Abusive parent needs care

December 20, 2023 2:05 PM

How do my sister and I come to grips with having to help our Abusive Father who is now having cognitive issues?

My father who is in his mid 70's recently had a brain hemorrhage. Up until this happened which was about a month and a half ago he was independent. To add to the equation, my mom has Alzheimer's and he was her caregiver for about 4 years until she was placed in a memory facility where she's actually doing very well.

My dad was abusive to me, my sister, and for sure my mom. The abuse was verbal and psychological, not physical. But it absolutely took it's toll on all of us. I believe my mom's Alzheimer's was accelerated because of the daily barrage of abuse from my dad for many years including after she was diagnosed.

I wanted to also provide some more info...I live on the west coast. My mom and dad are on the east coast. My sister lives on the east coast, about an hour and a half away from mom and dad.

I have spent the last month living with my father and helping out with driving him places and taking him to doc appointments and trying to take care of bills, etc. My sister, while she never ever physically stays at my father's house, has tried to help him with logistical things like getting my mom into a home, and helping with bills. But she has, and for good reason, kept her distance from my dad. When my mom went to a home several months ago, she virtually cut off contact with our dad unless absolutely necessary.

Now, given my dad's condition there is a TON on our plate. Both my sister and I are sacrificing a huge amount of time away from our families, losing time and work with our careers, and taking the blows of an abusive person who not only belittles us at every turn, but shuts us down from trying to help unless we really push him hard. And then he yells at us for not helping him. He is behind on bills, and is extraordinarily aggressive about telling us we're lying to his doctor to stop him from driving.

My sister is close to just stopping helping him all together. To be fair she has dealt with more since she's closer geographically. I've been consistent with talking to my dad on the phone every day for a long time and trying to be in his life. I've also come home almost every other month this year...even before this happened. I was mostly coming for my mom. And as much as I hate my dad, I never wanted to cut him off. But now, I think we're both starting to question our future with an abusive parent who now needs our help... it's torture trying to help him. It was torture having him in our lives. All the while, our family and work lives beginning to to unravel.

When I found out what happened to my dad and I booked my flight come home I almost had a nervous break down because I knew what was coming and what will be needed for who knows how long. I have had borderline suicidal thoughts since being home with my dad.

I know this is a very hard situation and no one has a solution. My sister seems very close to throwing in the hat. My dad's recent brain scan says the swelling has gone down and he is potentially going to get better but tough to say if that will really happen or when. I'm not sure I could fully turn my back on my dad. But my mental health as well as my sister's mental health is really fragile right now. We have part time caregivers in place to drive my dad places and help out around the house once I leave which will be soon. The driving for him is really the biggest concern. But I'm feeling pretty hopeless and helpless right now. I know I'll need to come back to help out in a couple months. But not sure if my sister and I have it in us to continue, but don't know what choice we have. Any words of wisdom or advice is greatly appreciated.

posted by ljs30 to Human Relations (19 answers total)

You don’t have to help him. You don’t have to sacrifice your life and health and relationships that sustain you to someone who can’t treat you with basic human decency. I advise you to step away. If you want to care for someone, care for your sister and yourself and your mom.
posted by congen at 2:12 PM on December 20, 2023 [37 favorites]

Don't detonate your own life for someone who hates you and you hate back.
posted by june_dodecahedron at 2:16 PM on December 20, 2023 [11 favorites]

You really can just walk away. Honestly, the fact that you sister is on the verge of walking away is better. Because it's easier if you both are willing to throw in the towel - that way neither of you is unfairly taking on the burden.

Do not hurt yourself for your abusive father. Parents are supposed to take care of their children. He failed you. You owe him nothing.
posted by litera scripta manet at 2:24 PM on December 20, 2023 [14 favorites]

I also want to be clear - I am saying this from experience. I spent too much time trying to help my horrible, abusive parents at the expensive of my mental health. The best thing I did was to walk away.

It's not easy. My father is extremely mental ill, and once my mother divorced him, he has been homeless off and on, and mostly homeless these days. (He gets disability and lives in a low cost of living area and had subsidized housing, but he's been an alcoholic and drug addict most of my life, so I assume that's where the money went.)

Anyway, it was hard, especially at first, and sometimes even now. But it was the best decision of my life. It was so freeing.

Rip off the bandaid. Take care of yourself, the way your father should have taken care of you.
posted by litera scripta manet at 2:27 PM on December 20, 2023 [8 favorites]

Look, there's a lot going on here, and people are naturally going to disagree about what, if anything children owe their parents (and vice-versa). It sounds like care for your mom might be bound up with your dad, either in fact or just in your head, so that's probably complicating things. Then there's some guilt you may feel toward your sister. This is all tough stuff, and it's easy for us to tell you that you don't have to do this. But it's complicated, and doesn't necessarily have an easy answer.

But.

For the love of God, stop calling your abusive father (who you hate!) every day! Whatever you decide your role is in this situation, it definitely doesn't need to include that. I personally think you should walk away entirely, but if that seems too hard, a good minimal step to take care of yourself is to stop the daily phone calls.
posted by Ragged Richard at 2:28 PM on December 20, 2023 [10 favorites]

I would do absolutely anything in my power to keep my adult kids from having to put their lives on hold at all, much less indefinitely, for such a miserable task. I don't think I'm particularly selfless in that regard; it's simply their (and your) turn.
posted by headnsouth at 2:48 PM on December 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

Your father needs assistance, but not from you, your sister, or your mom. The hospital should be able to connect you with a social worker.
posted by oceano at 3:04 PM on December 20, 2023 [9 favorites]

Definitely not a psychologist or anything but my answer is simple: You dohave a choice. Cut off contact with him. It's terrible that he had a brain hemorrhage, but that doesn't undo what you went through and are apparently still going through. There are other people in the world who can help him, or if he is going to drive everyone out of his life, then that's what he has done and he has to live with the consequences.

I realize this is not simple when dealing with relatives, given how we're conditioned to believe we should automatically love someone because we have a blood relation to them. But there are plenty of people who not deserving of either that love or the guilty feeling that comes with not helping them in a time of need.
posted by tubedogg at 3:12 PM on December 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

You're dealing with suicidal ideation: that means you definitely need a break from him. That's your brain pulling the emergency cord saying, "help! something serious needs to be addressed!" Letting him continue to hurt you as his situation deteriorates will not make him change and suddenly be the dad you deserve. Letting him berate you is not going to improve his post-stroke recuperation, and it's absolutely not your job feed his need to feel powerful.

My mom cut off her own abusive father (who was struggling financially) when I was young, and I am so happy and proud of her for doing so. Giving her room to heal was 1000% worth whatever change of heart he may or may not have had in later years.

Advice for as long as you can possibly afford it: therapy for you, continue to outsource his care to others. Getting help from the hospital social worker is a great suggestion from oceano, because they'll be able to let you know what gov't services he qualifies for (if any).
posted by smirkette at 3:21 PM on December 20, 2023 [11 favorites]

You sound like someone who takes their responsibilities incredibly seriously, and puts themself at the bottom of the list of priorities. That makes it really hard to stop showing up and putting yourself in harm’s way, because of your parent’s ongoing abuse.

A framing which has helped me in a similar situation is to think about other responsibilities. To your family, for example, who are doing without you being there - and who get the version of you who has to deal with this incredibly difficult situation.

And perhaps most importantly of all - you have a responsibility to yourself, to safeguard your own wellbeing, which includes not putting yourself into circumstances which trigger suicidal thoughts. Your west coast family doesn’t deserve that, and nor do you.

Your father doesn’t get to trump everyone else’s needs - even if he were not abusive, but even more so as things are. It doesn’t sound as though he will change - which means that hard as it is, the onus is on you to protect yourself by stepping away.

I’m so sorry that you’re dealing with this.
posted by JJZByBffqU at 3:38 PM on December 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

A first question to ask yourself: Is the help you are providing actually effective?

If, say, you talk to your father on the phone for two hours and try to encourage him to tell you about his finances in order to help him with them, and during the call he says nasty stuff to you and never does actually pay any bills or get his finances sorted so he understands them and commits to doing the next part on his own, the cost benefit analysis says that your time spent was wasted. If the pain you suffered from receiving his abuse during the call did not in fact result in any improvement in his life, then your pain is the only thing to consider. You got hurt for nothing. Worse, the discussion probably caused him distress too.

There is a good chance that the help you are attempting to provide is not working, either because he is not cooperating or because you are trying to provide him with emotional support and he's not capable of benefiting from that.

If the help you are providing is not actually improving your Dad's life as much as it is making your life worse, you should at least try to change what you are doing to something effective. And if there isn't an immediately effective way for you to help, you would be better off if you stop interacting with him and spend some time instead doing research to figure out some effective way to provide help. Getting into arguments with a mean old man with dementia is likely to be singularly ineffective.

You don't help a drowning person when you throw yourself into the river and drown as well because you can't swim. Your situation here may be the same as that. Is your Dad actually going to be better off if you travel down there yet again and do all his banking and errands and bill paying for him? Temporarily. But the price for getting all HIS bills paid in December will be to miss so much work that YOU can't pay your bills in January. It's not sustainable. Temporary fixes are only worth doing if they are a bridge going somewhere. Shoring up a dangerous flight of stairs is a bad idea if you can't get back within a few hours to stabilize them and make them secure. If you don't have a short term plan of what to do after you shore up the staircase, you are only creating an illusion of safety, that could easily result in a much bigger disaster when the whole thing comes down.

It really is okay to back off. It's okay not to jump into the river and try to help a drowning person if you can't swim. If your dad needs to have a conservator appointed over and above his wishes, then your trips to go and help him with his finances are only delaying that. Sometimes when someone is drowning the best thing to do is to run away from the river, as fast as you can. You'd be more likely to help a drowning person by fetching a lifeguard than by going into the water.

Maybe you'd be more help to your father by figuring out what evidence is needed to get a conservator appointed, and collecting that evidence. The longer you hold off on things like that, the more likely you are to only get it done after your father has lost track of his resources and has taken out a bunch of payday loans as a solution to a temporary cash flow problem because he didn't remember he hid a wad of cash in the pocket of his winter coat.

Your father may enjoy being nasty to you. It might even be his only pleasure in life. That doesn't mean it's good for him, or that you should submit to it. It might even make him happy to burn his own house down, in a fit of rage. But allowing him to gleefully burn his own house down is not helping. Just because he wants be be mean to you doesn't mean it's good for him.
posted by Jane the Brown at 3:47 PM on December 20, 2023 [10 favorites]

I'm so sorry you are struggling with this. It is a special kind of torture. N-thing all of the advice above to take care of yourself and make whatever boundaries you need to make.

A friend of mine is working now as a "fiduciary" for a couple of older folks in our neighborhood who, for various reasons, don't have the option of getting help from family (from what I hear they are both Very Difficult People whose children probably have ample reason to stay away).

Like the social worker and conservator recommendations above, something like that might be a good option. Whatever you have the resources for, it will be well worth it I think. And you won't have to be embarrassed or in any way have to try to cover up what's really going on with in the relationship with your dad. These professionals have seen this many many times.
posted by pantarei70 at 4:20 PM on December 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

I can relate. These are not fun times.

Move your mother (if possible) to a memory care facility that’s closer to you or your sister. She should not have to see this man any more.

Every senior wants to remain independent for as long as they can. If your father can afford a caretaker to keep him in his own home, great. Otherwise an assisted living facility may be a much better option. You have some obligation to make sure his needs are attended to but not to personally attend to them.

There’s a reason kids of parents like this move across the country. Protect yourself experiencing any more trauma to the extent that you can. (I failed to do this and have paid for it in my sanity!)
posted by Kalatraz at 5:49 PM on December 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

It's okay to say no. I have discussed this with my siblings and we are all - the state will have to step in, none of us are damaging our families to help beyond a very limited degree of organising documents. We have individually said no to one family member who needs a fair amount of additional support and so it went to someone external to the family to manage. I wish we had done that many years earlier so that family relationships had been less strained.

Your brain tells you that your dad is the #1 priority here because years and years of abuse and family dynamics have always placed him at the top of every decision - will this upset dad, what does dad want, etc. Society says loudly over and over that taking care of our parents is a child's major job, especially if you are female-coded.

That is a lie. To care for the elderly is a social need and can be met by other people. Your dad is not #1 in you or your sister's lives - he chose to destroy the relationship you could've had. You may even be thinking/hoping if you show up now for him, he'll somehow be grateful and turn into the approving and loving parent you want.

Step away now while you and your sister can support each other in that decision, and let other people in his community and state figure it out. It'll be worse for him, but any good parent would NOT want their children to be destroyed caring for them.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:31 PM on December 20, 2023 [6 favorites]

You don't have to help him.

You can choose to help him (and decide how exactly how much or how little help you are willing to give - it could be "I will do some websearches looking for services" or "I will make some phone calls looking for services")

but you have zero obligation to a parent who abused you.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:44 PM on December 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh man. I had to do this math 10 years ago, earlier than everyone else I know, when my abusive parent had a third stroke that put him in rehab, then assisted living, then a nursing home, then hospice, as he declined. It was different for me, though, because I was the sibling who lived in town still. It still took a lot of work, but it wasn't even as hard as trying to do it from across the country.

I want to point out something that someone noted to me back then: You don't know how long this is all going to take. It took 5 years of caregiving before it was all over, in my father's case—and even though he had carers, that still meant 5 years of hospital visits when he got infections and an eventual cancer diagnosis, getting and exercising durable power of attorney, executing all the paperwork, taking care of all his finances, arguing for care on behalf of my abuser...

I spent a year of weekends cleaning his house up to sell, because my mother had divorced him years before and being there was triggering to her. And he was in hospice for a whole year at the end, and I stopped visiting for most of that year, because even though at that point, he no longer physically had power over anyone, being there was giving me intense PTSD nightmares.

Two years in to all that, my now-ex also developed severe health issues that put him in the hospital frequently and nearly killed him, then left him with debilitating chronic pain. I'm pretty sure there was at least one point when they were both in the hospital at the same time, which was...wow. All of this took a major toll on my mental health, job situation, and marriage.

All of that to say... You're allowed to say no to this. You need to live for yourself too. It's a choice, a really hard choice, to decide to care for someone who has abused you and your family. You can also do what you can now to get things in order, then leave the rest to others. You are not obligated to do this.

In my case, I didn't necessarily feel obligated to do it, but I just made the most sense as the person to do all of this because of proximity. But it's really important to note, I also was compensated monetarily for doing all of that. That also changed the calculus. If in your situation, there's nothing to gain from it except the belief that you're doing the right thing, that might not be enough to compensate for the psychic damage. Even being compensated for it didn't stop me from taking immense psychic damage myself.

Just...look out for yourself, and know what you're getting into, and set boundaries around what you are and are not willing to do.
posted by limeonaire at 9:27 PM on December 20, 2023

Also, the things that seem important now may seem less important later, as the situation changes. And some of it may end up being completely absurd with the benefit of hindsight. Maybe some of this knowledge will be useful.

I remember how at first, we were just trying to do basic things like get into his house, fix the locks (he'd taken the front door lock apart before that third stroke), and find all the bills to pay. (I successfully lockpicked the back door of my childhood home!) At that point, his mother still was able to drive and had a working memory, so she was also there, and I remember how, in the midst of me doing all of this, she still had something to say about my weight. Like WTF, Grandma, right now you have something to say about that? (We no longer speak, because I finally had enough of that a few years ago. The dysfunction comes from the top.)

I was trying to maintain a good working relationship with my parent before he declined too much to do things like sign necessary paperwork, so he didn't make irrational, damaging decisions. He had a tendency to be capricious. So even though I deeply hated and resented him on some level, I still tried to do things at first to keep him happier, to make the job I had to do on everyone's behalf easier. So I'd bring him, my abuser, food he liked, or try to get him a phone he could use with limited motor ability (I even asked an Ask MetaFilter question about that back in the day). There was this whole Scheherazade period early on where I painstakingly read him his draft estate plan a few pages at a time over the course of many days, because I thought that was the ethical thing to do.

I'm not saying that kind of appeasement is good. It's just something I felt like I needed to do in the situation to ensure the best outcome. It's honestly a total mindfuck to maintain those two realities at once—trying to remember that even though you're technically doing this for him, that doesn't make you two cool now or anything. It's very similar in some ways to working for an abusive boss. I was doing it knowing that I was laying the foundation for his and the family's financial security, but it still sucked. I know others who, in similar situations, declined to be involved further with their parent for their own mental health, and that's a completely valid choice.
posted by limeonaire at 10:11 PM on December 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

I agree with all the support you’re getting here. Everything except this:

You have some obligation to make sure his needs are attended to

No, you really do not have any obligation whatsoever to a parent who continues to actively abuse you, either legally or out of some sense of filial piety. You really can walk away. I say this from experience. I’ve written loads of other comments here about it.

In this situation your first obligation is to preserve yourself. “Put on your own mask first.” Friend, you’re not wearing your own mask yet. Go and figure out how to do that so you can thrive with your own family.
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 1:42 AM on December 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

Document his lack of cognitive skill and get a court to make someone his physical and financial guardian. Then, nursing home or other appropriate care. In the US, find the Area Agency on Aging in your area; they should know the lawyers who do geriatrics.

I agree that you have no moral requirement to attend to his personal needs. Logistically, you are the only ones who can manage his legal and relocation needs and getting his needs addressed by somebody else; make that the priority. If you decide to provide any care, limit it to essentials and hired care.

Can you add clarification about your question? I agree with the responses that you don't have to do this, but I think you intend to do this, to at least some extent. Whatever you choose id okay, but maybe we can help you figure that out? Some people will just take everything you have to give and be vile in the process. Don't give more than you can. Best to you and your sister.
posted by theora55 at 6:58 AM on December 21, 2023 [1 favorite]