So dad got aspiration pneumonia. At 1am I’m talking to his dr about his condition that they don’t understand. Fragile X ataxic syndrome. Then I’m given the resus or not question. Bam I was in shock. So may shocks.
My father died of a massive heart attack, suddenly and without warning (except we found the obligatory indigestion tablets in his jacket pocket afterwards). He was a day short of his 55th birthday. I'm beginning to think that he would have found that preferable to what our current crop of APs are having to go though.
@Anotherday, I was in the acute medical ward with the Dowager when an old lady (94, but quite with-it) was being taken through all of that. Luckily the Dowager had already told them 'no' so I was saved the decision. Thank God.
Mrs. S, praying for all APs and those who care for/about them
I was part of the "resuscitate or not" discussion (on entering care) for both my father and my oldest brother. While I would have said "not" for myself it wasn't something I was prepared to say for someone else, especially as we hadn't discussed it previously. I am going to have that discussion with my youngest brother so he is clear what I want.
I posted on this ship, maybe ten years ago, thanks that having a new car saved my parents life. I remember because Jenny Ann actually saw the aftermath. I sometimes wonder if that would have been kinder for them.
Jengie, my mother said often after her catastrophic fall two years ago that she wished she'd died then, and I'm afraid I do agree. Instead, it was her best friend from next door, twenty years younger, who had the massive brain haemorrhage and died.
My late grandfather, in his eighties, had a test to confirm whether chest pains were indigestion or a heart attack. He did press-ups. If he was still ok after ten press ups, then it was indigestion and he would take a tablet. And if it was a heart attack, he would say, then at least he'd have made damn sure it was a fatal one.
I'm going to have to get a lot fitter over the next thirty years to emulate him; I can't do press-ups in my fifties.
My father died suddenly too (though he was seventy). He knew his heart could give up at any time and had already arranged his funeral to the extent of working out with his funeral director friend how to put the coffin on the front of his boat, and getting Inland Waterways to hack a path from the canal to the crem. My mother on the other had is in total denial that she will die one day, let alone that she is old and needs help. This is so annoying because with a bit of help she could be having a much happier time than she appears to be having at present. She's just left a voice mail ranting at me between asking for things to be added to her next on-line grocery order. She was fine yesterday so I'm not sure what's brought this on. I'll phone her back when I have the strength.
On funny, if slightly worrying note, we had a conversation that went like this:
Me: What do you think of Boris Johnson resigning?
Mum: What?
Me: Didn't you know he's resigned. (mum is usually very clued up about politics)
Mum: But he still has the same haircut doesn't he?
The Dowager, frail but lucid, is currently in hospital on a ward for the elderly. She isn't eating or drinking very well but has stopped trying to run away, and wants to go back to her care home.
(Her neighbour, just back from a week away, has visited, and he must have been to the care home first - AND paid a small fortune to park at the hospital. If ever a neighbour were a candidate for beatification, it would be he )
Me again, reporting that the Dowager is on course to be released (if not into the wild) next week. She ate most of her lunch while I was there (albeit grudgingly, while making up all sorts of excuses about why she didn't want to eat it!)
Poor ward orderly(?) going round asking six old ladies what they wanted to eat tomorrow - four choices of main, two of pudding, plus the option of a sandwich if none of that suited them. If I had £1 for every time he said 'but you have to eat, my dear' we could have funded that ward for a week!
More neighbours rang last night to see how she was, having come back from holiday and gone more or less straight to the care home (cf. above) only to find she was in hospital.
Oh dear, this feels like another step down the slippery slope... yesterday evening Other Half went to see Mother-in-Law. While he was there he phoned his aunt so she could have a chat with Mother, and during the course of the conversation it transpired that she (Mother) had forgotten where Barra is.
A native Scot. With a sister who has a holiday cottage on the island. Has forgotten where (and what) Barra is. :-(
@The Intrepid Mrs S - Is the Dowager back to her care home yet? @JaneR - as @Jengie Jon says memories come and go.
Hope everyone elses Aging Ps are doing as well as they can.
Yes indeed, she was shipped out yesterday morning. I fully intended to call her today but we were grandson-sitting as Miss S had an important meeting at work, and frankly I didn't have a second to myself all day (I can't remember when I last went to the loo )
However she was apparently walking and talking okay yesterday when she got 'home' so that's good news. How is your AP bearing up, @Sarasa ?
Got into almost blind father's fridge. Started throwing out rotting things. So angry he is. I think it's about the decline in abilities, seeing life collapse. Because I had to make him cry didn't I. Got it refocused by asking his advice about something don't need advice about. He brightened. I sometimes wish he was suffering of failing memory. I feel like a very bad man. Having an after supper beer instead of tea. On a weekday, well there you go. It's the death of his wife my mother anniversary and I thought the fridge needed attention. What was I thinking?
Maybe that you would rather he didn't die of food poisoning? I used to have this with the Dowager - she didn't eat much so the remnants sat in the fridge till I, or some like-minded neighbour, threw them out. I remember particularly two slices of bacon, every colour of the rainbow, that she swore were fine- until I trapped her (these were the days when logic would still operate) by asking how, if she had no sense of smell or taste, she would ever know they were off?! You are a serious candidate for sainthood, by my reckoning.
It's all about control, NP - I'm going to have that tattooed on my wrist one day.
Mrs. S, contemplating 'if not, it's about money' on the other one
@NOprophet_NØprofit - none of us can get things right all of the time, I don't think I get things right most of the time, btu mum and I still rub along, and as Mrs S says, you don't want your father getting food poisoning. @The Intrepid Mrs S - glad the Dowager is back 'home'. Long may she remain there.
I had a lovely long weekend away on retreat, the only blip being messages from my husband and brother on Sunday about my mother having mislaid her keys. Every time she does this she thinks the neighbours have them, even though it is obvious they are in her flat somewhere. She called the police and they were supposed to be visiting yesterday. When I spoke to her yesterday after I'd got back and when I visited today she didn't mention either lost keys or police. She was in full rant about the neighbours having taken her magnifier, which I found in the magazine rack "Oh that's right I hid it there, and forgot that's what I did' she blythly said.
After I got home she phoned to say the neighborus had taken the pole she uses to open her kitchen window. She went and confronted them and is convinced that they are enacting 'hate crimes' againist her. She'd phoned up the management company that deals with the fabric of the building to complain, though it is nothing to do with them, and they suggested, or so she said, that she phoned the police. I had to put the phone down as I was getting crosser and crosser with her accusations and inability to even countance that it might not be them who is doing these things.
As we seem to have hit the buffers at present with getting a diagnosis of what is wrong with her, and I can't see us getting her back to the GP any time soon, I think I'm just waiting either for an accident or the neighbours snapping and calling the police out to mum for something before we get anywhere.
Those are helpful comments Mrs S and Sarasa. I do know that he values the help.
Though ridiculous story: after my mother died 9 years ago, I watched him skim the mouldy sludge off the top of some science experiment and eat it. I wish I was making this stuff up.
I've wondered overnight about the river of a person's life, and whether we as their children are islands and we try to direct them into a safe channel. But periodically they go over a waterfall, and then we dry them off and try to be the next island in their river of life. -- I was listening to radio whilst sleeping and I think I must have gotten this idea from something I heard.
On happier news, of his 3 other children, I think 2 are organized now to understand we aren't a hotel, their visits here are to help, not vacation.
I've wondered overnight about the river of a person's life, and whether we as their children are islands and we try to direct them into a safe channel. But periodically they go over a waterfall, and then we dry them off and try to be the next island in their river of life. -- I was listening to radio whilst sleeping and I think I must have gotten this idea from something I heard.
Quotes file! Wherever you got that from, NP, it's a wonderful image.
@Sarasa - I think you have it right. Something will happen which will necessitate the involvement of police or Social Services, and it will be taken out of your hands. It was only the GPs involvement which brought the Dowager to accept the end of her independent life, she would never ever, have believed me on the matter.
Keep it together chaps - this is your life as well, you know!
Not an aged parent, but an ageing sister. I hope that is allowed.
Last time I visited her in her Care Home, she mentioned that she hoped Dad would bring her something ( An adaptor ) from Wilko.
Dad died in 2001.
It is the first time I have known her forget this fact.
Do I just ignore it? Or tell her?
Actually I told her. No response, whilst she digested this. I think on this occasion I did the right thing, but will there come a time when I shouldn’t?
Things like that are all glossed over in the nursing home where I volunteer. So, by all means tell her if you think she will likely remember. If not, just smile and say you would be glad to get one for her if she would give you the part number.
Puzzler, this was an issue when I worked in care homes for people with dementia. What we were told is that it depends on the person and how they react - if they experience fresh grief every time you remind them that the person they ask for is dead, as if they are learning it for the first time, best not to mention it, because it just causes unnecessary repeated suffering. If they always forget everything again in a few minutes anyway, it can be better to simply reassure them the person is coming soon. Which is hard to say, because it is not true, but it can be the kindest thing to say - just comfort of the moment, if everything is moment by moment. Or find a distraction from the question - a different way to comfort and reassure - which is what I would do, because I find it hard to say untrue things. I don’t know what I would do if it were a family member.
Puzzler, this was an issue when I worked in care homes for people with dementia. What we were told is that it depends on the person and how they react - if they experience fresh grief every time you remind them that the person they ask for is dead, as if they are learning it for the first time, best not to mention it, because it just causes unnecessary repeated suffering. If they always forget everything again in a few minutes anyway, it can be better to simply reassure them the person is coming soon.
A friend of mine whose mother had dementia used to tell her that her (deceased) daughter couldn't come today because [insert plausible excuse].
As a family, we are strict truth tellers. I doubt if any of us could actually get away with lying. My mother's dementia has thus been hard to deal with. We have learnt to reply with statements that are true but have double meanings. So if Mum says "Where is Harry?" Harry is her brother who died about a seven years ago. We reply "He is with Mum and Dad." This satisfies her without telling a lie.
No prophet, I’m not sure if this is what you heard on the radio but it sounds like the Kawa model of occupational therapy, a relatively new model which makes more sense to many people than the traditional clinical models.
As a family, we are strict truth tellers. I doubt if any of us could actually get away with lying. My mother's dementia has thus been hard to deal with. We have learnt to reply with statements that are true but have double meanings. So if Mum says "Where is Harry?" Harry is her brother who died about a seven years ago. We reply "He is with Mum and Dad." This satisfies her without telling a lie.
Bless you xx
I never saw it as lying with Mum.
We just lived on her planet. We agreed with what she said and then changed the subject - visual things, which didn’t involve memory, helped like photos of countryside scenes. We could talk about them together. She hadn’t forgotten what cows and horses etc were.
She’d often say things like she’d made a potato pie for tea and it was in the oven. We thanked her and agreed. After all, two seconds later she’d no idea what she’d said anyway.
Thanks for those helpful comments. My sister has a long term mental illness, though at the moment is pretty well. This was the first time she had mentioned Dad as if he was still alive, so I was a bit taken aback. I don’t know whether dementia is setting in or just confusion.
Do you think your sister might have got confused between you and your dad, @Puzzler? My mother knows my dad is dead ,but the other day said something about a comment he'd made when she moved into her curent flat, by which time he'd been dead nearly ten years. I could see she knew that wasn't quite right, and the comment was one made by my brother, so I guess she'd muddled the two of them. She certainly muddles my son and husband up. She asked my son how his mum was when I was sitting next to him and my husband was elsewhere.
As to the 'lying', I don't think in most cases it does any harm to be vague, agree or change the subject, but I do worry that agreeing with mum only re-inforces her beliiefs in the things she thinks her neighbours do. On the other hand trying to convince her otherwise gets nowhere, so I guess I need some other strategy!
Many years ago I was talking to my mom (by phone). She was a couple of time zones to the east of me, and it was probably 8:00 or 9:00 in the evening for her. She was absolutely frantic that my father had just died and there was so much she had to do. (Dad had died several years earlier.) Rather than try to convince her that Dad was long gone, I just tried to tell her it was much too late that night for her to take care of anything, and that she needed to get some rest so she could handle things the next day. She seemed to calm down, and apparently by the next day she'd "forgotten" that Dad had just died.
We are getting closer and closer to the incident that will cause my mother to have to make changes in her life. On Saturday she couldn't get out of her flat. She has taken to locking herself in due to the neighbours and couldn't remember how to unlcok the door. Well at least I think that's what happened. The Fire Brigade and the Police came round, got in via her balcony and unlocked the door.
She is also full of tales of how the neighbours have been coming in and drinking her wine. Her circle of people she thinks are in cahoots with the neighbours is now growing and includes another long-standing neighbour with learning difficulties (she was in on the wine drinking) and the man from the Management Company who mum is convinced came to take the neighbours out for lunch on Friday.
My brother and I are thinking of going back to the GP, either with or without mum to see what we can do next. I was hoping the police might contact Social Services about mum having been called out twice in a week, but my SiL who spoke to them, said they didn't seem too concerned.
That's really difficult, Sarasa. It must be so wearing on you.
I am looking for advice, but I am going to have to be very vague about the problem. Yesterday's sermon was about our heart's desire and I realised that this is mine.
My mother is part of a very large extended family, who all get on well with each other. Part of their success in maintaining this happy situation is that there is a complicated web of secret keeping. There are all sorts of secrets - A's father isn't who he thinks he is, B admitted to an offence he didn't commit (and went to prison for it) to shield C, D's broken ankle wasn't a slip on ice, but was caused by D falling over drunk. That sort of thing.
There is one secret which I hate keeping. I've had to lie by omission several times and I hate it. I want my mother to spill the beans. It's possible that it isn't a secret within the wider family, but that the secret is actually that everyone knows but won't admit to it. But I don't think so. Mum doesn't want to say anything, and I can see that it will be stressful for her. And she's 85, and doesn't need the stress. At the moment everything is jogging along, being managed by secrecy, but the whole thing will blow up when she dies. (There are implications for her funeral). I can envisage a cluster-fuck of monumental proportions when she dies, and I can't face it. She's in excellent health at the moment, but she is 85.
How can I make her see sense, without stressing her out or being horrible to her? Dad reckons she should say nothing, but I don't think he's thought through the long term implications either.
You might find that the web of secrecy isn't that secure and everyone knows the secret, so come the funeral and the big reveal, it's a big damp squib. That this web of secrecy is all a facade to keep things running smoothly and everyone else is pretending not to know. Or won't be that bothered when they find out.
Is it about something that happened 50 years ago or more? So how many of those present are going to be more than "Meh"?
But the wedding at which the bridesmaid was pregnant with the groom's child was almost 80 years ago, and that's still a big secret.
Everyone may well know, but how to find out? Mum's funeral will have to be organised on the basis that no-one knows, and we can hardly re-run it if it turns out that everyone knew.
Mum's in very good health just now, but this is hanging over us.
I agree with CK. The big secret in my mothers family was that her sister was illegitimate and not my grandfather'sdaughter. Mum thought her sister did not know, come grandmother's funeral turned out everyone knew.
If you organise it on the basis that no-one knows and it turns out that everyone does, will they understand why you did it that way? If they really don't know, will they understand that you did it because your Mum wanted nothing said, when they find out? Or is it going to set off something of nightmare proportions?
I'm really not asking this to get answers (it's all private to your family) - just asking if you can brazen it out when the time comes or if there is any one person who could be trusted to support you at that point or if you are going to need plans B to Z to avoid world war.
Good luck!
But something that happened 60 odd years ago won't have the same emotional sting as something that happened a week ago, so people are not going to be so upset and will probably be able to behave themselves for the funeral. For those who are upset there may be some fallout afterwards, but I suspect many of those who would be upset will be beyond caring - through death or infirmity.
I suppose at the end of the day, if it all blows up, then you can only apologise and say - I'm sorry but it was mum's wishes i was following not my own. Though it's possible too that if everybody knows but they are used to it being kept secret, then it may stay secret at the funeral. But it's tough for youx
In order to keep the secret, Mum wants to exclude several people from attending her funeral. I'm the one who will notify them if /when Mum dies, so I'll be the person to tell them they are not invited. The hurt and emotional sting will be experienced by them, and we can hardly re-run the funeral to include them later. (These are people that Mum gets on well with, as do I, they are welcome guests in my parents home and in my home).
As far as I am aware, a funeral is open to anyone to attend, with or without an invitation.
I get the impression that you and your father would be ok with these people attending, and they will expect to do so.
So can you just notify everyone in the usual way, when the time comes, and leave it at that? ( no exclusions) . And whatever is revealed will be revealed ( how? By whom?)
Or do you feel you must honour your mum’s wishes even though doing so will cause ructions? What will that achieve?
Is it possible when the time comes to describe your mum's funeral as "private", and only invite those she'd have wanted? I've seen funerals listed like that on an undertaker's web-site, so it's presumably not completely without precedent.
And in any event, you'd imagine that people at a funeral would be on their best behaviour and unlikely to bring up a sensitive issue, no matter how historical ... wouldn't you?
If it was my family and the people in question were people I cared about I'd probably invite them to the funeral, on the grounds that my mother would be beyond being embarrassed by the revelation of her dark secret and not hurting their feelings was more important. But I don't know NEQ's family so that may be the wrong call.
My parents are a bit like that with members of their family sometimes... there was one occasion, many years ago now, when I inadvertently let the cat out of the bag to my grandfather. It wasn't anything earth-shattering (they were moving house) and I wouldn't have given the game away if I'd realised it was a secret... but they were really annoyed with me. I still don't understand why they hadn't told him themselves. It's not as if they were planning to rob a bank.
Wasn’t it Les Dawson had the line ‘There was enough said at our Aggie’s funeral...’
Though that worked because it evoked a world of clannishness and gossip, twitched curtains and everybody knowing everyone. You and I and anyone who grew up in those times and those communities remember - and probably not fondly - the stifling effect.
Certainly it left me wearing a mental T-shirt with I Don’t Give A Damn What You Think. So I would be going for the nuclear option of letting whoever wants to be there, be there. Funerals, istm, are for the living, to help them be reconciled to whatever the dead person meant in their (continuing) lives.
There's also the possibility of saying, "Mom, if you really don't want them there that strongly, then YOU write the letter we will post to them explaining why." Her choice, her responsibility--her ouchiness. Why should it fall on you?
Sometimes family secrets don't lose intensity or shock value over time. I'm not going into any details about this but I come from a large and troubled family with a history of multi-generational incest. What my sisters and I did to protect ourselves was to 'cut off and distance,' moving as far away from the older generation and (sadly) one another as possible and pretending it hadn't happened. It is the truly 'unspeakable' story behind almost every other drama or tragedy that has taken place in the larger family and I hope it does not go on to affect the generations to come, but that is probably unrealistic on my part.
A gifted therapist once said to me that the dynamic of cutting off and distancing from others may be a short-term solution, but resolves nothing. If anything, the secret has gained more power as older members have died and the silence has continued. There are no easy answers. I tend to think good will and truthfulness are the answer in most family conflicts, but this remains explosive and those most affected don't want anything disclosed.
NEQ, you are living with a very difficult situation, and I do hope your mother changes her mind. For her sake as well as yours.
Comments
@Anotherday, I was in the acute medical ward with the Dowager when an old lady (94, but quite with-it) was being taken through all of that. Luckily the Dowager had already told them 'no' so I was saved the decision. Thank God.
Mrs. S, praying for all APs and those who care for/about them
Mrs. S, struggling to see the reason in all that
I'm going to have to get a lot fitter over the next thirty years to emulate him; I can't do press-ups in my fifties.
On funny, if slightly worrying note, we had a conversation that went like this:
Me: What do you think of Boris Johnson resigning?
Mum: What?
Me: Didn't you know he's resigned. (mum is usually very clued up about politics)
Mum: But he still has the same haircut doesn't he?
Praying for all of us withAged P's.
The Dowager, frail but lucid, is currently in hospital on a ward for the elderly. She isn't eating or drinking very well but has stopped trying to run away, and wants to go back to her care home.
(Her neighbour, just back from a week away, has visited, and he must have been to the care home first - AND paid a small fortune to park at the hospital. If ever a neighbour were a candidate for beatification, it would be he
Mrs. S, grateful and thankful
Poor ward orderly(?) going round asking six old ladies what they wanted to eat tomorrow - four choices of main, two of pudding, plus the option of a sandwich if none of that suited them. If I had £1 for every time he said 'but you have to eat, my dear' we could have funded that ward for a week!
More neighbours rang last night to see how she was, having come back from holiday and gone more or less straight to the care home (cf. above) only to find she was in hospital.
Mrs. S, blessing good neighbours
A native Scot. With a sister who has a holiday cottage on the island. Has forgotten where (and what) Barra is. :-(
@JaneR - as @Jengie Jon says memories come and go.
Hope everyone elses Aging Ps are doing as well as they can.
However she was apparently walking and talking okay yesterday when she got 'home' so that's good news. How is your AP bearing up, @Sarasa ?
It's all about control, NP - I'm going to have that tattooed on my wrist one day.
Mrs. S, contemplating 'if not, it's about money' on the other one
@The Intrepid Mrs S - glad the Dowager is back 'home'. Long may she remain there.
I had a lovely long weekend away on retreat, the only blip being messages from my husband and brother on Sunday about my mother having mislaid her keys. Every time she does this she thinks the neighbours have them, even though it is obvious they are in her flat somewhere. She called the police and they were supposed to be visiting yesterday. When I spoke to her yesterday after I'd got back and when I visited today she didn't mention either lost keys or police. She was in full rant about the neighbours having taken her magnifier, which I found in the magazine rack "Oh that's right I hid it there, and forgot that's what I did' she blythly said.
After I got home she phoned to say the neighborus had taken the pole she uses to open her kitchen window. She went and confronted them and is convinced that they are enacting 'hate crimes' againist her. She'd phoned up the management company that deals with the fabric of the building to complain, though it is nothing to do with them, and they suggested, or so she said, that she phoned the police. I had to put the phone down as I was getting crosser and crosser with her accusations and inability to even countance that it might not be them who is doing these things.
As we seem to have hit the buffers at present with getting a diagnosis of what is wrong with her, and I can't see us getting her back to the GP any time soon, I think I'm just waiting either for an accident or the neighbours snapping and calling the police out to mum for something before we get anywhere.
Though ridiculous story: after my mother died 9 years ago, I watched him skim the mouldy sludge off the top of some science experiment and eat it. I wish I was making this stuff up.
I've wondered overnight about the river of a person's life, and whether we as their children are islands and we try to direct them into a safe channel. But periodically they go over a waterfall, and then we dry them off and try to be the next island in their river of life. -- I was listening to radio whilst sleeping and I think I must have gotten this idea from something I heard.
On happier news, of his 3 other children, I think 2 are organized now to understand we aren't a hotel, their visits here are to help, not vacation.
Quotes file! Wherever you got that from, NP, it's a wonderful image.
@Sarasa - I think you have it right. Something will happen which will necessitate the involvement of police or Social Services, and it will be taken out of your hands. It was only the GPs involvement which brought the Dowager to accept the end of her independent life, she would never ever, have believed me on the matter.
Keep it together chaps - this is your life as well, you know!
Mrs. S, crossing digits for one and all
Last time I visited her in her Care Home, she mentioned that she hoped Dad would bring her something ( An adaptor ) from Wilko.
Dad died in 2001.
It is the first time I have known her forget this fact.
Do I just ignore it? Or tell her?
Actually I told her. No response, whilst she digested this. I think on this occasion I did the right thing, but will there come a time when I shouldn’t?
A friend of mine whose mother had dementia used to tell her that her (deceased) daughter couldn't come today because [insert plausible excuse].
Bless you xx
I never saw it as lying with Mum.
We just lived on her planet. We agreed with what she said and then changed the subject - visual things, which didn’t involve memory, helped like photos of countryside scenes. We could talk about them together. She hadn’t forgotten what cows and horses etc were.
She’d often say things like she’d made a potato pie for tea and it was in the oven. We thanked her and agreed. After all, two seconds later she’d no idea what she’d said anyway.
As to the 'lying', I don't think in most cases it does any harm to be vague, agree or change the subject, but I do worry that agreeing with mum only re-inforces her beliiefs in the things she thinks her neighbours do. On the other hand trying to convince her otherwise gets nowhere, so I guess I need some other strategy!
She is also full of tales of how the neighbours have been coming in and drinking her wine. Her circle of people she thinks are in cahoots with the neighbours is now growing and includes another long-standing neighbour with learning difficulties (she was in on the wine drinking) and the man from the Management Company who mum is convinced came to take the neighbours out for lunch on Friday.
My brother and I are thinking of going back to the GP, either with or without mum to see what we can do next. I was hoping the police might contact Social Services about mum having been called out twice in a week, but my SiL who spoke to them, said they didn't seem too concerned.
I am looking for advice, but I am going to have to be very vague about the problem. Yesterday's sermon was about our heart's desire and I realised that this is mine.
My mother is part of a very large extended family, who all get on well with each other. Part of their success in maintaining this happy situation is that there is a complicated web of secret keeping. There are all sorts of secrets - A's father isn't who he thinks he is, B admitted to an offence he didn't commit (and went to prison for it) to shield C, D's broken ankle wasn't a slip on ice, but was caused by D falling over drunk. That sort of thing.
There is one secret which I hate keeping. I've had to lie by omission several times and I hate it. I want my mother to spill the beans. It's possible that it isn't a secret within the wider family, but that the secret is actually that everyone knows but won't admit to it. But I don't think so. Mum doesn't want to say anything, and I can see that it will be stressful for her. And she's 85, and doesn't need the stress. At the moment everything is jogging along, being managed by secrecy, but the whole thing will blow up when she dies. (There are implications for her funeral). I can envisage a cluster-fuck of monumental proportions when she dies, and I can't face it. She's in excellent health at the moment, but she is 85.
How can I make her see sense, without stressing her out or being horrible to her? Dad reckons she should say nothing, but I don't think he's thought through the long term implications either.
Is it about something that happened 50 years ago or more? So how many of those present are going to be more than "Meh"?
But the wedding at which the bridesmaid was pregnant with the groom's child was almost 80 years ago, and that's still a big secret.
Everyone may well know, but how to find out? Mum's funeral will have to be organised on the basis that no-one knows, and we can hardly re-run it if it turns out that everyone knew.
Mum's in very good health just now, but this is hanging over us.
I'm really not asking this to get answers (it's all private to your family) - just asking if you can brazen it out when the time comes or if there is any one person who could be trusted to support you at that point or if you are going to need plans B to Z to avoid world war.
Good luck!
I get the impression that you and your father would be ok with these people attending, and they will expect to do so.
So can you just notify everyone in the usual way, when the time comes, and leave it at that? ( no exclusions) . And whatever is revealed will be revealed ( how? By whom?)
Or do you feel you must honour your mum’s wishes even though doing so will cause ructions? What will that achieve?
I am not sure you can get her to spill the beans now.
And in any event, you'd imagine that people at a funeral would be on their best behaviour and unlikely to bring up a sensitive issue, no matter how historical ... wouldn't you?
If it was my family and the people in question were people I cared about I'd probably invite them to the funeral, on the grounds that my mother would be beyond being embarrassed by the revelation of her dark secret and not hurting their feelings was more important. But I don't know NEQ's family so that may be the wrong call.
My parents are a bit like that with members of their family sometimes... there was one occasion, many years ago now, when I inadvertently let the cat out of the bag to my grandfather. It wasn't anything earth-shattering (they were moving house) and I wouldn't have given the game away if I'd realised it was a secret... but they were really annoyed with me. I still don't understand why they hadn't told him themselves. It's not as if they were planning to rob a bank.
Though that worked because it evoked a world of clannishness and gossip, twitched curtains and everybody knowing everyone. You and I and anyone who grew up in those times and those communities remember - and probably not fondly - the stifling effect.
Certainly it left me wearing a mental T-shirt with I Don’t Give A Damn What You Think. So I would be going for the nuclear option of letting whoever wants to be there, be there. Funerals, istm, are for the living, to help them be reconciled to whatever the dead person meant in their (continuing) lives.
[tangent] Maybe you could get a jacket that says "I really don't care, do u?" [/tangent]
A gifted therapist once said to me that the dynamic of cutting off and distancing from others may be a short-term solution, but resolves nothing. If anything, the secret has gained more power as older members have died and the silence has continued. There are no easy answers. I tend to think good will and truthfulness are the answer in most family conflicts, but this remains explosive and those most affected don't want anything disclosed.
NEQ, you are living with a very difficult situation, and I do hope your mother changes her mind. For her sake as well as yours.