helping dad without taking over

The same Word document arrived again. Dad was trying to send me a scan of a new letter from the bank. Instead, he kept sending the document I’d prepared for him previously. It happened four times before eventually we gave up on the scanning and he phoned me in Frankfurt and read the new letter aloud.

The first letter had been easier. He’d managed to scan that one and send it to me, although we had interpreted parts of it quite differently. I read the final sentence as essentially an apology, with the bank saying they were looking into some issues that had arisen. Dad didn't read it as an apology; he read it very differently.

I drew up a response for him and he sent it. Then, almost immediately, this second letter arrived, so quickly that there was no realistic way the bank could already have received his reply and dealt with it.

Dad is 86, and this banking situation has been going on for months. The aftermath has been long and complicated, with correspondence going backwards and forwards and issues still unresolved.

A lawyer friend has been helping him, although recently I’ve had the impression that he’s beginning to step back. Dad can be impulsive and sometimes does things that complicate whatever the lawyer has been trying to achieve. From where I am sitting, I wonder whether this friend has reached a point where preserving their friendship matters more than continuing to become deeply involved in the bank situation.

At the same time, I was beginning to notice Dad turning more towards me. So, when he read that second letter over the phone, I listened, however there was very little I could actually do. We already had one response on its way to the bank, and I told him I thought we needed to wait until they replied to that. Otherwise, everything was simply going to become confusing.

The conversation didn’t go the way Dad appeared to want it to. He became huffy, and I tried to pull things back by asking him what he needed me to do. “Nothing”. So, I changed the question: “What do you want me to do?” “Nothing”. I was left wondering what he had actually hoped I would be able to do.

What has also become more noticeable to me recently is that some things Dad would once have dealt with himself don't always seem quite so straightforward for him now. Something he knows how to do one day can become difficult another day. This time, it happened to be scanning a document.

After the phone call, I messaged Mum and arranged to speak with her the following day when I knew Dad would be out. She told me she thought Dad was relying on me at the moment. However, I told Mum, “I’m not going to be the next person stepping in to take over everything and sort the mess out”. It sounded very clear when I said it. It didn’t feel nearly as clear afterwards. I felt guilty.

I know what happens to me when stress becomes too much, and I know that becoming deeply involved in trying to resolve the current situation Dad has found himself in could affect my health. I also know Dad well enough to understand that taking over something this complicated, when we may disagree about what needs to happen, could put our relationship under considerable strain. I can know all of that and still have another thought sitting immediately beside it: “He's my Dad”.

I live in Frankfurt. Mum and Dad are in Northern Ireland. I have only relatively recently returned to Frankfurt after spending a considerable period there with them, yet somewhere during that phone call another thought appeared almost automatically. “Do I need to go over again so soon?” Nobody had asked me to go. There was no new emergency requiring me to be physically present. There wasn’t even anything obvious I could have achieved by being in Northern Ireland that I couldn’t do from Frankfurt. Still, the thought came.

The “so soon” was perhaps the part I noticed most because I’d already been there. I’d already spent a substantial amount of time away from my own home and life, and yet a new difficulty had appeared and almost immediately I was wondering whether I needed to go back again. I could feel that pressure, almost a need to go back, beginning to form, and I forced myself to blank the thought out. It didn’t remove the guilt, though.

Distance can look quite substantial on a map while disappearing remarkably quickly when something happens. A document is scanned. A phone rings. Something that cannot be resolved becomes another conversation, and somewhere within it sits the possibility that you may need to cross countries again.

What I was also beginning to notice was how easily helping with one thing could turn into helping with the next. I had helped Dad understand a letter and drawn up a response. Then another letter arrived. Dad was struggling with things he’d previously been able to do. Mum thought he was relying on me. No-one had actually told me I was responsible for sorting everything out. Yet I could see how easily I might become the person everyone gradually turned to.

For women living abroad carrying similar questions around ageing parents, distance and competing responsibilities, this is also the kind of territory that can come into Personal Support sessions. Sometimes you know what you cannot realistically take on and still feel guilty for not doing more. There isn't always an easy answer to that.

Dad hasn’t phoned me about the situation again since my conversation with Mum. I’ve wondered whether she said something to him afterwards, although I don’t know that she did, and I know the subject will eventually return. The situation is still unresolved. Dad is still my dad. And I don’t know whether the next time something happens that same thought will immediately appear again: “Do I need to go over again so soon?”