If you have been a caregiver to your parents, has that effected your opinion of your children caring for you in your senior years?

I have made many mental notes, as well as journaling, since becoming my mother's live-in caregiver.

I have always been in good physical health, but have had minor anxiety issues for the past 15 years when my husband's health issues began (another story). I am now my mom's caregiver and I have recently felt like I may be slipping into a little depression. I am bound and determined to not put any of my 4 children through what my husband and/or mom has put me through.

I "babied" my husband the first 2 years after his heart surgery, after which I realized turned into him just getting lazy and taking advantage of me and others. My brother, who has always lived near our parents (another brother lives 3 hours away), babied Mom after Dad passed 5 years ago. We moved in with her 5 months ago (yet, another story) and now she seems to think I'm mean because I don't do things immediately when mentioned.

On the other hand, this has caused me to start eating right, exercising, and get closer to God. Like I said, I am bound and determined not to put my children through any grief, if at all possible.

I do NOT expect my children to be my caregivers NOR do I want them to be! For that matter, I don’t want my husband changing my diapers either. I’ve told him to just take me to the nursing home & leave me. Seriously. He can show up once a week with a donut for me & a skein of yarn.

My daughter works for an assisted living association. She is picking out my home.

Not a cold day in hell I’d put my son through this. I never want him to hate me or be plagued with caring for me. I will have an envelope handy with my care instructions. Full DNR if I get sick and exercise my right to go with some dignity.
KEYWORD: DIGNITY

I pray I die in my bed like my grandmothers.
I am already apologizing to my son for when I get old. He sees how it is with my mother living in AL so it is preparing him. That being said after having 3 parents die in as many years and no knowledge of their situations I started showing him financial information and putting his name on accounts. I have stated my funeral preference (I want a Viking funeral ;))
I walk down the halls of my mom's AL and see my future. It is not pretty and staff does the best they can. A family member MUST advocate. You know your loved one. They don't although they get to if they stay long enough. Employment turnover is high especially among younger staff members.
Do I want my son taking care of me? No. Do I want him to watch over me? Yes if he can as I do for my mother. We all need that.

My father fell victim to Jamaican lotto scam, I petitioned the court to have him declared an incapacitated ward of the state. From what I understand he wishes to never speak to me again. Think maybe, I went a bit overboard?

jjwahl, there are consequences for everyone’s actions. What did you think would happen? How do expect to have your father react?? If he is deemed competent he probably won’t speak to you again. My 95 year old mother is a gambling addict, an alcoholic and a hoarder. She is mentally ill but she is still competent. If I went to the courts to deem her incompetent when she really a competent she wouldn’t speak to me either. They set the bar very low for competence. Do they know there name? Do they know who is president? What day is it? What time is it? Those types of questions. If he can answer them all correctly, he is competent. It is very very hard to strip someone of their rights. Especially when they have been competent all of their life. I have guardianship of my 27 year old son because he is on the autism spectrum. I got guardianship when he turned 18. He never was deemed competent so I never stripped him of his rights. But he is high functioning and works part time and drives. But he had to have 2 doctors say he was incompetent and look back at all his school records and medical records and then after all that we had to go to court in front of a judge. It is not an easy process. My son is not mad at me for it. He is grateful to me for it.

Tothill, it looks like you have everything in order. I don’t know how anyone affords long term care insurance. I funded my oldest son’s college education and funded our retirement. I had no money left to fund a long term care insurance. I wish we had MAID where I live. I would use it at the end of my life. Why should people suffer? Even animals get put down by a veterinarian.

I went through cancer this year and in an eye opening experienced, found that my kids were not concerned, not helpful and not 'here'.

Now, I didn't call them and ask for a ton of things. I kept up on the housework, the laundry, the running of the house, but the one thing that just gagged me was grocery shopping and meals.

DH can't cook anything but fried eggs and the rare occasions that I didn't have dinner ready at 7--he'd start up a huge pan of eggs. Ugggghhhh.

Kids never knew how depressed, lonely and sad I felt. I was very aware of them staying away--literally, keeping their distance and it was HARD. My son (lives in another state) never once called me or texted or emailed during the entire time I was sick. Which, BTW is still. You cure the cancer, then you cure the chemo.

So---when offered the follow up TX for my kind of cancer, I said "Thanks but no thanks." When this comes back, and it will, I will just let it go and call Hospice and go gently into that good night. No one will miss me more than a couple of days and then they'll all settle back into their lives.

As painful as it is to acknowledge, maybe I raised kids who were just a skosh TOO independent and thoughtless. I would NEVER and I mean NEVER live with one of them.

Oh Mid I am so sorry for your going through this.

Mid,

I am so sad to read how you were treated. Honestly, it’s a crying shame. I say this for the obvious reason, that you don’t deserve it.

It also hits a nerve with me and I know that you know why. I have shared with you about losing my MIL to non Hodgkin’s lymphoma many years ago. Well, she did go into remission after her stint at MD Anderson. She was in remission for five years. I saw her ordeal with lymphoma. It’s tough. I wish that you didn’t have to suffer.

I am still believing for your healing to be permanent. I still burn candles for you at Mass. I hope that you don’t mind me doing that. I know you are not Catholic and I truly respect all faiths. We all worship one God.

I loved my MIL so much! I related to her better than I did with my own mom. I have a wonderful husband that has many of his mom’s qualities. I am grateful to her for so many things. She was an incredible mother and grandmother.

She needed platelets during her treatment for cancer and my husband donated them to her. We saw her all the time. She knew we were there for her and did all that we could. She treated me like a daughter. She would introduce me to people as her daughter. She even told me that I was the daughter that she never had. I considered her to be mom to me. I adored her. She had three sons.

Her mother and her husband were awful! But her mom was never a considerate woman. So sad, my MIL was an only child. She had a miserable mother and mother in law, double whammy! She had a spoiled husband! His mom treated him like a prince and my MIL like a freakin servant. It was sickening.

My FIL was not able to deal with her being sick. He was selfish too. When I offered to do grocery shopping he would ask me to sit with mom instead so I did. He would come back many, many hours later with one or two items in a grocery bag.

Stupid me, I did not even think that my FIL was having an affair. He always put on a front that he loved her. He was screwing around on my MIL. He moved the woman into his home about two weeks after my MIL died. I wanted to throw up it made me so sick to my stomach.

He tried to force her down our throats. It was absolutely awful. We didn’t get to grieve with him as a family. We became estranged from him because his behavior became so bizarre. He moved with her to another state and didn’t even tell us. She saw us as a threat. She wanted to spend all of his money. I hope that she made him happy because he lost two beautiful grandchildren and a son and DIL who tried to have a relationship with him. This woman was a real piece of work. I won’t bore you with the details but let me just say she was evil! She was the opposite of my sweet MIL. She even took down every photo of us in his house. The photos of my precious daughters as young children! She replaced them with her family photos.

There is so much about you that reminds me of my MIL. I mean that as a huge complement! Your family is foolish not to see the special person that you are. I have never met you and I can certainly see that you are warm, smart, funny, intelligent and have many other good characteristics.

Sorry so long. Guess I got a little upset. Certain memories trigger emotions that are difficult to handle.

I've already bought my burial plots and I'm only 52. I want to spare my kids as much work as possible. I have had to do everything for my parents. They tried to plan but got too sick before they got it done and I'm determined not to make that mistake. I can't predict how the future will pan out for me and my husband health wise but I can try to take care of the little legal, financial and practical things. And my kids are teens so I have no idea how they will take care of us or not but I WILL change my will - if one ends up doing all the caretaking - they are getting more!

Id rather die than do that to my kids. I doubt my kids would take care of me anyways. I say that bc I know them