My brother left me as the sole caregiver for my mom seven months ago, she now lives with me rather than spending any time with him at her house. At one point I felt he was a SH*T for not doing like me and bringing a hospital bed into his DR/LR and taking on responsibility 50% of the time (if he couldn't stand her house). We are both single, so no wife’s feelings to consider (my S.O. lives alone, he has none), recently while talking to a friend she described a similar situation where she told her mom she could not live with her (my friend is single). While I see my friend as not a bad person (but not good anymore), I see my brother as bad. Even his kids feel he is wrong in the way he has treated our mom over the years.
Maybe I'm in the minority with a company and boss that gives me the freedom to adjust my hours to meet everyone’s needs (currently dropping mom off for HD at 5:30, working 6-9, picking her up at 9:15, dropping her off at home, returning to work by 10:30, working till 6/7pm, picking her up from her home, taking her to mine, cooking dinner, cleaning, getting some sleep...).
Maybe I'm in the minority with a job that's only 20 minutes from home and an HD or PD center less than 45 minutes away from home.
Maybe I'm in the minority of believing we owe our parents (being a caregiver) when they age because they took care of us when we were growing up. Maybe the SH*T feels he didn't ask to be born so why should he take care of them? Maybe something he experienced growing up poisoned him against his single parent.
Does someone who walks away saying they can't help (yet only live a mile away) and say's their advice is in your best interest (don't do it all on your own) a bad person? Or, are they simply trying to make themselves feel better saying if I can't deal with this, neither should you, so put her in a facility?
Why do some of us go the extra mile to make a parent's last few months/years comfortable and honor their wishes not to be abandoned in an assisted care /nursing facility and others feel it's not their concern?
All I can hope to do for my brother at this point is to set an example for his kids as to what it means to love a parent. Hopefully they treat him better when he needs their help than what he has done for his mother. While I don't hate him, I no longer have much respect or love for him.
That's it.
Don't waste brain cells judging others on what they can or can't do. It's not productive. You've chosen to do what you're doing, and your brother and your friend are doing what they can do. Leave it alone, and for heaven's sake, stop asking what makes a "bad" person. It makes YOU look bad and holier than thou.
People do not get abandoned in ALs or NHs. They need to go there to be safe and cared for when they required more care than a family can give or are able to give. A bad person would condemn those of us who needed to make that choice.
I myself understand my own limitations. While I was a RN for my career and LOVED it, I was well paid, and worked three days a week toward the end of the career, with lots of paid vacation and time off. It was always clear to me that this caregiving was not something I could EVER do in my own home, no matter the love I had for my family. Again, it is about our human limitations. I never pretended in my life to be the best person out there; when the nominations for Sainthood come along you won't see my name (given the outcome for the job of Sainthood, I am fine with that).
You can love a parent without throwing yourself upon some sacrificial altar in giving up your own life for them. My parents never wanted that for me, and I have (I am 80) make it clear that under NO CIRCUMSTANCES do I want that for my own children.
We have our own lives with our own choices when we are adults. If we have children we owe it to them to raise them the best way we can. They owe us the love we earned by being decent parents, and then they owe us to get on with THEIR OWN LIVES, caring for their own children should they choose to have them, and living decent lives.
My opinion only. We all have one. I am afraid I fall into your brother's camp. You can judge me, if you still have time for such meaninglessness in your busy life. Or you can just get on with your own choices. I wish you the very very best.
Maybe you never had a parent that beat you with various objects for minor infractions while you were growing up, even to the extent of breaking a ruler on your hipbone, and so now opening your home to your abuser is abhorrent to you. Maybe you never had a sweet kind old grandpa that everyone thought was just that, but he started sticking his tongue down your throat when you were 8 years old and raped you at age 11, so you continue to keep your silence but refuse to help when he becomes old and sick. Maybe you never had a husband who was the life of the party in public but living with him was hell because he cursed and yelled at you in the privacy of your home, got drunk every night, and committed physical, emotional and financial abuse against you, so you turn over caregiving to your stepchildren when he gets sick because you were planning on divorcing him and you've already retained a lawyer. Maybe you never had a mother who put you down, talked about you behind your back, and betrayed you when she could have been supportive, so you can't bear the thought of being around her at all much less changing her diapers. All these things happened to people I know. All these are excellent reasons not to provide caregiving to those who think they are entitled. No one owes anyone caregiving. Caregiving is a gift, and people don't care to make a gift to those who have created misery, chaos, and mayhem in their lives.
A few final words - "When you judge others you don't define them. You define yourself." --Earl Nightingale
I do believe that those with unkind, cruel, abusive parents etc., have an out and should not be expected to sacrifice themselves. But, those of us who had wonderful, kind, caring, loving parents should not have an out unless of course we have our own health concerns or our parents needs are more than we as mere human beings can handle physically and financially.
I like you lost a lot of respect and or love for my siblings and at the time of my mom's greatest need there were four of us, including myself that could have stepped up to the plate. I was alone at the plate and like you scratch my head and ask why?
Safely and ultimately contentedly domiciled in a fine SNF a couple miles from my house, LO is by no stretch of the imagination “…abandoned…”, and now close to death is visited daily, impeccably cared for, cherished by my spouse and me, and over all treated with the same respect as those whom she loved herself when younger.
If you’re looking to relieve yourself of her hands on care while assuring yourself that excellent care can be found elsewhere, do your research and do that.
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