Does anyone else cringe when someone says, "At least you still have your parent"?

 Folks that have been through the parent/caregiver/this is gonna gone on forever, drill know better than to make these comments.  These are the folks you exchange whines and rants and commiserate with with. Like this forum. I mean where else can you rant and rave about parents who just keep hanging on, years beyond any quality of life.

Ah, but the young folks whose parents are still skydiving and such. They make those stupid comments. I know they mean well but.....

Its my hope, as I'm fading away in some facility or other, that I'll see the kid whose parents were skydiving and now are pushing 100 in memory care. The kid, now 65, that has spent 10 years in elder care hell.  And with my last gasp of cognition I can say, MY...YOU ARE SO LUCKY TO STILL HAVE YOUR PARENTS!

 I'm overdue for a rant. You don't even want to know what my folks have put me through lately.  Thanks Dawnone for starting this.

I cringe because they have no idea what it's like to have a parent with dementia. They think they are still the same as they were years ago. But you know that they aren't. I have friends that have lost both parents and I say at least they have good memories of them. The memories I am going to have is the way my mother treats me now.

When people hear my mother is 98 they inevitably say some variation of "how wonderful, I hope she makes it to 100". Uhm, really?

I say she'll be 95 years old in January and they smile and say, "Oh great!" Then I say she's in the last stage of Alzheimer's and they frown with a downturned mouth :( and they say, "Oh, sorry." Yeah, me too. This ain't livin', it's h*ll for both of us.

What were we doing in 1900 to only live to 47 years old? By 1998 people were living to 77 years old. (source-u.demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html)
Other sites say that many childhood diseases have been eliminated so we live to adulthood. We have cured many fatal diseases, so more adults are healthy, living longer. Advances in medicines have suppressed many diseases like high blood pressure. But to what end? To live so long that we wind up with a broken brain? How do we go backwards?

When people make those comments, just smile and say, "That's nice. Would you like to take care of my father/mother for a day, while I take some time for myself that I haven't had in X number of months?" I'm serious. Say it with a smile, and as sweetly as possible. It puts people on their heels.

Only a person who hasn't had to live with it, would even think such a thing! Yes the body may be alive, but the person is gone. Remembering the person they were, and having to deal with the hollow shell, sometimes for years is tough! Went through this with my grandfather, grandmother, a great aunt who lived with mom, and now mom is showing the early symptoms. I can only hope something else develops before having to deal with years of this again. - People often fear the big 'C', but I can tell you first hand, cancer isn't near as cruel. Right now I'm doing in home hospice with hubby who has cancer, at least it will be much faster, and while often confused, it isn't near as bad as Alzheimer's.

I agree w you. It’s a lot of suffering for the patient & caregiver. My mother asks me to give her a pill to kill her or a gun. I say it’s not up to us...
only G-d. She asks where is it legal to do it & she would want to go there. She always asks what’s wrong w her....

Dear dawnone,

I know its hard. I generally think people mean well, but really us caregivers don't want to hear it. After my father passed, I know people were trying be supportive or helpful but I just hated everything I heard. The worst one was "go take a vacation and you'll feel better." I tried not talk to that person anymore.

I just wanted to add my support and say I hear you.

I'm glad for all your responses. Sometimes I feels so bad because she's more of a burden on me and at same time I feel bad for her with her disease.

I roll my eyes and say "Oh, if you only knew!"