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What do you do when your beloved father dies and your mother, who was his primary caregiver, won't honor his memory the way you feel she should? That's what Joanie W. is facing. It's a common family dilemma, yet no one seems to talks about it. Final arrangements and how we deal with them bring up such strong feelings, and the public aspect of a funeral or memorial service -- or lack thereof -- can trigger feelings of shame, embarrassment, sadness and -- yes, it's true -- rage. Here's Joanie's story.

"My dad died recently after a long battle with heart disease and diabetes. His last years were really tough as his health went downhill, and he became really difficult to deal with. He was sour and bad-tempered and complained all the time, and my mom took the brunt of it. In his last days, once he went to the hospital, it was like she washed her hands of him. I flew out and stayed with him and basically ended up making all the final decisions...  Read more

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Watching those close to us age is stressful for everyone, but certain situations seem guaranteed to set family members against one another and start families unraveling at the seams.

And nothing causes more distrust and divisiveness among siblings than feeling they're not being treated equally or that one sibling is taking advantage of a parent at the others' expense. Case in point: Our message boards at Caring.com are filled with discussions about difficult family situations involving money, uneven sharing of caregiving responsibilities, dishonesty, or all three.

When One Sibling Repeatedly Borrows Money From a Parent and Other Siblings Resent It

This story plays out in all sorts of ways, but the central player is an adult child (or cousin, or nephew...) in difficult straits who frequently goes to aging parents asking for "loans," help with living arrangements, or out and out handouts...  Read more

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Recently I heard from Sarah, an old friend, about a hard situation she's in that I'm sure many Caring.com readers can relate to. Sarah's mother-in-law moved in with her and her family more than a year ago, and since then Sarah's had a really hard time dealing with her husband's siblings, who aren't helping out as much as they promised.

But what Sarah's finding even more stressful is that the expense -- both in direct costs and in time lost from work -- of having an elderly person join the household is much greater than she expected. And what really galls her? No one else in the family seems motivated to chip in. "This summer it really got to me," Sarah told me. "We were stuck here in the Midwest heat, working ourselves to the bone keeping up with our jobs and caring for mom, while my husband's sister's family went to the Bahamas, and his brother and his wife spent weeks at their lake cabin...  Read more

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Can dementia be predicted by what happens in someone's brain when they see an iconic celebrity like Marilyn Monroe, Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, George Clooney, or Britney Spears?

I realize it's odd to think about Marilyn Monroe and the brain, of all body parts, but bear with me.

Now that we can "see" the inner workings of the brain thanks to better imaging tests, scientists are devising clever ways of watching memory in progress. And one of the simpler ideas, reported in last week's Neurology, compares brain activity when a person is shown different names. Turns out people at high risk of developing Alzheimer's struggle just as much to recognize Marilyn or Britney as they do non-famous names like Irma Jacoby or Thomas Fitzpatrick.

In fact, they struggled six times harder than people at low-risk for Alzheimer's (as determined by family history and genetic factors)...  Read more

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Last week I explained the most common money styles and how to figure out which one is yours. You can also use this list of common money styles to figure out the money styles of your spouse, parents, siblings, or others.

Knowing how the important people in your life view money (especially in a caregiving situation) -- and how those views differ from yours -- will do wonders for your ability to get along and avoid the pitfalls that tend to trigger arguments and blow ups.

Here, some of the most common ways family members with different money styles push each other's buttons -- and what to do when that happens.

Money Styles Conflict #1: Hoarder vs. Spender

One of you saves for a rainy day, the other wants what she wants and resents feeling deprived, especially where comfort is concerned.

How to Resolve: The ignition spark in this conflict tends to be status; spenders are status-conscious, and spend to keep up with others...  Read more

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Have you given much thought to your money style? While you're at it, you might want to consider the money styles of your parents, siblings, and other family members. I'm betting a light bulb will go off, like it did for me when I did the exercise, below. When it comes to the choices we make about money, even those who consider themselves close can behave like apples and oranges. Some money styles go well together, while others cause major sparks to fly.

I spent my life listening to my mom say she had no money, that there was no money, that everything cost more than she could afford. As a teenager, she even made me and my sisters buy our own shampoo and other personal supplies, complaining that there was no room in the budget for such items. Yet once I took control of her finances in her final years, I discovered that in fact, she had a substantial cushion of savings that I'd known nothing about...  Read more

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Some of the saddest caregiving stories concern brothers and sisters who come to loggerheads over some aspect of their parents' or another relative's care – and wind up saying ugly things, or not speaking, or worse. (By worse, I mean court feuds, permanent family exile, and even violence.)

Common reasons for family conflicts over caregiving include (in no particular order): Different standards for quality of care, how to proceed after a diagnosis, where the older person should live, who should have control of legal or financial affairs, who should pay for procedures or care, wills and other gnarly issues about how estates are or will be divided. Did I mention money?

"You never really know a family member until money is involved," a Caring.com member recently, and memorably, observed in a discussion about siblings.

If a family estrangement, large or small, is gnawing at you, what can you do...  Read more

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My mom was an only child, a fact of life she disliked and the reason she gave for having five kids of her own. She finally found a bright side to her solitude in her 70s while looking after her mother, who had Alzheimer's: "At least I don't have anybody to second guess me or argue with me over how I'm doing things."

Let's face it: Siblings have spent a lifetime perfecting the art of bickering and feeling resentful toward one another. So it's little surprise that in the emotionally fraught arena of caregiving for an aging parent or grandparent, "issues" between siblings run hotter than the lava under Kilauea.

Sibling anger and frustration has also been a theme among Caring.com users recently – maybe Mother's Day brought it to the surface.

A lot of misunderstandings occur simply because the non-hands-on brothers and sisters have a hard time fully "getting" what life is like for the day-to-day caregiving sib...  Read more

[Mom and me at a birthday dinner]

This Mother's Day is the first since my mother died last June, and for the past few weeks my emotions have been a combustible cocktail of sorrow, loss, and rage. The truth is, this has never been my favorite holiday, given that my relationship with my mother was a tangled and troubled one. Somewhere deep down, I think I thought it would be a relief not to have to "celebrate" it anymore.

I wasn't expecting the emotional hit I've taken over the past few weeks, as those around me prepare to acknowledge and honor the generations of women that hold their families together. When murmurs arise about choosing the perfect gift or exchanging recipes for brunch, I have to leave the room. I honestly don't know if I'll lose my temper or burst into tears, and I don't want to find out. So this goes out to all of you for whom Mother's Day brings painful feelings of sorrow, loss, anger, and guilt. Those are real feelings too...  Read more

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There's little that's more frustrating than doing your best in a situation involving the welfare of an elder -- only to have your choices criticized or opposed by a sibling, parent, or other family member. Hello super stress.

Family disagreements are nothing new. But when you're all grown-ups, you can't slug it out in the backyard or send anybody to their room. At least, not if you plan to resolve anything. That leaves nitpicking, debating, raising voices -- or ceasing to talk to one another altogether. And when that's not productive, then what?

That's when you can try something relatively new: Elder mediation.

You might think of mediators in connection with the Middle East or high-profile corporate disputes. But many family mediators specialize in handling situations related to aging or ill relatives. They're a fast-growing subset of the mediation world.

If you're like me, the very word "mediator" may at first ring complicated – and expensive...  Read more