Am sure that despite what we write, most do whats best ...

Had a situation once that kind of went along the lines you just wrote about. 1st wife's mother was getting old & her mind was wandering. My ex bro-in-law lived 1,500 miles away & wasn't excesively interested in his mother's problems. My ex was in another country. I decided to regularly visit the old dear just to give her a familiar face.

I had begun going out with lady who I married shortly thereafter & one day asked her (lady friend) if she would join me visiting ex's aging mother. She was shocked & said "no way". I tried to point out that this was just an old lady who needed some support & that she was very much in need of some personal attention - I felt she could well just fade away & die if ignored (this was no idle comment). She had no one else available or willing to visit her. I had also asked ex ma-i-l if she would like to meet my new friend but she kind of indicated she was not interested (but I knew her pretty well and how she might actually react).

Anyway I decide to force the issue & on a drive near the old lady's house one weekend said I was calling in to say hello & after a long tussle convinced future wife to call in with me.

Well, within 2 months the two were like aunty & niece. Ex ma-i-l spoke highly of my new wife-to-be & she in turn was even willing to visit ex ma-i-l by herself. Many years later she did the same with my own mother who she had previously had a few run-ins with. When we were living in HK, I couldn't get down as often as she could so she wrote every 2 weeks & visted on every trip back to Australia. By the time my mother died in 2002, it was my current wife that was about the only person she recognised any more despite getting regular visits from my brother, sister & their kids.

My current wife knows I would do same for her mother. Her father is aging & not going to live for too many more years. There are times I've wanted to strangle both her parents, but as with any crisis they all come & go. At heart they always have their daughter's interests at heart even if they like so many old parents, can act out a 'wicked witch' role in showing it.

So in the case of ma-i-l I took a calculated gamble that things would turn out as they did. Sometimes (but not always) the risk is worth forcing the issue.

Cheers Doug

We nonaligned folk periodically find it maddening when the aligned trot out their, Tis more Blessed to Give than to Receive.. as if their particular sect had a Corner on the market of putting-into-wprds What You Just Learn. (Had best learn, if you don't want to die as a Billy or a Trump)

[Present company excepted; nobody does That here - need I say?]

The 'Blessing' is in the achievement? discovery? of a level of consciousness unavailable to the self-obsessed. By any-other-name as will smell as sweet. The Universe RUNS on this energy.. D'Oh. :-0

Over the years I've known several women {then in their ~30s) whose avocation and sometimes livelihood was ~ taking care of the abandoned aged. And it was no "sacrifice". It's so corny/ineffective? when people try to 'explain' to the disinterested about such matters, in the 'West' - but then, they are understandably just trying to prod someone who's never Noticed.. quite a lot.

I've always felt it was a Big mistake when the priests got together to committee-write their manuals.. and codified so much that just can't be parsed by logic - a lot of metaphysical mischief has resulted IMhO. But there are signs of the sloughing-off of some of this mischief. {One learns never to ask 'Why'}.

But, as in your lovely story - sometimes the 'bonus' is both clear and palpable. I suspect that only experience works in such matters.

(I didn't get a chance to meet one such old lady..) who had lived a remarkable life, from her time as Earl Warren's personal secretary, when he was a D.A. in CA.. and onwards to USSC. Her early experience as one of a gaggle of (now many 'famous') early women pilots (!) was fascinating; there were a few pix of her and of them. Obv she was a good conversationalist on a variety of topics, esp, from time spent in East + artifacts, etc. Would like to have heard some of that.

I learned of this from the person who helped her, towards the end.. so it's 2nd hand. I did go along in the plane when it was time to sprinkle her ashes out over the landscape. Methinks she would have approved..
(and chortled over my 'cockpit cleanup' with the hand-vac, after we landed)

Yup, there are some Fun "old people" around :D

Ashton

Welcome to IWETHEY!