How can I get over my anger at my mother regarding my father's care?

Wowmom129 asked...

My mom had to do everything for my 87-year-old father, and became resentful as a result. I begged her to hire someone to come in and help her. but she flatly refused to consider it, because she didn't want strangers in her home. Then, last weekend, my father fell when I was away at my daughter's soccer tournament. He hit his head on a bench, had to have stitches in several places, and fractured his second vertebrae.

Now my dad has to wear a neck brace for three months (if he lives that long), and will go from the hospital to a full health care facility instead of the assisted living facility I had hoped for. I'm convinced that if my mother had had someone helping her, my father wouldn't have fallen. I know I will never know for sure, and that I should forget about it and move on, but I can't help it: I'm very angry at my mother. If she'd accepted help, it might have given us another month or so with my father, and we would have the comfort of knowing we'd done all we could for him. Instead, he is all beaten up and in pain.

I've tried to forgive my mother and understand what she's going through, but I keep thinking that she should have put her feelings aside and done what was best for my dad. Am I selfish to feel this way?

Expert Answer

Jonathan Rosenfeld is a psychotherapist in private practice in San Francisco.

It is understandable that your affection and distress for your father are making it difficult to see your mother in a compassionate light. At the same time, it's important to accept that we can hold powerful and contradictory emotions. In other words. you don't have to get over your anger and dismay with your mother's actions in order to feel compassion for her and to forgive her.

Often what gets in the way of forgiveness is the beliefs we hold about the motivations of others. What do you believe motivated your mother's decision to refuse help? I'm guessing that your view of her motives are mostly negative. It would not be mean or unreasonable to see your mother as selfish, self-serving and uncaring.You can find ample evidence to support such a view, but does maintaining a case against your mother help you? It certainly gets in the way of forgiving her.

What happens if your imagine neutral or positive motivations behind your mother's behavior? Leave aside. if you can, what your mother should or should not have done. and try to focus exclusively on her positive or at least neutral motivations. Perhaps she believed that your father would not want anyone besides her caring for him. Not wanting a stranger in her home could be an intimacy issue; perhaps she did not want someone coming between her and your father. It could be an issue of dignity: being dependent on outside help may be humiliating to her. Perhaps she wanted to maintain a sense of normalcy, and that would have been shattered by taking in outside help.

Ultimately, you don't know what was behind your mother's decisions, but if you can stay away from negative interpretations you should be able to forgive her. Try to be patient with her and with yourself, and with time, forgiveness should become easier.