Family Ties

I put my Father on the bus to return home to East London at lunchtime today. I have to confess to a feeling of relief and freedom, mingled with guilt that I feel that way, and regret that we don't have a better relationship. It doesn't matter how much I tell myself to keep calm, stay positive, make allowances for his age (he's 89 and keeps announcing he wants to go on for many more years) and not let his put downs and insults get under my skin, but unfortunately he has been an impossible, selfish bully of a man my whole life, so when he is demanding and manipulative and illogical and bad tempered with us now, it is hard to put it down to old age.

And I hate the fact that, while he makes our normally relaxed, happy and harmonious home a tense and miserable place to be in when he visits, to the extent that we frequently invent excuses to go out shopping or find sudden urgent errands to do, just to escape the dreadful atmosphere, there is absolutely not an iota of remorse on his side, while we feel guilty for needing to escape from our own home!

Every time I was tempted to feel sympathetic because it must be so frustrating getting less and less independant, he did or said something so unneccessarily obnoxious that all feelings of empathy dissolved.

I used to put it down to his lonely unhappy childhood and poor parenting that he received, but if I look at Max, who should technically be a basket case if having a dodgy childhood is the criterion, he is an amazing husband, wonderful, involved, wise and caring father and grandfather, so obviously one can choose to overcome a difficult beginning and not perpetuate the problems.

Unfortunately, my Father never made that choice..... and so we need to continue to deal with the dilemma of how to deal with his visits when the the very patient lady he lives with needs a break. If the saying "only the good die young" holds true, I suppose we have many more years of this to go through!

I guess it is a cautionary tale for all of us.... do we want to grow old surrounded by generations of loving family and friends who, as with the passing of Grandpa John, rally round us if we are ill, and are devastated by our passing, leaving a legacy of happy memories and sage advice, or do we want to grow old mean and lonely, and merely "endured dutifully" by the few family members who still feel obliged to have contact with us? It is a choice we all need to make sooner rather than later, because the outcome will be determined by the positive or negative impact we are having on the lives of those around us right now.

Anyway, after the fraught atmosphere of the last few weeks, I guess this painting I completed recently epitomises how Max and I feel about the coming weeks, it is called "invitation to rest"!!!