Getting old

[Dave2002]

Dave2002, he may have thought that he knew the piece of music, and couldnt remember what it was, hence the sudden change of mood?

Very perceptive. That's probably it. He had had a stroke, and could not communicate or remember things perfectly. We reckoned that when he was trying to talk to us if he couldn't remember the words or what it was he was trying to tell us that he became very agitated. He was able to speak to some extent, and appeared to recognise photographs when we showed them to him.

So it probably wasn't that he didn't like the music at all, but it just gave him the problem of trying to work out what it was and that increased his confusion.

We thought he actually had quite a lot to say, but he was very frustrated at not being able to tell us properly.

He was actually getting somewhat better, and ready to move out to a nursing home when he had his final heart attack. Although I stick by what I wrote earlier about hospitals, there were some great people looking after him. Many of the people working in hospitals are dedicated and hard working, but there just aren't enough of them, or of the really appropriate qualified staff in NHS hospitals to cope with the problems they are faced with.

I say tax the bankers up to the hilt, and put the money into things that really matter.

[johncorrigan]

Courtesy of a weekly newsletter I get:
From 'A Poetic State' by Czeslaw Milosz.

"Things once difficult are easy but I feel no strong need to communicate
them in writing. Now I am in good health, where before I was sick because
time galloped and I was tortured by fear of what would happen next. Every
minute the spectacle of the world astonishes me: it is so comic that I
cannot understand how literature could expect to cope with it. Sensing
every minute, in my flesh, by my touch, I tame misfortune and do not ask
God to avert it, for why should he avert it from me if he does not avert it
from others?... I was impatient and easily irritated by time lost on
trifles among which I ranked cleaning and cooking. Now, attentively, I cut
onions, squeeze lemons, and prepare various kinds of sauces."

[eighthobstruction]

Dave2002....>>>>'Very perceptive. That's probably it. He had had a stroke, and could not communicate or remember things perfectly.'<<<<

Imagine what it must be like for a Jazz Musician with Alzheimers....all those different changes....Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah !!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thUlRuptbFc&feature=autoplay&list=PL37F6EA9A9DDC7D29&lf=results_video&playnext=3

[Serial_Apologist]

Courtesy of a weekly newsletter I get:
From 'A Poetic State' by Czeslaw Milosz.

"Things once difficult are easy but I feel no strong need to communicate
them in writing. Now I am in good health, where before I was sick because
time galloped and I was tortured by fear of what would happen next. Every
minute the spectacle of the world astonishes me: it is so comic that I
cannot understand how literature could expect to cope with it. Sensing
every minute, in my flesh, by my touch, I tame misfortune and do not ask
God to avert it, for why should he avert it from me if he does not avert it
from others?... I was impatient and easily irritated by time lost on
trifles among which I ranked cleaning and cooking. Now, attentively, I cut
onions, squeeze lemons, and prepare various kinds of sauces."

I say, look around when you go out. Every day I manage without even trying to find something really funny happening in everday life. It could be starlings squabbling over tit-bits in a car park, or an overheard remark in the shop. Maybe I just have an odd sense of humour!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i was visiting my niece who lives in a wonderful place that caters for those with severe physical disabilities [she has severe cerebral palsy], sitting outside in the delightful and large quad for a smoke i noticed a shrub in a pot with a memorial notice in it - apart from the chap's name and dates the epitaph was "Let down for the last time" ....

now this home is special, dedicated and caring, above all we trust them ... but many of the residents do not have family connections having spent most of their lives in institutional 'care', abuse and abandonment must be a common experience in their lives .... something we might all face in our senility eh?

[eighthobstruction]

Nice thread Mahlerei, great when we find a thread with no axes to grind....but then again there is the Grim Reaper scythe....

[Stillhomewardbound]

As the fella once said ... live every day as if it's your last and one day you'll be right!

[Nick Armstrong]

As the fella once said ... live every day as if it's your last and one day you'll be right!

A stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.

Not sure how that's relevant but your line reminded me of it.

I'll get my coat...

[gurnemanz]

Both my parents died (aged 86 and 95) with a feeling that their lives had reached a natural conclusion. They were married for 62 years and touchingly and appropriately they needed each other more than ever in their final years. Luckily they were never both really ill at the same time and were able to care for each other during difficult times. In the nine years he lived on in their house without her, my father kept most of my mother's stuff in situ (eg bedside table untouched), such that she was very much still there in spirit.

[Petrushka]

My mum died in 1985, having suffered from dementia for some five years. I don't know if this is any consolation, but my experience was that I went through the grieving process from the moment she finally didn't recognise any of us, know who she was, what age she was or where she was. I remember, following a visit, getting on the train, and thinking, "Thank god to be away from that!", and then shortly afterwards bursting into tears. When the time finally came, I said to my father, "She's well out of it now", and before I had time to regret it, he agreed. I guess I was the life and soul of the party at the funeral - long moved away friends, relatives and people having remembered Mum as she had been were clearly distressed.

I thought it might be worth mentioning this to anyone facing a similar situation with a loved one who is no longer "there"; should one find oneself "prematurely" grieving, don't fret if when the time comes you feel a huge sense of relief; I'm not myself a believer, but if you are I'm sure God will forgive you... it is for that person whom one has lost and will never return.

I've found this to be so. Since my mother was diagnosed with dementia she effectively passed away and I have been through the grieving process even though she is still very much alive. But she no longer recognises her family and by 'home' she means, not her home of the past 51 years, but her childhood home. S-A is right. I know that my over-riding emotion when she does die will be one of relief.

[Stillhomewardbound]

After her fourth flavour of cancer my Member passed away aged 78 and really my father died on the same day. They had been married more than fifty years. He was inconsolable and the following four years were desperately empty for him. What sustained him, however, was his devotion to his five children, and we in turn bouyed him along with our love for him.

However, what this stage of our lives reminds us of clearly, is we never fully escape our childhood. Vulnerability stays with us all our years and however strong and dynamic we become we will always be some couple's offspring, and in a way, we will always pine for our mammy and daddy.

Such is the dilemma of middle-age orphans.

[BBMmk2]

I was a mental-health worker too bbm....residential care....stressful and generally unrewarding I found [mentally and ££££]....

Oh right eightobstruction. Yes care homes do not really thank their staff. They just interested in bums on seats!!

[Mary Chambers]

I don't think anyone need feel guilty or bad if they're relieved when someone close dies. There are many worse things than death, and no-one wants someone they love to suffer longer than necessary.

[handsomefortune]

> however strong and dynamic we become we will always be some couple's offspring,<

how true! great post stillhomewardbound - love the picture, your parents' expressions look so excited, and optimistic.

> I don't think anyone need feel guilty or bad if they're relieved when someone close dies. There are many worse things than death, and no-one wants someone they love to suffer longer than necessary.<

agreed mary chambers. serial apologist's point, about the grieving process beginning as illness progressively hides a person's original individual characteristics, and family role, is well made too.

but this acknowledgment doesn't cover families who, for whatever reason, simply leave vulnerable relatives to their fate. iirc your point, on the thread about 'the beeb moving to salford' mary chamber's was about the only post that acknowledged that beeb employees might have elderly/vulnerable dependents, as well as children. therefore, chasing jobs far away is much more complex an issue, than a professional being 'up for the challenge'.

as lateral has courageously illustrated, it takes an awful lot of emotional energy to actually ignore parents, out of a sense of self protection, in lateral's case, because emotions are typically so complex and conflicting.

perhaps genuinely useful tips and philosophies about caring and death, are a bit thin on the ground? ideas tend to be handed down verbally, between generations, a bit like olde folk tales.... if at all. it's rather a tabu subject afterall, as though death doesn't apply to all, and every last one of us.

ideally, there should be a manual, but i've yet to see a useful one regarding caring, ....one that isn't about 'abuse of the elderly' which doesn't help everyone, and risks painting a really grim picture of both ageing, and carers. or, 'respite for carers' about the importance of carers' taking a break, and for everyones' sakes.

i guess there's plenty of fiction about death/caring - but it still seems third party, and irelevant to peoples' personal circumstances.

when i take my dad to the doctors, the diabetic nurses make quite a big deal out of totally ignoring the person pushing the wheelchair. yet, at the same time my dad loathes discussing his own illness. so i have to feel as though i'm butting in, in order to ask a short list of questions/requests that mum and i know need addressing, and preferably while we're actually at the doc's. it's quite an odd situation to find yourself in, but i guess in the past, bullying and 'speaking for' must have been a problem...for this to now apparently be a strategy at surgeries. perhaps this approach varies from practise to practise? however, i haven't noticed the same behaviour at my dad's hospital appointments, where they seem a lot more relaxed about listening to someone, other than the patient. perhaps hospitals recognise that a patient might actually need 'speaking for' on occasion? especially, as hospital visits are notoriously tiring emotionally and physically. or worryingly, is it that hospitals 'don't care' - whereas surgery staff do?

my mother in law's currently vexed that her doctor makes 'far too much' of her (late onset) diabetis diagnosis ... and to counter this, was boasting of her own robust health. proof of which, in mil's opinion, is the fact that she regularly cares for two one yr olds, and a 6 yr old, sometimes simultaneously, and at 68 yrs of age. on hearing this, her doctor apparently just laughed hollowly, and changed the subject immediately. perhaps this anecdote is evidence of the general denial of the value of carers, who nowadays actually enable others to have jobs, especially with care being increasingly expensive. obviously, from a doctor's perspective, you'd think they'd want to know what people do, on a daily basis, in case it's affecting an existing condition, such as diabetis? but no, not even a 'don't forget to take the weight off your feet periodically' which is just routine advice where most diabetic specialists are concerned. glaswegian grans are tough mind you - but surely no one's that resilient!

[Lateralthinking1]

I have read all these comments. Some are sad, some are happier, some are scary and some reveal that we have some remarkable people on the forum with a giving nature that deserves huge praise.

A number of people mentioned the issue of being concerned to ensure that they are not a burden. While I understand those natural feelings, I do think that this is a view that merits some tender questioning. Everyone's situation is different whatever the ages involved. There are also practical and emotional constraints on what they are able to do and accept. I think though that sons and daughters who have not been moved to Salford, and who have had the sense to consider possible future eventualities along with indicating feelings that they care, need to be viewed in that light. To seek to erase those aspects of them or pretend them away may be the stuff of good intention. It can also harm their sense of identity and have the reverse of what is presumably the desired effect, namely being an impetus to lead their own lives, however potentially pleasant or god awful.

Perhaps unusually, it is my mother rather than my father who tends to be the more difficult. In fact, I have re-established contact with my father this week and he has been supportive to me. At any age, that is a two way street, however it might look otherwise. He is not as rational or as emotional as me and can do the most ridiculous things to place family situations in difficulty but he does respond to explanation which then enables him to see things with greater clarity. He can cope with the fact that my life hasn't always been easy, including recent unemployment, and yet still recognises my strengths. Both feel steadying.

I have another few points. One is about being an adult only child. I have seen so many times in other families how one person lives near to their parents while others move elsewhere safely in the knowledge that parents are not without some family nearby. This is not a matter of resentment for me because I think there is a feeling of responsibility built into the dna of an only one that goes far beyond obligation. Parents frequently don't see that the usual assumptions in larger family units that they have experienced themselves don't necessarily apply. When they hear it more directly it can lead to uneasiness in them and even irrational guilt.

There is something about gender. I cannot speak of any tensions between a headstrong father and a son because my own father has been the very opposite of someone who was important in a boardroom. However, I think that the issue of future care can be more difficult for a mother when contemplating that she might be dependent on a son. There might be an unspoken fear there about practical issues like bathing but it surely makes more sense to discuss any concerns like those ahead of time. Quite clearly there are aspects of support that family can provide and others where there is need for outside support.

History can play a bigger role than many realise. My mother's father died when she was nine, at which point she supported her mother in practical ways almost as an adult. I feel that her denial of age, which can often involve overdrive, is almost a lifelong response against coping emotionally with bereavement. I believe that there were issues of guilt that she inadvertently transfers onto me, particularly now at a time of unemployment. The person who tends to be shaken up most is then me.

And there can also be issues of coping with the fallout from any difficulties in a parental marriage as they age. My mother has always said that she wanted to travel more and envies those who do. She felt constrained in that way by my father and she sees that constraint now in me. They say that they can't go away and leave me on account of my recent difficulties, even though I say I would like them to do so, and she sees me increasingly becoming more like him. None of this is easy. Actually, it can be a bloody nightmare and I frequently wish that I didn't have the kind of insights I have. They are often not the answer one might think.

I wonder about the excuses people make. I know of several women in their 80s who travel alone to America and Egypt now that their husbands have died. I don't think that in truth my mother would ever have been that person. Currently I have e-mails from my father which speak of "we" but she rarely speaks as he does and the background silence can be awful. While everyone outside is viewed as go-ahead and normal, the condemnation, along with a sense of duty, is saved for him and me. If there is any guarantee that someone will not wish ultimately to provide care, it is probably an instinct of making caring emotionally impossible. It can be deeply damaging and perhaps that is the reason why it is being exercised in that way in our current situations.