Guilt and Regret - Treat your loved ones well while they are here!
My dad died of dementia last week at age 81. I am taking the grieving process day-by-day. His dementia was advanced so I have spent the last 2 years watching him deteriorate steadily and was somewhat ready for his passing. He and my mom were married for 55 years. I won't bore you with the details but let's just say their marriage had deteriorated and they spent the last decade (possibly more) not being very nice to each other (mom being far more cruel). I just spent my Thanksgiving morning at my mom's house....she rattled off decades of regret with respect to her behavior toward him. She is beside herself with guilt. It's horrible. I am one to try to learn from bad events: Hug your loved ones and always treat them in a way that you will be proud in the future. At some point you get no do-overs.
And, it can certainly be work, that’s for sure. Especially, if one is carrying the extra luggage of Guilt and/or Regret. Two of the worse emotions known to human kind, in my humble opinion.
Guilt - I can honestly say that when it came to looking after both my parents in the final years of their lives - every single decision and action I made/took was solely in their best interest. Even when it was the more difficult road for me to take.
When it comes to Regret - I have a few. In my fathers case I know with all my heart that these regrets are not mine to own - they are a result of my mothers actions but I do still wish that it would have been different - better - for him in the end. In my mothers case, I regret that I allowed myself to become so completely and utterly absorbed in the task of looking after her. To the point of neglecting my own family and neglecting myself.
But with that said - I guess if I’m going to carry my regrets I’d rather carry the burden of having done too much rather than too little.
There’s a book... I read it for work purposes years ago but it has effected my whole life and stayed in my thoughts and actions ever since. It’s called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey...
“Begin with the End in Mind”
Begin with the End in Mind means to begin each day, task, or project with a clear vision of your desired direction and destination...”
I do think, that if one acts with this “habit” - mindful of that while at times it feels torturous and endless that in fact - one day in will indeed end. How do you want to carry forth after it’s all over? Which bag do you want to carry with you? I have found that a suitcase filled with as much compassion as I could stuff into it - that, that is definitely a lighter load.
Maybe say to Mom, its hard dealing with this desease. You know in ur heart they aren't able to reason and process anymore but ur always hoping u can get through. He is now from free from the confusion. He really had no quality of life.
Please don’t take on any of your mother’s guilt for the way she treated your father. Either one always had the option to leave. My mother could be a nasty b**ch and I’m sure my father did a lot of putting up and shutting up with her. I only got involved when he passed in 1995 and she handled her grief (or so she claimed) by detailing every thing he’d ever done that she didn’t like. When she did it in front of my husband and children who adored my dad, they told me that they’d had it with her and I needed to tell her to knock it off. It was difficult, but I did tell her we no longer would tolerate her denigrating my dad. After that, she stopped complaining g about him but then began speaking about her “first love”, who was in the military and was shot down over Germany. He fell in love with and married the German girl who rescued him and eventually married her. She never got over him, well into her eighties and I had to listen on many occasions how she wished she’d married him instead of my dad.
My point is that grieving is a personal thing and we all do it our own way. But, you have the right to tell your mother that their marriage and how she treated your father was between them. You had no control over any of it, just like me. If your mother has so many regrets, tell her to start keeping a private journal and write her feelings down in it. Because, you no longer want to hear her lamenting over things that can no longer be changed or”made right”. Her regrets come too late. You have your own grief to handle and you don’t need to take on her’s.
Even as he lay dying on his hospital bed in the ALF, my mother was complaining about the 'noise' he was making while breathing his last breaths. The very moment he died, she burst out crying, saying "I wasn't very nice to him, was I?" I nearly bit my tongue OFF rather than say anything nasty. So I just reminded her that she'd taken care of him for 68 years and left it at that.
That was pretty much the last time she spoke of my father until one day she decided to ask me to come over; she had something she was chomping at the bit to tell me, after 60-something years. It was something so foul that it killed off the last bit of respect I had left for the woman. Her attempt to have me hate my father backfired.
Nowadays, she won't even keep a picture of him in her room. He serves no purpose for her anymore.
But the irony of the situation doesn't escape me. Dad was wheelchair bound in the end; mother constantly complained that he was too stupid to wheel himself around properly & would always dent up the walls of their apartment. Now she's in a wheelchair and having an even WORSE time navigating herself around.
All the things she complained about HIM complaining about SHE is now suffering from. His pain wasn't ever 'real'.............but nowadays, her's IS.
Karma's a beatch, isn't it? I truly believe God is keeping her alive (93 in Jan) so she can experience ALL the anguish HE experienced, which was exacerbated by HER. While she doesn't have anyone around to make her end of life experience worse, she's also alone without a spouse, and that can't feel so glorious, I wouldn't think, even though she says she doesn't miss him ONE single bit.
So, I'd like to tell you that I wish my mother would be beside herself with guilt. Just a LITTLE would be nice. It would make me believe she really DOES have a heart somewhere inside that body of hers. Be glad your mother is feeling badly about her less-than-kind actions while her DH was alive; it shows she's human.
I'm so sorry for your loss, my dear, and I am sending you a big hug tonight.
Maybe she will start behaving differently, having to live with the reality that she can not change the reality that was her marriage, but she can change the reality that is her mother daughter relationship.
Remember that you don't have to be her sounding board if it is to difficult for you right now.
Hugs!
We can speak to our children with limitations. I feel that we should not use our children as our sounding boards to the point of them taking on the responsibility of a psychologist. It isn’t fair to them. It’s too much information for them to process.
It’s a heavy weight for children to carry. I saw this with my niece. One of my SIL’s placed such a burden on her daughter by her continual dumping about her unhappy marriage to her father.
It’s not fair to place the child in the middle like that. Those conversations belong in a marriage and family therapist’s office.
Sorry, Lealonnie. You did not deserve that, not at all. That type of conversation only causes confusion and damage to a child.
A parent should go to a marriage and family counseling to air their grievances. I guess they either don’t realize what they are doing or don’t care. Who knows?
I hope that you find peace and joy in your life. You deserve it. If it is too much information for you to listen to, please tell your mom to tell her concerns to a grief counselor.
In the end - my fathers last few years she all but abandoned him. Sure, she still lived with him but carried on with her busy schedule of travel, classes and friends as if nothing had changed. And, things had changed - my father became quite effected by severe CHF. For the first time in their relationship HE needed HER. He had ALWAYS taken care of her when she got sick, had a surgery- whatever. But she chose to leave his care in the hands of a paid caregiver. Okay... so not everyone is cut out for being a caregiver. I get that.
HOWEVER- once my dad began to depend on his caregiver more and more they developed a very sweet and close bond. Nothing inappropriate to be sure. But my mother became very possessive and jealous and by treating the caregiver so horribly my mom drove her off. This lady was a true gift - she took excellent care of my father.
I do believe it was the last straw for my dad - he took a turn for the worse and died about 10 weeks after she left.
The irony in it all? After my dad passed my mom became the grief stricken widow. Mom would spend hours looking through their wedding album and with tears in her eyes - talk about how happy they had been, how wonderful their marriage was, how he was the love of her life and how would she ever manage another day without him. In other words - she completely reinvented their lives together. It was a total load of steaming chit. It’s amazing I managed to keep from biting my tongue off - or from beatch slappin’ her!
I often wondered during her last years the same as you did... was “fate”, “destiny”... whatever giving her a taste of what he must have felt in his last year.
Yep. Karma can be a powerful thing.
My MIL adored her father and saw right through her mom.
When my grandmother in law became a widow she continued to feel sorry for herself. I don’t think she ever loved her husband who was a wonderful man who showed her love in spite of her hatefulness.
It may sound mean but everyone secretly desired that he would divorce her so he could have had a happier life. He was a devout Catholic and divorce wasn’t common then.
Unfortunately, he worked himself to death because he always said that he would have never been able to retire and be alone with her full time! Did he need to work into his late 70’s? Hell no! They were rich. He worked to keep his sanity. So sad.
In fact, he didn’t stop working until he discovered he had colon cancer. He sought treatment and lived another two years. He made the best of his circumstances but it surely wasn’t easy for him.
I always say my father was relieved to die as it was easier than living another day with my mother.
we all do the best we can with our ( untrained for ) struggles and imo , our care receivers were fortunate to have us . it wasnt a walk in the park for us either .
Hugs!
I keep waiting for my anger and
neurosis to go away by itself...
I really doubt that your mother feels any guilt, people like her just grieve the loss of having someone around to tend to their every need and abuse, it is all a show, their life is but a stage and they are the lead actor.
When my mother dies I will not have any regrets, and I do not require any do-overs. She is a B on wheels, who will most likely live longer than I will.
I am sorry to hear of your father's passing. Take care of you.
[And the refereeing you did when you father was alive.....]
It’s called complicated grief.
Don’t put yourself on a timetable. And don’t let anyone else put you on a timetable.
You are wise to seek counseling. It’s the best gift you can give yourself.
Seeing things through your aging parents’ prism has weighted you with a burden that you do not deserve.
Stay open to healing and changing, even when the progress is difficult.
I have a question.... and I ask with sincerity and humility:
When you think back to your parents’ halcyon days, can you identify any early hints of the drastic personality changes that emerged as they aged? Traits that perhaps you accepted unquestioningly as their only child (living their world)..... but maybe now you can identify those tics as harbingers of the poor coping skills that took over?
I am an only child. It took me decades to “un-normalize” what I normalized during my upbringing.
I am not citing good or bad. Simply what was. Co-mingled with:
I had no idea it was not my job to be my parents’ mirror. Not my job to be their 3rd spouse. I did not question it as a child or teen or young adult.
I always knew that my filter was different. I found it so weird - even childish(!) - that my peers did not identify with their parents the way I did.
I thought that my over-developed sense of accountability was my superpower.
I’m in my 50s. Over the past 15 years or so, my unpacking of my parents’ “terminal uniqueness” has been an interesting, non-linear journey.
So. Back to your situation, Upstream. Your parents.
It seems odd that two stable, emotionally-healthy adults would suddenly erupt with personality disorders, self-neglect and addiction in their 6th decade.
Perhaps explore this with your therapist. A new look at the past might help shed light on the present.
(((big hugs))), Upstream. Wishing you peace.