siblings and eldercare

Those of you who've read my book, Feet First-Riding the Eldercare Rollercoaster with My Father, know that sibling relations is a recurring theme throughout.  Probably like a lot of other siblings, my brother and I have gone through periods of being in fairly close touch, and other (sometimes long) periods of not wanting to even hear each others name mentioned.
 
We're far more dissimilar than alike: I'm sentimental, whereas he's fairly unemotional.  He's always been very smart with money, a talent which has always eluded me, while I was always in the "live for today in case you're not here tomorrow" mold.  He married early and decided against having children, while I had children and settled down very late in life.

He was always strong-willed and straightforward, while I tended to avoid confrontation whenever possible.  Make no mistake – I admire him in many ways, but when eldercare crunch time came, he made it very clear that he wasn't going to devote time nor energy to my father, a cantankerous, combative person throughout his life.  They had never gotten along very well, and my brother's advice to me was to simply ignore my father's constant phone calls and pleas for attention.  I was incapable of doing that, though I must admit that I did wish that I had a little bit more of a detached nature...

I'm really not trying to vilify my brother – he lived in France and his wife was battling a virulent case of breast cancer, so he admittedly had his hands full.  But neither his advice nor his personal situation helped me when it came to the daily tasks attached to overseeing the care of my father.

I had always had a somewhat closer relationship with my parents than my brother did.  Even when my brother and I both lived near them,  I always made sure to see them regularly as they aged whereas my brother was usually "too busy."  The differences in our personality traits left me "holding the bag", and I was none too happy about it.  But I was who I was, and he was who he was.  Finding a middle ground between siblings of differing natures and dispositions is the key – and there's no magic bullet to accomplish that.  Though essential, honesty isn't the only answer.  Different personalities will interpret events and situations differently, and there's no way around it.  You've got to try to find common ground that takes into account everybody's differing realities, and it's not easy.  When it comes to caring for aged parents, very little is easy...