Dear LPG,

I am a pensioner and, like all other pensioners I wear a lot of hats.  I happen to be a full-time wife, sister, mother,  grandmother and friend, while I often find myself swapping between my part time carer, hostess, cook, councillor and advisor hats to name but a few.   Today I want to talk about something for which I need all my family member hats. 

I am lucky enough to have a husband and four children and I love them all very much.  My now very adult children all went off on different life-tangents as they began to grow up.  It is not unusual for youngsters to leave the nest and find their feet in far flung parts of the world these days, and my family is no exception.  One’s work took them to a base in the USA, while another got married and moved with her husband to the other side of the world.  I have also managed to produce an army officer who is never in the same place for any length of time, which just leaves one who is based about ten miles away from me in Kent. 

I am lucky that I have never really fallen out of love with any of my children. They all make contact with their Dad and me regularly; some via Skype, WhatsApp and the phone while others send regular letters.  Like many of my friends I am extremely proud of what my children have achieved, and our offspring and their offspring are frequently the topic of conversation when my friends and I get together.

But I am under no illusions about their love for each other.  As they have grown they have had their differences of opinion but it has been easy, as a parent of my age, to ignore the unrest because I rarely see or talk to them all together.  I have also been told that the whole question of how to care for elderly parents can open up this can of worms for siblings that previously had let life push them apart but thought that they were perfectly in agreement on this subject.

I recently watched as one of my friends decided that it was time to enter into a ‘power of attorney’ arrangement so that she could be as sure as one can that someone she trusted would be in control of her affairs if there was ever a reason she could not be. 

She wanted to leave more than one of her children in control but, because of their inter-related conflicts she suddenly began to address the reality of being able to do this in the knowledge that she would not provoke a full scale argument into the bargain. 

In her case the dilemma is far from resolved but it occurs to me that my husband and I need to work out what we will do when we get to that point in our lives and I am writing this in the hope that it will trigger the many others who find themselves in this situation to do what little you can about it in advance.

 It is one of those considerations that we all know we will need to address at some point but, even if we have the time to, we often dismiss.

 OP, Bellingham

LPG has found that OP is not alone. Much of the information we found on this subject originates from other countries but the problem is obviously a world-wide one…

(►►►)   (►►►)     (►►►)    (►►►)