And then.

Out of nowhere, the mercury shoots up. For one last weekend, you wear your cutoffs and sit in the sun. You begin to think longingly of lazy, lolling days on the beach. You forget how you used to lose half the skin on your thighs every time you tried to get out of your car. You forget about sticky, sleepless nights. Summer never looked so good. You love summer. Summer‘s the best. Why did it have to end?

No, you haven’t accidentally opened the Farmer’s Almanac. See, it’s still us, Val and El. We’re just getting a metaphor thing happening, to illustrate a point. That being: You can be buzzing through your life, feeling almost normal, hardly dwelling on your ex at all. And just when you think that you’re finally over him, wham, something slams into you. Out of the blue, you’re . . . blue. Without explanation, you miss him all over again, maybe even worse than you did before. It’s so unexpected. It’s so unusual. What horrible thing is happening to you now?

We like to call this knotty little phenomenon heartbreak. Everyone experiences it, but few of us discuss it. Like menopause, we’re oddly embarrassed by it. We think that this lapse is a sign of weakness. That it means we’re maladjusted or something. That it’s an indication that we’ve lost the only true love in our life and we’ll never get over him.

Hardly. The bad news about heartbreak is that it’s no company picnic. The good news is, it’s no company picnic. What’s more, it’s usually the last gulch to cross in the long obstacle course that is your breakup. Just as you need to hit the bottom of the pool in order to push up to the surface, your emotions need to take one more downward dip before they can start a steady climb upward.

So let’s do what we do best and pick apart this feeling until it no longer resembles anything at all. Remember the upshot on this last heartbreak hurrah—after this, it’s all downhill.

What It Is

Well, you have the general idea: heartbreak is basically a second wind in your breakup depression. What makes it different from the first rush of tears? In a nutshell: time. You’ve had time to process what happened; you might even think you’ve recovered from it all quite nicely, thanks. And just when you think that you’ve stabilized, you find yourself singing a whole new set of sad songs. Which makes sense if you think about it. All the thrashing about you did in the immediate breakup aftermath was just to keep your head above water. It was about survival, not form or technique. Now that you know how to swim, you’re faced with the struggle of finding out which stroke works best for you.

Which still leaves you waterlogged. Just because heartbreak means that you’re on the way to a healthy comeback doesn’t mean it’s any fun. Most of the women we talked to said that this second wave was less dramatic and hysterical than the first, but more despairing. “It was a mellow kind of depression,” says one twenty-seven-year-old public relations exec. “I wasn’t all riled up; I just felt like life sucked. I accepted that I was just one of those people who would never meet someone; I accepted that my life was a miserable, empty shell. I figured I would just resign myself to the facts instead of crying about them. I stopped talking about my ex. I stopped going on dates—I had gone on a million and hated them all. I was so picky—one guy had a freckle on his lip, and I hated him for that. It was pointless. Everything seemed pointless. I wasn’t sad, I was bitter. I decided I didn‘t care if I was alone. I got into a routine of my own. My apartment was my best friend—I even felt sad to leave it in the morning.”

Almost everyone seconded this experience. “I had this terrible sense of waiting for something good to happen,” a twentynine-year-old TV programmer recalls. “It was like I was waiting for a voice-mail message that would change everything. When it didn‘t come, I was angry, resentful. I walked around as though there were a black cloud over my head; I couldn’t shake it. It was a quiet time; I just wanted to be left alone. In a way, I was bitter because I felt pressured to get out there, but I just didn‘t want to. I felt guilty for my reclusiveness — and bitter because I didn‘t want to have to feel guilty.” Another woman describes this period as “the time when my hate for one person—my ex—metamorphosed into hate for the whole world.” And a thirty-one-year-old actress says she”experienced severe mood swings. I was surly, cranky as hell. Whereas right after the breakup I was morose and couldn’t eat a thing, now I was aggressive. I said fuck it and ate everything in sight. I didn‘t hide my feelings. I stopped pretending to be happy for my girlfriends who were getting married or starting new relationships. On the whole, I was an incredibly unpleasant person.”

According to Dr. Bonnie Eaker-Weil, a relationship therapist in New York City, heartbreak is the final stage of soul-searching that has to occur before you can embark on another relationship. “At first,” she says, “you might spend a lot of time doing things that help you avoid the pain—crying, railing against your ex-boyfriend, going out like crazy, holing up. Then, things even out a little. You start to date at a fairly steady pace_; you might even be feeling pretty optimistic. But as time passes, you find yourself meeting more and more people whom you simply can’t connect with, maybe people who are just as sad and lonely as you are. You realize afresh what you lost. You idealize your ex—and then won’t give anyone else a chance because they naturally can’t compare to the icon you’ve created in your head. This is generally when you distance yourself from the world and take time to think about yourself. You become extremely reflective about your breakup. Although you’ve mourned before, now you finally have the strength to step back and start the healing process. And while this is healthy, you have to be careful not to fall into it for too long. Being introspective and reflective is good, but you can’t use it as an excuse to keep from rejoining life.”

For other women, the triggering device is a little more specific, although no more logical. “It hit me when I was turning the clocks back for daylight savings time,” a thirtytwo-year-old doctor recalls. “I thought to myself, ‘God, when we broke up, it was the day that we turned the clock forward. Has it been six months already?’ It dawned on me that our separation was a reality. It was fact—it was no longer unusual or interesting. The breakup was old news—I no longer had the immediate emotion of it all to connect me to my ex. I wasn‘t mourning anymore—he was a thing of the past. I was totally unattached. I had never felt so alone.”

A large number of women found that heartbreak had the unnerving habit of settling in over holidays or birthdays. “I was sitting at my birthday party with a bunch of friends,” says a twenty-six-year-old grad student, “and I looked around

At all the smiling faces and thought, ‘Where is he? Why isn’t he here?’ I burst into tears. I hadn’t really been thinking about him for a while—we had been broken up for four months— but then it hit hard. I missed him for a long time after that. It wasn‘t a sharp pain, but more of a dull ache that stayed with me for about a month.” And many counted weddings (not theirs) as major contributors to the misery index. “Two months after the breakup, I was a bridesmaid in an old friend’s wedding,” says a twenty-seven-year-old book publicist. “I had been helping her plan the wedding for about a year and a half_; my ex had been there through it all. I stood there in my ugly bridesmaid dress and just couldn’t believe that he wasn‘t there to laugh about it with me. I even looked for his face in the crowd_; it was so inconceivable that I should be there without him. Then, an hour later, my best friend announced her engagement at the reception. It was too much for me. I was happy for my friends, but it just highlighted my own unhappiness even more. I felt completely hollow. It was a terrible night.”

The majority of the women we spoke to, however, found that their heartbreak was spurred on by a bad date or transition relationship. “My depression started the minute the new guy I had been dating walked out the door,” says a twenty-six-year-old teacher. “I didn’t care at all about him and I guess he could sense it. He broke it off, but I wasn‘t arguing. When he was gone, I sat in the living room, missing my old boyfriend like crazy. I thought, why me? Why do I have to be upset again? I knew then that I had blown it with the one person in the world that I was compatible with. I contemplated the next hundred years of solitude. And then I called my ex, for the first time in months. I knew it wasn‘t a good idea, but I couldn’t help myself.”

Oh, we could be all disapproving. We could make clucking noises and shake our heads.

A number of people in homes for the aged complained to me that their children hardly ever came to visit them. At first I thought this was very sad, until I made a point of visiting several of those adult children.

Their replies expressed sentiments like, “Why should I visit my father? In my youth he was punitive and selfish, and rejected me. He spent no time with us and he ruined my self-esteem, which I am, at forty-five, still trying to improve . . .” This was the gist of what these children said. Other remarks were on the lines of, “When I really needed my mother, when society turned its back on me, my mother too turned her back on me. The only person I believed would never fail me . . .”

So, when I heard a pathetic, frail-looking old man or woman voicing disappointment at their child‘s lack of concern, and after having spoken to the child, I asked myself honestly, do I blame the adult child? I think you know my answer. The history of your past relationship does not dissolve the day your parent faces a crisis. It can’t. The memory of the past is always there.

I also spoke to elderly people who stated that their adult children were a great source of delight to them and that without them they’d have no reason for living.

I reiterate that all decisions concerning what you owe your parent should be discussed with your spouse as he/she is more detached than you and can therefore see more clearly whether your parent‘s demands are reasonable. Your spouse can play a major part in banishing tormenting feelings of guilt. It is fallacious to think that you as adult child are the only one in a position to render the very best all-round service to your parent. How can one human being fulfill all the needs of another person? I assure you, someone else can bath or shop or cook or mend for your mother just as well as you can. The price you pay for saying yes on every occasion might just be more than you can possibly afford — physically and/or emotionally. All you’re really doing is punishing yourself. It is a serious error to rearrange your life out of a sense of guilt.

The question to keep asking yourself is, “Do I really want to be with my parent? I must make sure though that it fits in with my existing schedule.” The question not to ask is, “How much do I owe my parent?” Debt in the moral sense implies repayment. How on earth does one repay moral debts? Each one of us is motivated to respond in different ways to different people and events. To be indebted morally is a weight none of us carries comfortably. We need to make responsible choices and decisions using our framework of moral absolutes as our guide.

A daughter-in-law asked: “What about my mother-in-law who demands that my husband visit her on the way to and from work, who demands to spend every weekend with us and who threatens that without her son‘s constant attention she‘d die?”

This mother has been manipulating her son for years — she‘s continuing in the same pattern. When this adult son finds the courage to withdraw from these unrealistic demands, she may end up with some bruised feelings, but her son will end up being a man — who is free to live his life in accordance with his values and beliefs.

Responsibility for an ageing parent depends on the relationship you’ve had previously, your sense of duty/obligation, your family’s feelings, your life’s schedule and, most of all, your concern and love, or lack of it; not guilt, unrealistic demands or a desire for martyrdom.

Let me explain. The parent has done all these things with the best and noblest of intentions — of that I’m certain — but has stunted all possible growth in the child. The parent has over-lovingly drowned the child‘s “root system”. The child has to start functioning independently for the first time as an adult. If the opportunity for safe training during the developmental stage had been allowed, the child would have grown into an adult who is able to cope. The parent naturally didn’t see it that way. The child needs to get away from the overpowering influence of the parent in order to be receptive to receiving, learning, growing, thinking, feeling and living. So the adult child might be afraid to be too close to the parent again, now that he/she has finally and painfully found his/her own feet. The independent adult child is still afraid of being engulfed.

Parents do feel they deserve some kind of recognition for this kind of life-long sacrifice. Understandably so, but can a_n elderly parent looking back now possibly see why her child i_sreacting this way? It is a heart-breaking situation.

There are other reasons for the low yield in dividends _of sacrificial parenting, such as anger, resentment, inadequacies and so on, but indirectly they are all linked to the dynamics sketched above.

It would be presumptious of me to allocate the correct amount of time, money, energy, accommodation or affection you should bestow on your parent. Hopefully, though, this guidelines in assessing for yourself the debt you owe your parent and coming to a comfortable and right decision that works for you, your family and aged parent. Good luck!

As a basic principle we should not ascribe any deterioration in health to a specific age group. We have been brainwashed for years to believe that children are forever vomiting, teething, snivelling or running temperatures, while older people have arthritis, fragile bones, stiffness, as well as poor sight and hearing.

Anyone of any age may fall ill or have an accident, but we all get over it. The chances of recovery does not depend on our age, but on:

• Our constitution
• the effectiveness of treatment given
• the severity of the condition
• our attitude towards being out of commission temporarily
• our pain threshold
• our previous experience with illness
• our confidence in our own healing capacity
• the empathy we receive during illness.

We all handle illness differently. The statement that older people and children are often sick is not true. I know many young adults who are often sick and many old people who are fit, active and healthy. Children may have accidents fairly regularly, simply because they haven’t yet mastered the negotiation of tricky steps or steep inclines, for example, or learned to carry two objects simultaneously. It is important to realise how unimportant age is. It leads to therapeutic optimism – which enables us to believe that the right treatment will produce positive results at no matter what age (unless of course the disease is severe).

It is a disservice to older people to assume that because they’re old there’s no hope for them. Encouraging an older person to remain, or to become fit in old age is a far more helpful and practical approach.

Older people and children think only of themselves

We need to think well of ourselves at all stages of our lives. It gives us confidence and direction. If it appears that older people and children are preoccupied with themselves, it is merely because the older person has, at last, more time actually to consider the self and make sure it remains intact during

The lateryears, when their colleagues and the rest of the family are no longer actively giving reinforcement. The child is in the process of building a self-image and constant reassurance is the foundation upon which this is made possible. So for both old and young the perception of self is a bit fragile and needs shoring up. The middle generation is getting subtle feedback from colleagues, friends, sport club members, bridge club members, career and business associates, lovers, spouses, parents and children. Because the network is wider, they don’t need to think about their own egos so obviously. There are of course some adults who think only of themselves. Selfish people occur among all age groups.

Older people and children fear the same things

Each and every one of us have emotions which have “toxic” components. These are emotions such as fear, frustration, boredom, low self-esteem and so on. The degree to which they prey on us varies from person to person. But we tend to push all fears, regardless of whether they originate in childhood or not, or whether they are the same, onto two exclusive groups – the old and the young.

The only common denominator regarding fear is that it casts a shadow on the inner world of a human being. Older people fear disabling conditions, financial insecurity, the loss of loved ones, even loss of dignity. Children fear a host of totally different things – such as failing, being left out, darkness, the dentist, exams and so on.

Elderly people too often have too much time on their hands, too few responsibilities and too few opportunities to employ their skills. This combination gives fear fertile soil in which to flourish. Children very often fear as a learned response, or they fear your reaction to their behaviour.

Older people and children do not fear the same things. This generalisation is incorrect.

Older people and children cannot adjust, they always want their own way

The most intense period of adjustment occurs in our earlie_r and later lives. Older people have to adjust to diminishin_gstamina, a change of life style, loss of spouse, friends, loss _of usefulness, and so on. Theirs is an enormous list of very re_ef and difficult adjustments which have to be negotiated. No on_ehas attended a training course or attained a degree in how to adjust to these losses. More often that not these adjustment_sare excessively painful, stressful and need a lenghty period of recuperation afterwards. It is possibly the most demanding battery of adjustment tests one will ever have to face.

Children too have stressful adjustments to make_; adjustment to the routine and discipline of work, adjustment to a wider social environment, adjustment to taking on new responsibilities, to becoming adults, to learning and mastering skills, to external demands, parental expectations, internal demands, teacher expectations . . . The list is endless. Almost as soon as they’ve adjusted to one set of circumstances and begin to feel settled, the next stage of growth and development, with its incumbent adjustment requirements, is upon them.

As far as children and older people wanting their own way is concerned – well, wouldn’t it be lovely if we could all have our own way all the time? Whom do you know who don’t want things their own way? If you answer only older people and children“, I must ask you to re-examine your view honestly.

I think what is really meant, is that older people sometimes react in ways that seem irrational — and this is equated with the reactions of children. It is often not understood what caused certain reactions. You cannot deduce from your frame of reference what prompted certain behaviours, so you simply say to an elderly parent: “You’re acting like a child.” I would like to prove that old(er) people are not like children.

Older people are demanding – just like children

Some older people are demanding, many aren’t. This characteristic is not exclusive to older persons. A demanding old person was probably a demanding young person. Characteristics are exaggerated in later years but it’s highly unlikely that someone’s essential nature will change. Demanding personalities are probably created during childhood. A child who had to demand attention because the parents were too busy or too ignorant to give it, might well grow into a demanding adult.

The problem with direct demands is that they evoke a negative reaction in others. We tend to avoid people who are demanding. This often aggravates the problem. What would ease the situation for you would be to recognise that you have a demanding parent, that he/she has always been demanding and little is going to change that. All you can do is give that parent a little more attention.

You may well be thinking, “The more I give, the more he/she demands”. Unfortunately that sometimes happens and then you must simply say, “I’m sorry, that is all I have time/money/ space for today.”

Older people and children are always frustrated

We’re all frustrated from time to time. But frustration in older people may have special causes. One may be lack of education, which leads to a feeling of being unfulfilled. Lack of financial resources could prohibit indulgence in certain interests. Well-meaning, loving children may compound the frustration by not letting the parent lead his own life. Doing everything for a parent can be counter-productive. Many of us have this silly notion that older people should cut down on their activities.

In reaction to this frustration older people may become irritable, cantankerous or apathetic. Encouraging them to participate in suitable activities (suitable by their definition) is the most constructive way to lessen the frustration.

Children are frustrated because you, as their parents, have imposed certain restrictions on what they’d like to do. This cannot by any stretch of the imagination be compared to the frustrations caused or felt by your elderly parent. Your child‘s opportunity to indulge in life‘s offerings will come — for your parent, the prospects ahead are not so promising.

Older people and children are always bored

This statement is wrong. Boredom afflicts every one of us who lacks the inner resources to generate interests, occupations or pursuits. These give our life purpose and shape. Boredom is not reprehensible but sad, because it’s a waste of life. It’s heartbreaking when it occurs among the elderly as it often overtakes someone who has possibly been active and involved previously. Boredom sometimes stems from neglect or a lack of contact or opportunities to become involved. A negative and common side-effect is hypochondria.

We all dread illness, but the fear is suppressed by other thoughts and activities that are part of a normal busy life. When we have time on our hands “sickness anxiety” tends to dominate our thoughts.

Children, on the other hand, are naughty when they are bored. They do all sorts of mischievous things to alleviate their boredom. They do not normally develop hypochondriac tendencies.

Older people might also alleviate their boredom by developing petty grievances or an obsessional preoccupation with routine.

I remember rushing off after a day of teaching to purchase my mother’s groceries, mark books, and do various other essential chores, before delivering the groceries. My mother usually started preparing dinner at five o’clock sharp, but I unavoidably arrived at five-thirty on that day. It is hard to imagine, unless you’ve experienced it, how thirty minutes can throw a person right out of gear! She was frantic because:

• something may have happened to me
• dinner would be late (because the ingredients arrived thirty minutes late)
• the rush would be on to ensure that dinner would not be later than “normal” despite the delay in delivery.

It is utterly useless to look at the situation from a “full day” point of view. One has to try and view such or similar incidents from an older person‘s viewpoint. There were many idle hours in her day and because she was waiting for her child and her food and looking at the clock at ten-minute intervals, thirty minutes was a long time. I, on the other hand, had so much to do that I was hardly aware of the fact that I was a few minutes late!

It is fallacious to think that older people become smaller in body, mind and spirit. Externally they may shrink a bit, but why should a spirit or mind contract? Why should an older person be more or less bored than any other person? The stimuli needed to make us feel satisfied or exhilarated are highly subjective at any stage of our lives. At no stage do any of us want to experience boredom.

To combat boredom, it would be advisable to look at various options with an elderly parent and to encourage him/her to pursue one or more of those options.

Well-meaning, loving adult children sometimes lavish too much care on a parent. You insist: “Let me make the tea, do the shopping, take you here or there, wash your hair.” If the parent is able and enjoys doing all those things, you are, in fact foisting rest and freedom from responsibility as a life style on your parent.

The funny thing about rest is that it is only enjoyable when it alternates with activity. Haven’t we all experienced the lovely feeling of sitting quietly with a book in the garden, or of soaking in a warm bath or lying on the sofa, half-dozing, half-listening to music in the background? Blissfully restful activities after effort and challenge – self-rewards, little indulgences – just to charge the batteries again for more effort.

Now try just resting, lying in a warm bath and so on. Try it today – all day, tomorrow, this week, next week, next month . . . Then tell me whether you feel bored or not.

We really need to bear this in mind when we, with so much love and care, unintentionally deny our parents the opportunity to do things for themselves.

to be continued

Why does this happen? It is not because your child has a split personality. It is a combination of things, among them the fact that he has to conform to school rules. If he doesn’t, he is _going to be singled out in front of his peers. Another reason is that children feel safe in the unconditional love they receive at home, where they’ll try to get away with proverbial murder, whereas at school the feeling of familiarity and safety is not so deeply entrenched – the world attaches conditions to wheth_er we’re loved and accepted.

Children want to be liked by their peers, they seek approval from the teacher – and all this induces them to make a special effort in order to attain the required result.

This applies to older persons too. The elderly expect their children to love them regardless of their wit, wisdom or wealth. The outside world calculates the amount of love and affection worthy of being bestowed in terms of a “what’s in it for me” ratio. When you know you’re being judged by your performance, you put your best foot forward.

The answer to the question then, is that your parents or your children are not being difficult with you and nice to others – they are being totally themselves with you because it is the only place in life where they can be totally themselves. That implies we don’t have to mind our P’s and Q’s, we don’t have to pass an acceptance test, we’re unconditionally loved.

In conclusion, how do you feel about the Egyptian statesman Anwar Sadat’s words?

“Whenever I see a good quality in someone else, that is not in me, I always try to take it and put it in myself – without faulting myself for being without it or envying its possessor. I simply adopt it.”

Let us adopt a little more tolerance toward what appears to us as difficult behaviour, armed with the knowledge that it is not motivated by malice.

Unlived life is a destructive and irresistible force working quietly but relentlessly. The result is that the married woman begins to doubt marriage. The unmarried woman believes in it, because she desires marriage.

Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their liberty and women their happiness.

But married once, a man is stak’d or pown’d, and cannot graze beyond his own hedge.

A married man turns his staff into a stake.

Husbands are like lots in the lottery: you may draw forty blanks before you find one that has any prize in him.

Marriage is a lottery, but you can’t tear up your ticket if you lose.

Wedlock’s a lane where there is no turning.

Magnus and Morna Wedlock is a padlock.

Marry‘d in haste, we oft repent at leisure;

Some by experience find these words misplaced, Marry‘d at leisure, they repent in haste.

Some men … saye it goeth by destenye To hange or wed … I am well sure Hangynge is better of the twayne Sooner done, and shorter payne.

Suspicion, Discontent, and Strife, Come in for Dowry with a wife.

Marriage is like life in this — that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.

Though women are angels, yet wedlock’s the devil.

If I were married to a hogshead of claret, matrimony would make me hate it.

Marriage halves our griefs, doubles our joys, and quadruples our expenses.

Every man plays the fool once in his life, but to marry is playing the fool all one’s life long.

The bachelor is a peacock, the engaged man a lion, and the married man a jackass.

Get thee to a nunnery, go; farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them.

There’s one fool at least in every married couple.

To the contract of marriage, besides the man and wife, there is a third party — Society; and, if it be considered as a vow — GOD: and, therefore, it cannot be dissolved by their consent alone.

The Church, celibate as its priesthood may be, … really rests upon the indissolubility of marriage. Make marriage in any serious degree unstable, dissoluble, destroy the permanency of marriage, and the Church falls.

A Propos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Marriage lies at the bottom of all government.

The only secure basis for a present day State is the welding of its units in marriage, but there is rottenness and danger at the foundations of the State if many of the marriages are unhappy. To-day, particularly in the middle classes in this country, marriage is far less really happy than its surface appears.

Marriage has, as you say, no natural relation to love. Marriage belongs to society; it is a social contract.

I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter.

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.

Marriage is a mistake of youth — which we should all make.

One was never married, and that’s his hell; another is, and that’s his plague.

Wen you’re a married man, Samivel, you’ll understand a good many things as you don’t understand now; but vether it’s worth while goin’ through so much to learn so little, as the charity boy said yen he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o’ taste.

The elderly parent needs to compensate for these losses. We wouldn’t dream of allowing our parents to go hungry or to sleep in the gutter. But most of us tend to overlook the fact that our parents do not live on bread alone — their emotional need_smust be satisfied as well.

We all need to feel useful and wanted; and we need intimacy from the moment we are born to the moment we die. People who feel useless feel depressed. Many elderly people have actually not survived the feeling of being useless and unloved.

Emotional needs do not decline like sight and hearing. A person’s need for friends does not die with old friends. If your parents have had a number of friends, and entertained often, you can be sure they will miss the company of friends and the opportunity to prepare a meal or nice tea for guests.

These social losses are experienced more frequently in later years. An elderly parent needs time to recuperate and to readjust after each loss. Often these losses aggravate their physical complaints — the combined strain is enough to overwhelm anybody. A vicious cycle is set in motion: loss; increased physical discomfort; increased pain; depression; lack of interest; loss of appetite; insomnia; a withdrawal from the world. A period of mourning is healthy but no one should be allowed to isolate himself for too long. Prisoners who are in solitary confinement experience hallucinations — which demonstrate the potency of our need for human contact.

Funny how we all respond with confidence to a parent‘s cry of a runny tummy or arthritis, but we don’t really know how to respond to an emotional need. A parent may telephone you to complain about the weather, the rudeness of the milkman or some such “trivia”. Because it’s not physical in nature, we become annoyed and often respond: “Must you always complain about everything?”

This complaining is fulfilling a need in your parent. The complaint may appear pointless to us, but the parent achieves _a goal — she/he needed to complain; needed to get rid of some _aggressive feelings inside. If you could accept that this is in fact a coping strategy, you too would cope more easily with such complaints.

Unfortunately, there is no proven scientific formula by which you can be constantly prepared for your parents‘ responses to the vicissitudes of ageing, although the way in which they coped when you were younger will play a part in the way they’re likely to cope later in life.

If they enjoyed successes in the past they can tell themselves, “I coped with that sort of thing before — I’ll manage again”. Their self-image and the dynamics they have employed to meet life before will enhance or decrease their chances of enjoying a ripe old age.

Often elderly parents drag a lifetime of frustrations, unfulfilled dreams and lost opportunities around with them. That, together with their physical frailties and social losses, can make them complaining, bitter, difficult-to-get-on-with people. Adult children cannot be blamed if they have no desire to spend time in the company of such parents. But you should try to understand the source of the behaviour. Do not misinterpret it as lack of love for you, or ingratitude towards what you are doing for them.