Are you friends with your parent? Do you like them or love them -- or both?
I often read many posts that people are caregiving because their parents took care of them when they were children. Of course, let's face it -- unless you were very sick as a child there is a huge difference between diapering a two year old in your twenties and doing the same for an 80 year old in your 50's or 60's.
My husband helps his dad out of what seems to be a great deal of obligation. The two have very little in common and cannot usually be in a room together for very long.
So I got to wondering...are you friends with your parent (or the person you are caregiving)? Once you reached adulthood, did that magical spark happen when you went from being parent/child to two adults enjoying each other's company?
And do you like them? The reason I ask is my husband loves his father (because he did put a roof over his head and send him to college) but he doesn't like him. We have often commented on how you can love someone because they are family but if they were not, you really wouldn't choose them as a person to be around.
Thoughts?
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As for Mom, we have grown more and more distant over the years. As a young person I was so "trained" to accept her selfish behavior that I didn't realize how she really was. After I had my own family and began to question her behavior, I began to dislike her.
Today we hardly talk anymore. One day in March I decided to just not call her to see if she would ever pick up a phone and give me a call. It has been almost 4 months and I have heard not one word from her.
As for being friends with Mom, well let's just say it is like trying to be friends with the bratty little kid down the street. You know the one with all the toys and won't share, or the one who has to have their way all the time. No I don't like her at all. My sweet SIL said once that mom is like a little spoiled girl.
So, in my case, I have grown very distance to my mother. My husband says it is because I now see her for who she really is and she is not a likable person.
In the back of my mind, and as I look back at my Mother's behavior as long as I have known her, and see her now, maybe she was unconscious of her actions. Let's say she was a "reluctant narcissist" because of mental or emotional issues she would not acknowledge! Hey, that's pretty generous of me. She did not have what it took to be strong in the way I am strong-- working hard to overcome-- but she has survived to 96 by depending on others. It's like something flew over my head while I was trying to figure things out, and here I am, taking care of someone who doesn't do anything intentionally, but always got what she wanted or needed.
She never acted like a friend, but perhaps she was my best learning tool. Cagey.
My mom was a nut job, a narcissist and my verbal abuser. Every time I read about a child being "herded" from the family group to be abused I'd say how can a parent do that until one day I realized I'd been herded. My mom eventually turned her back on me. She wouldn't return my calls either, madge1. She would rather have died than to talk to me and she did. I didn't like her or love her.
Every single day of my life I get up each morning saying I will not be like my mom but strive to be like my dad. He would grieve if he thought he had hurt anyone. My mom didn't give a flip if she hurt people. It was all about her. What a difference in the legacies each of my parents left behind.
I am now estranged from my elderly father who is 86. My mother who is now widowed, age 81, is trying to cling to me for her needs. My mother never stopped my stepfather from being verbally abusive to her or my family. My father did not do anything to stop my stepmother from excluding his family from their lives. Needless to say, my parents were the one's that destroyed my relationship with them due to their choices. I was the one that tried to embrace our blended family, but having spineless parents when it came to their new spouses drew me away from them. Now that the are elderly, I have no deep affections for them and will not even consider being their caregiver other than occasional help. I will be sad when they die, but I doubt I will grieve to deeply.
My poor father had many issues. I know some of these issues were his narcissistic mother and his father's death when he was eight. But I will never understand why he felt good bullying a little girl. And why my spineless mother let him. It is written that narcissists create narcissists. Maybe that is it. That is why I really look hard at myself and try to be as different from my parents as I can possibly be.
But I do feel a little sadness when I read about those who had such wonderful mothers and fathers. I didn't but I can certainly try to be one.
I also envy people who were friends with their parents. I'll never have that because you can't really be friends with a self absorbed person. It's impossible.