I so often see in families that one person steps up and others do not when it comes to helping a parent out in any area. It’s easy for me looking on the outside in to assume what everyone else does. That child is the responsible one, the more caring, the apple of their parents eye etc. But that doesn’t coincide an equal amount of times I see the child who has had the most difficult relationship be the one to step up. Almost as if an unspoken need to either continue the estranged relationship or to heal it once and for all. I never really get to find out, my focus must be on the one who does show up.
Between brothers and sisters, I’m accustomed to seeing the sisters carrying more of the load. An expectation, I suppose based in women have always been the nurturing ones. I will often see wives and children doing for before the son will. Regardless, I don’t judge. Again, my focus must be on the one who does show up.
Only children, have the 50/50 split of no sibling to deal with…yet no sibling to heal with either.
Because my focus must be on the one who shows up, their need to process, absorb and yes vent is why I’m there as well. The shock, frustration and pain of a sibling not participating is evident early on. Needing to accomplish whatever a parent may require becomes this mission for an adult child long before the realization of “is it doable” ever comes to their mind. It’s in the natural flow of fitting it all in along with their own life responsibilities that one begins to look to close proximity help. Who closer than another sibling?
While I watch all of this unfold, older stories are shared with me of a history of a parent relying on one more than the other. Where it has been common place for one to step up…making it easy for one to step back. Even in the best relationships strains occur, people get tired. What I clearly see is that whatever the relationship dynamics have been in a family will be exasperated later on.
The challenge with leaving things until “later on” to deal with is, some siblings relationships never recover.