“Did you take the time to browse the article? What do you think she should have done?”
That’s a good question. She knew about his moods, and that his moods subside over time.
Rather then just give him money - they would have been best to hire someone to watch over him at the brother’s house. Do not give him a key, but have his caregiver with the key in the hours that the brother isn’t home, cannot watch his father.
Being family is tough. When my father passed on, I had to look after my brothers and my mother until they recovered and were able to look after themselves again. Would I do it all over again? Sure. Someone had to be strong and look after them - who else was going to do it?
My wife and I are the primary caretakers for seven, count’em seven relatives in their eighties and nineties.
We are the ones responsible for making sure the ones out of nursing homes are safe, clean, and fed. We are the ones that had to deal with getting the ones in nursing facilities placed and taken care of. We are the ones who had to deal with Probabte court for guardianship and conservators hip. We are the ones who dealt with the medical insurance folks. We are the ones holding their hands in the ER on Christmas Eve while they are read their last rites.
We are the ones who did not move away. We live with them. We haven’t had a four day period of respite for five years because of one or another of them.
And when one of them is dying, or is dead, we are the ones that have to listen to all of the crap from the peer relatives about what we could have done differently.
And we are the ones that get no financial assistance to do all of this stuff because these relatives had no wills and all of their money is going for their care so the state doesn’t have to...which is really OK with us. They saved for a rainy day-—and it’s raining.
And we bitch about it to each other only. Everyone else sees a smiling grateful face.
And all of the relatives comes to the wakes and ask about where the money went.
We are teaching our kids about how families should work. But sometimes it’s like shuffling sand against the tide.