No.
My stepdad wasn’t a nice person. When he was comatose in the hospital, dying of pancreatitis and whatever else you get after 60 years of nonstop drinking, mom asked me to hold his hand once, while she left the room. It was hard to touch him, even when he was near dead, and I dropped his hand as soon as she left. So I guess I wouldn’t have done a good job taking care of him, unless a pillow over the face or unhooking an IV line counts as care.
I think it’s wonderful that you’ve reached the conclusion that the problem is with him, not you!
My Mother died when I was 4. My Father was broken by it. He remarried and let my Step-Mother get away with a lot because he was terrified of losing another wife. She’d threaten to take my little sister and leave if he ever sided with me in a fight. He rarely stood up for me in any real capacity. I have told my sister straight up, that when it comes time, she’s taking care of her. We get along ok now as long as it’s for less than a week. There is no way that it would be healthy for us to live together. I hope that I can afford to help my sister take care of her if it’s necessary. I could handle living with my Dad in his dotage, he’s a nice guy generally, even goes out of his way to be so. The kind of guy that will look at you cross if you talk gossip about someone. He has a temper when pushed to the edge and is a bit of a pansy when it comes to his wife, but that’s about the extent of my problems with him.
My wife’s parents on the other hand are awesome. They’ve helped us out so much, and I can talk to them pretty easily, so I’d feel pretty obligated to take them in. My wife’s childhood while it had some problems was about as unabusive as anyone could ask for. Her Dad is one of her best friends.
I would like to think I would remain open to the possibility of a sincere acknowledgement of the harm done, an apology, and an ongoing attempt to make amends. But absent all 3 of the above, I say fuck 'em.
After decades of trying every conceivable way to have some sort of relations with her dad, my wife hasn’t had any dealings with him for the past couple of years. Has been a far superior to any life with him a part of it. No need/desire to have anything to do with him until he dies - which will hopefully be sooner rather than later.
Well, my childhood wasn’t nearly what yours was, but I’m not planning on giving my mother anything in her dotage. Not without some serious admission of wrongdoing and apology making, at the very least.
I do plan on taking care of one of her sisters, however. As my Aunt very much took care of me.
Very interesting question, and some very interesting perspectives being offered.
I also come from a highly dysfunctional background which included unaddressed mental illness and alcoholism, prescription drug abuse, yada, yada, yada. Every child from that union faced life severely emotionally scarred in ways that were hard to identify and harder yet to recover from. We were served up to a waiting universe more than willing to prey on the weak. In so many ways we never stood a chance.
For myself, I was the most like my mother. I looked like her, sharp, willful at times, and was like a little reflection of her. Unfortunately she really hated herself and so really couldn’t bring herself to have any love for me. I was traumatized in my teenaged years in a way that left me shell shocked and something of a blank slate, forced by victimization to reconstruct a person out of shards that were left.
In some ways, I was very fortunate to be in that spot when I was still young and rubbery, as it were. In recovering myself, which took many years, I knew I couldn’t be healthy until I got right with our childhood exposure to wild dysfunction. So I sort of made my peace with it and moved on, it was the first step on the road to mental health. The second step was extricating myself from my toxic family, so I moved to another city and set about building a life for myself.
I was of little consequence to anyone in my family and so, fortunately, no one really noticed that I had withdrawn. From time to time, I would see them, but I was always guarded, always. Sibling relationships grew easier when conducted long distance. The waters in my pond began to calm.
Fast forward 20 years, (Dad’s already died in the night from alcohol and drug abuse years before), she’s dying of breast cancer. On the phone with me, she supposed that they must have cancer clinics in my city, yes? And it just hung there in the air. For like a long time.
Now I know how hard that sentence was for her to say, and I’d long ago forgiven them both for the ways they marked and disabled their children emotionally. And while part of me wanted to offer, I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. I had struggled too long to find mental stability and I knew in my heart that she had the power to undo it all for her own amusement if she felt to. I just wasn’t willing to risk it, in the end. I didn’t really beat myself up about it, I reflected on it but was really okay with the choice I’d made.
She got herself sent home from hospital, convinced her kids and grandkids were all coming to see her. Mostly because she really had lost the ability to hear anyone else’s concerns many years before. I’m certain my siblings had all hummed and hawed at the invitation and ended on ‘maybe’. But in her mind, they were all coming to her out of the way little town.
She had caregivers and a morphine pump. Me and my spouse made the several hour journey and stayed through the night with her, but no one else showed up and I had to explain that they couldn’t come. I spent the night pressing the button on the morphine pump for her when she was too weak and sleeping at the foot of her bed. Next morning I said my goodbyes, told her I loved her and we left. She died two days later back in hospital.
Here’s where things get weird. Fast forward about 7 years, our only surviving parent, my mother in law, has a stroke that leaves her entirely bedridden and in need of much care. Much. You guessed it, I became her care giver. Quit working and put in 6 years of adult diapers and meds and mountains of laundry and, well, you get the picture, the whole nine yards, as they say. She finally passed, in our home, about 2 yrs ago now.
As I live in Canada, the land of socialized medicine, there was a lot of support services for people in her circumstances, homecare workers, nurses, doctors, PT’s, OT’s, an endless stream it seemed. And, while I am grateful to live in a country that provides so well for it’s seniors it all comes with some paperwork, as you can imagine. I cannot tell you how many times I had to correct them when they’d say, “This is your mother?”. No, actually my mother in law. It was easy to see that they were universally taken aback that someone would take on this amount of care for a Mother In Law.
When privately asked about it, I would parrot that I hadn’t had the opportunity to provide care for my own mother. Not entirely true, and I knew it even as I was saying it, but it seemed to satisfy their need to know why I was doing this. And I was never asked about it that I didn’t reflect on why was I doing this when I wasn’t willing to do it for my own mother.
My mother in law was a wonderful, sweet and kind woman, to be sure. And I did love her. But the truth is that she produced a really remarkable man, my husband. But for that man, love and respect might just be words to me still. The warm loving embrace of his family was truly, the only warm familial embrace I had ever experienced. Taking on her care was one of the easiest decisions I ever made (though I struggled to accomplish it!).
Everybody is different. And each case is different. And you gotta do what you gotta do.
Oh, and sometimes life is just a great big beautiful mess. But I’m sure you’ve noticed that!
Unconditional love is like Marxism: sounds like a beautiful idea, but in practice somebody winds up getting shot in the head in a cellar.
Back when I was being abused it was pointless to resists. By the time I was big enough to resist it was still pointless to discuss. For a long time my only way to protest was to punish myself, and now that that’s largely a thing of the past, I can at least never, ever accept that I deserved to be treated like that.
For a lot of us, this may all be a mute point, since the same impulse that keeps the abuser in denial also keeps the abuser from asking for assistance. I guess I’m glad I’m not like those I know who continue to absorb emotional abuse from manipulative, evil old bastards.
Haven’t had to deal with it yet, thank the Maker; the idea of either of my parents in that state is shudder-worthy.
Dad was mostly absent, mostly good when he was here, but I got my share of “you’re utterly worthless” from him. I got ten shares of it from Mom, along with a good deal of physical abuse. I put an end to that when I was about sixteen – my best friend’s mother saw me get clubbed and knocked down and threatened to go to CPS. I took a gamble and explained this carefully to my mother, who lost a lot of her bluster and promised she’d never lay a hand on me again.*
She held to her promise, too, after years of abuse fueled by clinical depression. The Zoloft works well now and she’s rarely a psycho now. We actually get along really well, even if my relationship with Dad is a bit better.
So yes. If it came down to it, I’d quit my job and be a nurse to my parents full time. I forgave Mom (mostly) a long time ago. At the same time, I can understand 110% why someone else would not and I would not say my decision is good for everyone, offer void in Utah, etc.
elbows thank you for sharing your hard journey. You, my friend, are a survivor with a generous loving heart.
I completely agree.
I can be a very cold person, on occasion. I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to completely forget that I had parents if they had treated me poorly. Luckily, it’s not an issue in my life.
Joe
I understand if you don’t wan’t to answer, but what did she do? 
I guess it depends. Has the parent apologized profusely, admitted they royally screwed up, and want to make amends? That might be a consideration in your decision.
In other cases, bridges are burned so badly there ain’t never going back. My mother and I are estranged. While I don’t hate her (can’t be bothered to care that much) if the time came where she needed full time care, it would fall on my sister, who is still on good terms with her. For me, it would be like asking me to care for some random stranger. Sorry, but my own family takes precedence.
Argh. I guess I’m going to be showing here just exactly how not mentally well I am, but despite the fact that my mother has persistently abused me, I would indeed try to take care of her if she were willing. If she accepted, I know this would be the worst thing in the world for me and little good could come of it. But in my heart I feel it’s true; I’d do my best anyway, no matter what. 
The flip-side is that the Other Half also had an abusive mother, but has dealt with it by refusing to have anything to do with her. I completely understand and support his decision. It’s the right thing for him, as well as it is for others who choose the same path. I only wish I had that sort of resolve. Perhaps with the strides I’ve actually made concerning her over the years, this is another that’s around the corner. I just haven’t gotten that far yet.
I’ve given this a lot of thought. Both my parents were abusive, but like the OP’s, Dad was a violent drunk who turned to Jesus (and now just a fanatical cult member/dry drunk) and mom was a passive-aggressive doormat. To make a long story short.
For my mom’s part… a few year after my grandparents snatched us from her and turned us over to the God Squad (my dad and stepmom) to be abused and used for slave labor, I got a very long (and rarely coherent) letter from mother. She acknowledged that her behavior, and lack of ability to protect me from trauma had caused damage at a very vulnerable age and she expressed regrets that I’d probably still be suffering the repercussions for years. (And she was right.) Because she has acknowledged her behavior and has attempted to make amends, in the best ways she could, I would take her in. Actually, I’d rent her a house down the street or build her a little mother-in-law suite or something so we could both have our own space.
For my dad. Meh. He’s still in the thick of his religious cult, doesn’t acknowledge how his current behavior is still hurtful to my sister and I, and has never acknowledged any damage done at his hands, or by inaction on his part. He can rot in a nursing home as far as I’m concerned about it. And it better not be a surprise. I tease him all the time because my mother – his ex wife – is a geriatric nurse in a nursing home. So whenever he gets close to crossing a boundary and pissing me off, I threaten him with, “You better be nice to me because I know this really great nursing home…” He knows I’d stick his ass in my mother’s care just to spite him and his current wife.
That would be justice. Heh.
But bottom line… I really have no intention of taking care of the same people who refused to protect me and in fact, put me in harm’s way. I’m with the OP: you reap what you sow, baby.
But because my mother has been willing to reach out, communicate, rebuild relationships, and has expressed to me regrets… I’d be willing to forgive her mistakes and help her out when she needs it. On my terms, that is. (I’m not moving to where she is. But I’ll help her move to where I am and take responsibility for helping her and taking care of her.)
>Some people get to a point in life where they realise their parents were flawed humans like everyone else, and didn’t get the instruction manual on child rearing either.Likely their grandparents modeled that.
>Some people understand that though avenging childhood wrongs might yield temporary satisfaction, it really just continues the cycle. Rising above that can be true satisfaction in a nasty brutish life.
Well, ain’t Some People the lucky ones?!
Look, this has to depend on circumstances.
I know of somebody whose father raped her and impregnated her, then aborted her with a coat hanger. Then he raped and impregnated her again, and kept her in the house till she bore the baby, then he killed the baby. Bizarrely, the family also documented some of this with photographs. So, would this lady be a good candidate to “realise their parents were flawed humans like everyone else, and didn’t get the instruction manual on child rearing either”? Should we be waiting for her to find “true satisfaction in a nasty brutish life” by rising above it? I don’t think so. I think the less available this lady is to her parents, the better it is for the whole rest of the world.
Why would you expect me to be arbiter of what should or shouldn't be forgiveable behaviour? These are personal decisions, not judgements. The people I've met who have risen above their trauma probably consider themselves lucky, but I ascribe it to an act of volition, one of the very few things anyone can claim as their own.One of my best friends told me recently that she hopes her mother kicks off before her dad does because there’s no way in hell she’s going to do squat for the old bitch. And after hearing what this woman did to her, I don’t blame her at all. If that had been my mum I’d have disowned her long before.
I grew up with four siblings and I was the only abused child. My mother decided I was stupid, clumsy, lousy, no good, an idiot, etc. I was made to blame for everything my brothers and sisters did wrong. EVERYTHING. I took serious shit for even their minor and major screwups. The physical abuse she gave to me put me in the hospital several times.
When she was dying of lung cancer and her other children had left home and made something of their lives, I was called on because her other children were too busy. She immediately started to blame me for everything from my sister being a lesbian to my brother getting a divorce. One day, rather than giving in to my temptation to start beating the crap out of her, I left her alone in her apartment. I never went back.
Sig line!
I don’t believe anyone here expects you to be the arbiter of what is and is not “forgivable behavior”; I think the point is, that you can’t be that arbiter. Those of us who lived through the abuse need to make that decision for ourselves, and then, no matter what our decision is, we’re the ones left living with that decision, and making peace with it.
I personally think my parents’ behavior went way beyond “parental mistakes” (which, I hope to God are forgivable, because God knows I’ve made my share! However, I talk to my kids about the mistakes I’ve made, and ask them for their input). But the thing is, what my parents did to me, and whether it’s forgivable or not, is not your call. They did similar things to two of my sisters. Whether it’s forgivable for my sisters is not my call. It’s got to be up to the individual.
FWIW, it’s better to do nothing for your ailing, abusive parents if doing nothing is what’s going to bring you the most peace. Caring for them in spite of past behavior is the right thing to do if that’s what’s going to bring you the most peace.
Does that sound self-serving? Yeah, I suppose it does. But after several years of therapy and several years of soul-searching, I’m cool with that.