DecadianSenior Contributor
Grief and Guilt - Coping with our Feelings about our Aging Parents
@PurpleFlowers@Former-Member@BlueBay
I would like to tag more names here - but right now I am not at all sure who else is coping with aging parents - maybe I could extend the convo to people handling other difficult relations - but let's see what hatches
I have not had to feel this because of the way my family treated me - but my TS sure tried to lay a guilt trip on me - but regardless of how little I was required by my parents as they aged - though Dad appreciated me always - my mother did not want me around - and that made life really hard -
Still - as stuck as I feel writing about this right now - having written it everywhere else - I am opening a thread because whether it's because Christmas is coming with lots of ho ho ho - these elderly people have all sorts of issues and there is no end to what I hear about elderly parents - some of it good some of it not good - and of my friends sees her mother all day on her day off - and takes her shopping and helps with her chores - wonderful - but that doesn't always happen
So I think we are often caught between guilt and grief - these people who once were so powerful and important in our lives fail and become frail and fall away. Some become demanding and often cruel - some pathetic - others fiercely independent
We can't do much about the oldies but we can support each other - we all are somewhere along that continuim - from the first signs of getting frail to death - and mine have died
We are not supposed to speak ill of the dead - is that because they might hear us? Well it might be true - but I was told it was because they could not defend themselves. And that's true too - but parents often give their children a hard time in later years - and this is wrong - as wrong as child abuse -
So I will leave it here and see what hatches
Decadian
