare to provide that? Or are you assuming that your relatives will never get that ill or that if they do, someone else in your family (a wife, perhaps) would do that for you? Even if you were willing to give up your job (and hence your house, if you had a mortgage still) and were willing (along with your kids, if you had any) to live with the consequences of that, you'd still need help to be able to do that: someone to look after the relative while you were out running errands, getting groceries, etc, or someone to run all your errands for you while you stayed at home all the time.

perceptualobfuscator

I don't know if this has been addressed yet, but where I'm from we have volunteer groups that do grocery shopping and run other errands for elderly people, often in nursing homes. This sounds a lot like what you're describing. There's also Meals on Wheels and other organizations. Are you sure this isn't what you're seeing?

I second the posts saying not to be so quick to judge. It's easy to imagine yourself looking after your elderly parents/grandparents, until you realize that they may have conditions that need around the clock care that a working person (especially with children) cannot provide. What if they need help doing simple things, like eating, going to the bathroom, or even standing up? Can you afford to alter your home to fit a wheelchair? What if they have Alzheimer's, and can't tell where they are, or recognize you, or imagine they are earlier in their lives, fighting a war or lost? The sad fact is that some people are not gifted with good health in their later years, and around the clock, professional level care is difficult to provide without nursing homes.

It is also true that some people are not on good terms with their family, for whatever reasons, be it neglect or distance. If your parent did not provide adequate care for you, or was openly hostile, would you want to visit often? Things are often more complicated than they seem.