I'm just venting because I am getting physically and emotionally exhausted taking care of our 95 year old father. My husband, daughter, and myself moved in with him eight months ago when he was first hospitalized, (and we still have our house, with our memories, which has been vacant for 8 months). We have been taken care of him for five years since my mother passed away. My siblings have visited him probably 12 times since his fall in December for approximately less than 15 minutes each,
and they live within five miles of him. I have seen all of their true colors, and I am saddened by it, the abandonment. When does it become real for them?
You need to create a schedule where each of them takes a day per week. Then when you are "off", you can spend some time at your "home"! Even if that is not realistic, one weekend per month IS realistic, especially if they live so close.
I have to tell myself daily that they have made their own choice to live life "out of sight out of mind"..
I know I am doing what makes me feel good about myself, they will have to live with their selfish choices after Mom's death...
As I said it is a daily struggle for me, especially on very trying days..
I have 6 siblings and only 1 of them visits Mom!
Just throwing that idea out as consideration.
Years ago, when Mom could still talk on the phone, a sister sort of complained that every time she called here to talk to Mom, first she had to talk to me or whoever in my family answered the phone. So, using Caller ID, we began pushing the ON button and handing the phone to mom, directing her to say Hello to (sis). Problem so easily solved, I was glad that she said something to me.
It may be, as freqflyer suggested, that the others believe your parent should be in a care home and they really don't agree with your choice to care for him at home, so they won't support it. I'm sure you'd know if that was the case.
I think it's difficult for most people to deal with their parents' frailty and infirmity, and many people are too lazy and self-indulgent to look past their own discomfort and see the effect of their avoidance on others. My own mother refused to visit her best friend in her friend's final days, telling me "I'd rather remember her the way she was." Not even thinking that her friend might need her there for comfort and solace. Evan after I urged my mother, who was up north visiting me at the time, to go home and be with her friend. Years later, she admitted to me that she regretted that choice, probably when she began experiencing her own frailty and realized how lost she'd be if her loved ones started avoiding her.
So to answer the question of when it becomes real to them, you can never know. Maybe they are distancing themselves from your father to keep it from becoming real to them. Maybe it will become real when your father dies, or when they themselves become old and infirm. Maybe they will regret their choices then, or maybe they won't.
One sister occasionally acts like she care..but then retreats into the abyss. The third sister just flat out doesnt care or pretend to care.
Now that i know my brothers plan..god help me and my parents if i do crash and he gets control.
My eyes have been opened to what our relationship has been reduced to...so sad and disappointing.