I'm in my early 30s, and my father (72) has been in a nursing home since 2020. He has not walked and does not desire to walk. He does not care about his hygiene or life. He has given up on himself
He has been depressed for sometime and even though we have urged him to get help, he refuses and continues to suffer.
I try to see him once a month and will pick up my mother (70) to go see him. She is not all the way mobile, so usually when I see them both, it turns out to be an exhausting day for me.
He was able to walk before but refused to and now here we are. I grew up in a dysfunctional household (alcoholism, mental illness) and my parents decisions have left them lonely. They were good parents, but they just had their own issues. My dad was emotionally distant but he provided. I've done work on myself to unlearn disfunctional behavior but I struggle with my own mental health issues.
And each day seems like a battle to not succumb to depression because I know where it can lead. I've done therapy, try to exercise, pray, be creative, and eat healthy. But lately, those things don't seem like enough. I have a lot of resentment towards them both because I feel cheated out of being parented in my adult life. I look at my friends and their parents babysit for them, and have them over for the holidays. One day I do want to have children, but sadly they won't be able to be active grandparents.
I just started caring for my mom and she’s kinda picky. I decided this could either take 10 years off my life in stress, or I could make the best of it, support her, and also myself. Our parents are the reason we are hear, but the do not need to be our reason for being here, We make our destiny, and truly they deserve our support, even if they do have vices. Treat them with respect, he provided for you, meaning he cares. Possibly look at it as not being cheated, maybe not being changed or influenced by his personality traits.
I want to recommend you start reading philosophy. I found an awesome book called “The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living”. Take the daily read on in the morning and think about it.
Here’s yesterday’s saying, “Trust me, real joy is a serious thing. Do you think someone can, in the charming expression, blithely dismiss death with an easy disposition? Or swing open the doors to poverty, keep pleasures in check, or meditate on the endurance of suffering? The one who is comfortable turning these thoughts over is truly full of joy, but hardly cheerful. It’s a exactly such a joy that I would wish for you to possess, for it will never run dry once you’ve laid claim to its source.” Seneca, Moral Letter, 23.4
Seeking Peace1, I leave you with much love, wisdom, health, and life. Each day is truly a gift. Don’t let anyone unwrap the gift but you, like they said above. Don’t let the outside unhappy make the inside unhappy. Go buy yourself some flowers today. Don’t wait for a boyfriend to go get em for you :)
Cheers and hugs,
Eskiemama
(Ventingisback)
I am a Jew. We take this to mean "do not dishonor your father and mother in the public square". Don't shame them, don't cause them public humiliation.
Most readers here are Christian. Did Jesus give up his path, his ministry, his job to care for his mother? He consigned her to the care of another.
Can you not do the same with honor?
Seek Elder Law attorney direction for valuable information about accountability, expectations, options caring for aging parents. Are you an only child? Are you designated POA? You will need to decide , with some professional help, if you want to continue to be involved in parents care, serve as POA or not, look at other options ( remove yourself legally from any responsibility for them for your mental and physical health reasons); or continue to be involved with their care, but with significant boundaries in place to protect your mental, physical health. No one can change another person, you cannot change your father nor mother; professional counselor, Elder Law Attorney, input from parents PCP regarding their needs, your honest assessment of your own mental and physical health to continue ( also confer with your PCP) .....these are some of the things you can consider to help you make a valid decision for yourself. If you honestly feel that you cannot continue, then confer with Elder Law attorney for direction on removing yourself from the picture and possibly turning their care over to the state ( wards of the state) or if there are other family members consider them to take over. Only you can decide for yourself what and how much you can commit to; there will be more grief and regrets in addition what sounds like a lot already no matter what your decision is. Consider that both your parents or one of them could live a very long time; what is best for both short term and long term for you? What happens if you become ill and unable?
Why is your Dad in a Nursing Home? What was the "trigger" that put him there?
From your posting, it appears that your Mom lives away from him. Why is that? Does she have the funds to be able to live near him so that she can get to the Nursing Home without you?
I know this sounds counter-intuitive, however, if you were to visit your Dad without your Mom, would the visit seem more draining or less draining? If you were to visit with your Mom with out also visiting your Dad, would it seem more draining or less draining?
Is the draining issue due to the length of time of the visits? What is it about the visit that drains your energy more than other parts?
I have personally found that if I visit more often, the stays can be shorter and less taxing to my brain.
Do you have a significant other or is your Mom and Dad consuming all your awake time, whether mentally or physically? If your Mom and Dad are consuming majority of your time, you need to find some other activities that can consume you. You could volunteer, or you could pick up another job or .... just something to get your mind off of their care and their health. How about volunteering with the humane society and help take care of the many dogs, cats and smaller animals?
Quit thinking about your friends and their kids. You are only seeing a glimpse of their life with children. Raising a kid, with or without a partner, is an everyday challenge. One of the more challenging problems is how to get care of a kid when they are sick and you have to be elsewhere (home alone is NOT an option.) Not all grandparents want to babysit their grandchildren and some do, but on their terms, not yours. If you want to influence a kid, try volunteering with the Big Sister program.
Please think about what you do have and plan the future around what you do have, versus what you do not have.
Like you I want to honor my mother who is in assisted living She has been for 2.5 years. I tried twice to bring her home with me. It was a nightmare. She is a major psychotic. I already have so many health issues and lots of physical pain. I never sleep more than 2 hours straight. It’s torture.
I wish I had a way to give advice and take advice from others without the guilt that my faith has instilled in me to honor thy mother and father.
Does your dad or mom make you feel bad if you don’t come more often? Does either of them make you feel bad for anything?
IF NOT, then only thing I can offer is as long as you are seeing that they are cared for and have what they need you are honoring them. With that said….I wish I could take my own advice! If they seem content with how things are and are not complaining then you should try to be happy. That’s what I always wanted for my daughter before she was murdered.
My mom never stops complaining for one second. She is however a strong Christian, but is not a loving person at all. Never has been. There is nothing anyone can do to make her happy. Nothing is ever good enough. Never has been. I have been taking care of her since I was 8 years old in so many ways. That is now 55 years. I’m exhausted and have zero life due to her making me feel guilty.
So at times it seems like trying to do right, due what scripture says, or make others happy is mental suicide.
I did not have the best growing up either, we were a dysfunctional family. My mother had a lot of emotional problems and my father chose not to see it.
Dealing with their caregiving has caused me to revisit this a lot. I never was estranged from my parents and we had a social relationship through the years but the current situation brings back the nasty childhood memories that I thought I moved past and I also find I am dealing with resentments.
I am trying not to dwell on it, but it's hard. I find having gratitude for the positive people in my life and the good things that happened in life keep me going.
Go out and live your best life, fill t with good people and make wonderful memories.
"Dealing with their caregiving has caused me to revisit this a lot. I never was estranged from my parents and we had a social relationship through the years but the current situation brings back the nasty childhood memories that I thought I moved past and I also find I am dealing with resentments."
SeekingPeace - I hope these responses have shown you that so many people come from dysfunctional families. Knowing that others share this unfortunate family dynamic has helped me. It helps to know I am not alone, and you are not alone.
Looking from that angle, you may fit somewhere in the middle of the pack. That’s where I am too. Both of my parents were unemotionally available, due to their “job commitments”. So I understand.
But no matter how you wish it were different, it can’t be changed. You’re not fully living the life that is right in front of you because you’re still living as a child, hoping your parents will wake up and pay attention to you and resenting them for it.
Be gentle with yourself, but find a way to let it go. Be grateful there was a roof over your head and food to eat. Be grateful for the small things that they did do for you. Because your Dad will be gone before you know it, you will miss him then.
Your father is in a nursing home where he has people taking care of him, so you should not worry about him. It sounds to me that your mother has someplace else where she is living, so you don’t have to worry about her. They both have someplace to live, so you should focus on YOUR life and plans for YOUR future. If you so desire, you can go and visit them whenever you feel like it, but do not make their care a priority over yourself and your health. Otherwise, just call and check in with them.
Good luck in finding a solution to this problem ASAP before it starts to affect your health.
I adopted the philosophy that leaving a legacy was more important than having an inheritance. I don't mean that just financially, but I know that the greatest gift I could give my own parents was to raise my kids to be kind, functional adults who contribute to society. That meant I had to focus my time and efforts on my own kids.
My parents were never active grandparents, but I don't think it has impacted their lives in anyway. More importantly, we are active and involved parents who are trying to give our kids the same values our parents gave us.
Prayers
In your church or other community, you may get to know some middle aged people whose grandchildren are far away, or don’t have any at all.
We have some kiddos in our lives that we love to love on, and they aren’t blood-related. 🩷🩵
But you won’t do it, I fear. When people ask questions like this one, I foresee that they are already preparing themselves for a hand-wringing life of service and martyrdom. Just know you DO NOT have to do it.
Get over the idea of grandparents for your kids. That ship has sailed. Just do NOT neglect any future kids while catering to these pointless adults who half-assed your upbringing. Please?
Thank you for saying that I don't have to do anything. I know my parents have their own trauma that they haven't dealt with and that impacted their abilities to parent me.
They did the best with what they had. I never wanted for anything and they did instill into me integrity, faith, honesty and internal value.
I agree I don't want to neglect future children to care for them. Thanks for your perspective.
I will say no one is perfect, all families have issues and drama. Sometimes parents are stuck in their ways and as the child you have to become the adult and compromise meeting them half way.
Try to find some common ground, cause once they are gone they are gone. Do what you can so when that time comes you can be at peace.
It helps everything not to feel so heavy and dark. Eventually they will not be here and I will have to live on.
I don't want resentment to take root in my heart and then that negatively impacts my future relationships. Thank you for your advice!
When they die I will be at peace.
Honoring your parents means respecting their (sometimes awful) life choices, such as alcohol, but it doesn't mean you have to pour the alcohol down their throats for them! It means standing back and letting them lie in a nursing home bed until they die, as with your father. It means, possibly, taking mom to visit dad as you do, but it doesn't mean staying there with her. You could go to the store and come back later for her. Or go for a walk, or talk to some of the other visitors outside, or anything you wish. In other words, decrease your involvement rather than increase it. Honor thyself for all that you do. Nothing wrong with that.
Honoring your parents is a subjective thing. You are the one to decide according to your principles how you do that. I often think that too much is made of it. It's a commandment, sure, and if you're religious, you want to follow the commandments. But keep in mind that the commandments were written for a long-ago time. In Biblical times, honoring parents may have meant something quite different. People didn't live as long as they do today. Like maybe 50 years less. And back then honoring your parents might have meant letting them ride the best camel. Or carrying their water in a pottery jar from the well half a mile away. Or not complaining about the fleas living in the straw on the floor of their tent. Or if they hit you with a switch, don't hit them back.
As for grandparents, some are good and some are bad. I wouldn't be wishing for grandparents for your unborn kids at all if I were you. That's way too much wasted energy on something that hasn't happened (kids), that may not happen, and perhaps you won't want to happen when it comes right down to it.
Just so I have a north star and not following the Bible in word only, but to understand the context etc.
You are correct, I don't want to waste energy thinking about something that may not happen.
I'd rather put that energy into building a community of friends and family.
You may have to be the one that makes sure the holiday dinners are done with Mom invited. You may need to make sure your children know their grandmother. My MIL, she chose at 69 to move 2 days drive away when her only grandchild here was 4. And then complained my DD was not making over her when she visited maybe 1x a year, if that. My DD did not know her. My DD never missed her.
You need to except what things are, not what you wish them to be.
I actually pray the serenity prayer every morning to remind me of this, but sometimes I get distracted or overwhelmed. I need to figure out a way to make my acceptance stick.
I totally understand about growing up in poverty and a totally dysfunctional home. Lots of mental abuse, guilt-tripping, and gaslighting and our father wasn't around. So I get you. I know how it is to succumb to that depression because I did and it's been a very hard road coming back from it.
It's okay for you to feel cheated out of being parented in your adult life. You have been cheated. So have I. It's okay to be pissed about that, but not consumed by it. All you can do is love and accept your parents for who and what they are.
You are not going to get the validation and family life that you wanted from them. You'll have to build your own family to have that and you can.
When I was a kid I used to be jealous of the families my friends and cousins had. A mom and dad, a nice house, siblings that weren't bullies and actually hung out together. In the summer they went on family vacations. In the winter their houses were never cold because they always had heat. They ate supper together. I wanted these things and I got them when I grew up. You will have them too.
You can honor your parents by getting these things for yourself. Honor them by letting them see that they didn't destroy you with their issues and dysfunction.
Take a break from them if you need to, but really how exhausting is taking your mother once a month? Ask a friend to go with you to help then.
Good luck, and you will be just fine.
I had similiar feelings, less as a child but more as an adult. And yes I will have the dynamics I want if I choose to leave the past in the past and work to build it.
You'd be surprised at how exhausting it can get, especially if you are dealing with your own mental stuff and having to not absorb negativity and push past ungratefulness and entitlement of parents. I always have to spiritually prepare before I go.
You're not responsible for their happiness.
I think it's pretty common to have a romanticized version of parents in our heads. Perhaps work on having no expectations. Expectations are premeditated disappointments. An example from my own life is my eldest son, who gave us a "run for our money" from the beginning. While all the other parents were chatting about what colleges their children had applied to (and got accepted at), ours was at a behavioral rehab program several states away. This took him out of his junior year. This meant he wasn't going to graduate with his peers, if at all. I realized I had to stop mourning the death of that HS grad/college dream I had hoped for him. And be ok with it. Not everyone has the same straight path. He's a great son/man/father now. I'm not saying your parents are going to have this transformation -- I'm just saying I could have wasted so much energy on fretting on the crappy present and decided to stop myself. It was a choice. Happiness is a choice. Scripture commands us to be content: "...be content with what you have, for He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)
For you... you need to just throw up your hands and say, "oh well!" when it comes to your parents. They are in control of their lives and choices. Alcoholism is a choice. And if they suffer from mental illnesses, there's only so much you can realistically do to help them, but you're not their rescuer, you're not able to be. You focus your energies on developing your own fresh family when you're ready. It won't be perfect, either.
I didn't have a Dad in my life and my Mom was "different". All I can do is learn from that and try not to repeat the parts I didn't like. Also remember that there will always be others whose parents were/are way crappier than yours, and ones that were/are way better. That's life. Compare and despair.
Scripture says to "take every thought captive" (2 Corinthians 10:5), so when you start to have depressing thoughts you will need to actively redirect them. Every time they occur.
Since you are a person of faith, view dealing with your parents as a mission, not a chore or burden. That's what I do with my Mom. When your relationship with them has a higher purpose, it will help you to take your mind off the past and present pain and make it easier to have peace in your heart about it.
Blessings to you as you work through it!
And yes, I do realized that there are crappier situations and I need to appreciate my parents for what they did do and teach me.
I will do a better job on meditating on contentment and taking my thoughts captive. And try being content in all circumstances, good or bad. And work towards what I want out of life.
Having that eternal perspective keeps us on track, so we can see that difficult situations are an opportunity to grow, change and help others in the future who may go through similiar things.
Additionally, Faith can very often help with the issues of depression, etc. it’s not a cure, mental I’ll Ed’s is real so please don’t think I’m discounting that but I had a friend at church years ago who suffered from crippling depression. He once didn’t leave his house for nearly two years. When he finally got his meds right, he started back to church and he was so happy to be back. He shared with me all the things that other members had done for him during his dark times and the difference they made. He felt comfortable coming back and rejoining after being away for so long. He even told me one guy wrote to him every single week.
mid this sounds like something that you want to try, I suggest looking for a church with a strong “small group” ministry. This is the best way to get to know people quickly who share some of your interests or are in the same life stage you are.
After my divorce in 2007, I was depressed and embarrassed but my church family loved me through it. Most never even asked what happened, they just embraced me and made me feel less alone.
I was "serving" in church at the expense of myself and took a break to work on myself, serve those I'm closest too and really dig into what and why I believe. My faith has gotten stronger through this process.
Thanks for the advice though. I did witness these grandparent like relationships within my small group. I agree that church can be a place to get support, give support and bear each other's burdens.
Dad: he won’t walk for himself. No hygiene, he’s given up. He’s depressed, won’t get the help that’s offered. In your childhood (“dysfunctional household - alcoholism, mental illness”), he provided but was distant. It sounds as though he would like it all to come to an end – and perhaps he’s right. Find what you can ‘Honor him for”, and leave the rest to him. You can’t make him change.
Mother: she sounds a bit better. Take her for the monthly visit, and leave her there. They may get on better alone. Pick her up at the end of the day.
Yourself: quit the resentment. My father left when I was 5, and haunted me until I was over 30. Look after yourself and your family. Find nice friends, do favors so you can get some back. Don’t wallow in the past.
Good advice.
I feel she was building up resentment towards us... and this is from her childhood... She grew up literally with grandparents aging. So she did have a few good years before everything went downhill in a handbasket. At one point I told her she had to see a grandma... choose the one who can talk and knows who you are... That way, my spouse and child goes sees his mom and I go see mine...
She has a wonderful auntie, one of my best friends, and then her uncle, who is a bit "extraordinary", but at least he cares enough to actually call her and wants to visit.
So SOMETIMES... FAMILY.... can be overrated... I failed....I admit... I tend to reason the idea she is "stronger" because of all of this...I'm trying to justify all of this.
Perhaps you were saved from not being parented in your adult life. Love your parents for who they are.. now is the time to love unconditionally..
Role reversal is real, and she's already becoming the "parent" as we are the "kids".
Love your parents, as everyday they are becoming your "adult children". They are becoming more dependent on you.
You did find this forum, this is one of your resources to find your answers...look through all the discussions, and when your post is here longer you will find more answers which you will need to filter through to find the answer that best fits your situation...
If your health insurance covers mental health.. you may want to schedule a visit.
Please don’t do that. I hate it when elderly people try to justify why they enslaved their daughter: it’s normally the daughter.
You have no right to decide what she should do with her life: especially not forcing her into a situation where she has to be your servant.
Whoever is justifying that…are they by chance the same person benefitting from that situation?
You didn’t give her life, so she could serve you. Although some people literally had children, so they would have someone who’ll take care of them when they’re elderly.
You should be encouraging her to live her life. Since you can use a computer, you should be investigating how to take care of yourself, that doesn’t involve stealing your child’s life and time.
She’s in her prime. You have no right to steal her prime years.
(Written by me, Ventingisback)