Let me tell you my story, I am 88 years old and I have a husband who is 98. We have been married and in love for 70 years.
We had a “Camelot” the entire married life. Both of us are Holocaust survivors and living in the great USA was a dream come true.
HOWEVER! The dream has ended. My dear husband is old. Not seriously sick, but the parts are worn out. Can’t walk anymore, can’t talk anymore, can’t hear anymore, can’t eat anymore and of course some memories issues. Since we are so old, most of our friends are dead and the younger ones do not want to do anything with us.
Nice picture so far? We have children, grandchildren, great grandchildren but they all live at some distance and have their own lives.
I am young! I take care of how I dress, how I smell but sometimes the loneliness gets to me. I hate to complain for I know what a pain it is for the receiver. It hurts me tremendously that I can’t visit my little ones and that the family I created and raised is not with me. Yes, I also get depressed, but I seeked medical help and in spite of that it is so so hard. No one to talk to, no one to visit, no one calls, no one comes.
Life is incredibly difficult when one is old, have understanding , pity, and perhaps you who is in all you mental powers can find a solution to make the late years of your parents better. A little gift, a little surprise, a little visit from a loved one.
But to argue, complain, fight?
Ignore their complaints, lie to them, try to understand.
Compassion! Kindness! Love...
I commend you for being a Holocaust survivor. My father was born in Italy and spoke often of his experience during that time as a young boy. He also worked with some survivors years later at his job here. So I can only imagine what you went through.
I appreciate your sentiments about being more caring and understanding of our elderly family members. I will leave it at that, because being a caregiver is very difficult, even in the best of circumstances. I wish you and your husband well.
Every new phase in life requires us to adjust! Nothing stays the same.
Nothing last forever. Change is the sure thing.
What I found helpful is not to be surprised by anything. Sickness, loneliness, is part of life. I do not fight it but I proactively work at bringing joy every day into my life.
Our adult children have to live their lives. We as Parents do our best to
enrich our life with our friends, with music, with praying, with reading, with exercising, with volunteering etc etc so we do not burden our children for our care and for our happiness.
We are all responsible for our OWN happiness.
Reaching out to our children to express our love is a welcoming gesture that can touch them deeply... but asking for companionship from them is not what they need in their hectic lives...
We feel good about what we did for them to guide them through life, to support them and to see them being good people, successful, raising beautiful families. That is I believe our reward.
The “old age- stage” is known to us,
and not known to them...
So, it is our duty to be good to ourselves by staying positive and involved for as long as we can!
Join groups, libraries, community day trips, book clubs etc.
We will be the rainbow we are looking for and sunshine in someone else’s life, while we learn to dance in the rain, during the storm ☔️
If we cannot calm the situation we are in, then we have to calm ourselves so we can move on.
We have to be flexible so we bend and we do not break...
No one is responsible to make us happy or uplift us. We must do it ourselves. The only time we control is today. So I ask myself, in spite of my many challenges of being a Caregiver for my husband, am I good to myself today? With God’s help I can do it...
I listen to very uplifting motivational podcasts like Pastorrick’s Daily Hope.
What dynamic messages that feed the soul!!
I wish you find ways that uplift you.
They are out there. Do not be afraid to try. There are many Community based Senior Center activities. Do not expect anything from a specific person , so you may avoid disappointment...
In reality, each one of us goes through life alone. No one will completely understand our needs at each stage in life. It is all ever changing. Everyone is absorbed in fulfilling their own needs...
Go with the flow. Do your best and always pray for the rest!🙏
Stay strong! Keep smiling! Count your blessings everyday and share some of those blessings with others. It will do your soul a lot of good.
Sending you and this special forum,
positive energy, empathy, understanding and encouragement.
Hugs 🤗 and love 💕
You have to be tough to grow old. SO TRUE.
What keeps me going is being active in a church I have attended since I was first married. I have friends of various ages, most of them 10-20 years younger, but there are still some older and less active than I am, whom I make a point of spending time with. I am part of a small group that meets weekly, sing with a trio that goes to senior residences with classic gospel music, and play piano for another small group that does music and Bible study weekly at a local assisted living complex.
My father lived alone for about five years after Mom passed; and I was a day's drive away. He did spend time with my brother, also about a day's drive, but our home church family had a group of older folks who did weekly dinners together and kept track of each other. Two of my brothers' widows had similar support in their church communities as well as their grown children, some of whom were within commuting distance. My third brother developed Parkinson's Disease, and after his wife passed, he sold their house and moved closer to a son, who arranged a really good fulltime caretaker which worked for awhile and then he wound at his son's with the caretaker as backup. Fortunately, his dementia was variable--sometimes he would be in another decade, and sometimes he was right with it. No, it's not easy, but keeping in touch with good people is a real key to dealing with generational changes.
GO HAVE SOME FUN. Somewhere. Somehow. I hope you can make that happen.
A word to all of us... Go Visit someone that is lonely. Share a laugh, a smile.
God Bless you and your family.
I am a bit challenged with getting around without a cane or rolling chair. When weather is not too hot I can get outside and plant a few flowers or pull a few weeds. I enjoy that very much. We live in the Houston area, so the weather gets quite hot in Spring and Summer.
I try not to complain because my daughter and son-in-law have jobs they are responsible to keep going. It is nice to read these posts and see others who have similar or worse situations. I am thankful for being where I am. I do give my daughter 'extra' spending money fairly regular for all that she does.
My two sons don't seem interested (or don't care) to help. It would be nice if they would give her a break now and again. It's not much fun in these "Golden years" because they have become a bit tarnished!!
As the saying goes, all that glitters is not gold!
You have been doing well for yourself - keep up the positive attitude and stay active! Although our mother managed to remain in her own place until she was about 91, I can only hope to achieve that! She is in MC now, 96 going on 2. I am hoping that I won't have to piggy-back with either of my kids. We get along fine, but they have their own issues/lives to deal with, so I need to stay as independent as I can for as long as I can! I also hope there is no dementia in my future.
Although I have not read every comment, I do agree with several that I did manage to read:
1) We don't know what the situation is on the other side (children, grandchildren, etc) other than they live a distance away.
2) Communication is a 2 way street
3) Happiness comes from within.
To make suggestions for #1, we would need to know a LOT more about the family members in general. Were they and OP in touch often before her husband became so ill? I did see in the other threads that they were very active, traveled, etc. Did those travels include visits with the other family members? Is the disconnect because of distance and illness or is it something more deep rooted? This is really beyond our capability to fix, other than to suggest trying to reach out and make contact without any of the complaints about the current situation.
Followup to the above covers #2 - obviously you can't communicate with those who have passed on. This does become an issue for the elderly - our mother is 96 and has outlived both sides of the family in her generation and likely most of her friends. Those friends who remain were in worse physical shape than she was when we moved her to MC, so they wouldn't be visiting. Mom can't hear well, so there is no phone. Again, not knowing the dynamics involved, we can only suggest that YOU reach out to friends and family, express love and how much you miss them and would like to hear from/see/visit with them.
As for us trying to do something to make our elders (or anyone) happy, as noted happiness does come from within. Clearly a phone call or card would be welcome and might cheer you up for a short while. A visit would be even better, but since we don't know that side, it is something you would have to work out. Reach out. You never know - perhaps they don't realize what you are going through or understand your loneliness. Sometimes when we don't see people for a long time, we think of them as they were before - clearly you were active and perhaps they don't know. Perhaps they do, but can't deal with it. My OB visited mom alone ONCE briefly while here to get condo sorted out - he refused to go back, stating he didn't know what to do with her. Granted in our case mom has dementia, but at that time the biggest issue was repetition. You *could* still get a visit in and cheer her up. YB rarely goes, but is being forced into appt transport as I can't support her weight and she is refusing to stand/walk without help. We shall see how long that lasts. Although he is 10 years younger and still has to work, I mentioned it once to him that by the time he retires, he'll be scot-free. My retirement has come down to managing everything for her, including all appts until recently.
Does it cheer her up for us to visit? Perhaps. Generally I get two statements/questions when I go to visit: "What're you doing here?" and "Where'd you come from?" Nice greeting. My visits have dwindled for several reasons, including that in addition to living in the past (asks for her mother) and the repetition is the hearing loss. It is very hard to carry on any kind of conversation with someone who can't hear you (we used an LCD tablet but that has gone AWOL.)
But, general response to it all - not everyone had a "Camelot" experience growing up. Some people want to remove themselves. Some did, but the elders have become too difficult to visit/care for. Dementia is not a problem for you at this time, but we don't know what other factors are in play.
The suggestions to hire some assistance for yourself so that you can get out, join activities, meet others, etc, is something you should consider. If you sit and just wallow in self-pity because the family isn't there, you need to move on and make some kind of life for yourself.
I don't know if the OP is a troll or not, but this post sure HAS stirred up the pot, hasn't it?
Blessings
You have my full support of your situation and I find it incredibly sad that you do not get to see your grandchildren etc...
In the case of my mother she has been offered drives out of the house on a good day, I would take her around little gifts, plants, little surprises, something from the markets in the way of cut glass which we know she loves.
Hubby and I would take her around fish and chips or takeaways almost every weekend and we rarely even got a thank you.
I use to visit her every day up until about a month ago as my sister is very vindictive and manipulative and she and her husband have managed to poison our mothers mind against all the other 4 siblings.
They have worked in aged care for over 30 years so they know which buttons to push.
Whenever we took our mother a meal she would complain they were too greasy or the chinese was "Very Ordinary" so we have done all the above for her and I would truly love to have a caring loving mother like yourself.
We IE Hubby and I were the ones that took her on holidays, took her down the coast to visit her brother and sister when she was well enough to go whilst my sister and her husband here never lifted a finger to do likewise.
I use to have to take our son out of school at 8 years of age to take Mum for chemotherapy and 16 years later she is cancer free and has beaten bladder cancer and had a small low grade lump removed from her breast but she is 90 and living independantly but is forever complaining when her youngest daughter has had full breast reconstruction from breast cancer.
She has nothing good to say about any of the other 4 siblings whom we have all had serious health issues.
Now that my sister has manipulated Mum the last few months it has torn our hearts out.
The put downs, the sarcasm and nastiness have broken our hearts.
She has lied to my other siblings about us and hubby and I are gutted
My hubby never had his mother.
He was 3 when she passed away and his father left them with his grandparents who would be watching on in horror at my mothers abuse and ill treatment of us both.
They were the most caring loving grandparents anyone could have ever wished for.
So as I said I cannot comprehend your pain at your tender age and feeling so lonely.
I can tell you have had a very confronting life.
Our son when at High School got the honour of going and meeting two ladies that survived the holocaust and no one at your age let alone what you have been through should feel lonely and I find that incredibly sad.
I am going to go and do some vountary work and visit the elderly in the nursing homes here that do not see their loved ones.
I think that it is sad that a good parent like yourselves are feeling lonely.
It should never happen but in my mothers case it has been gutwrenching and soul destroying to have to walk away but it is affecting our health and if you ever need a kind soul to talk to feel free.
Cheers
Pipsqueak.
Fie upon those like your sibling who not only criticize you but poison others against you. Waste no time thinking about them or what they do - you can't change it. The anger this will bring on will only hurt you, not them, so just wipe them off the slate and be content that you did all that you could do!
How sweet of you also to plan to volunteer visiting those who have no one. Clearly you do have kindness in your heart if you are willing to share it with strangers (soon to be friends!)