Time is running out for estranged Midlife Siblings
Like a draining hourglass, time is running out on the aging family stage. If severed ,the midlife sibling connection ,to help aging parents, has finite time left.
The midlife families play will run only so long before the curtain closes. Death stalks the cast and will pick off the characters one by one then someday shut down the performance. Vulnerable to that drawn curtain, it is important for midlife siblings to resolve brother and sister breaches before a chronic illness or sudden death takes a parent then the sibling and leaves the survivor with nothing but regret.
Midlife brothers and sisters come through for us in a million ways.
If we move, they are the family members who most frequently help us pack, drive the U-Haul, and give a hand in the upheaval. When we retire with sheet cakes and cheap champagne, the biggest toasters can be siblings.
If elderly parents are moving, downsizing or relocating to warmer climates, siblings are there to help us parcel out family treasures, sort out the collected furniture and decades of junk, working with us as a team to help get our parents to the new location.
Siblings are stellar partners in this sometimes-overwhelming adult child task. If we become disabled or are ill, that sibling air mattress can reflate on a dime, and brothers and sisters are among the first people we can call in a health care crisis, to do everything from going on the web to find resources to coming to our home and nursing us back to health.
Forgiving Siblings Crucial as We Age
Potential victims of that emptying hourglass, sibling forgiveness is crucial as we age. If the sand runs out before ruptures are repaired, the warped family pattern just appears in the next generation. Passing on impoverished sibling models deals a bad hand of family desolation to the next generation, passing on hurt, rage, resentment, and unsutured gashes.
Aging Life Care Managers Can Help Stitch Midlife Siblings Together
As care coordinators, Aging Life or Geriatric care managers can help stitch these brother and sister wounds back together, by referring to counselors and MFT who specialize in aging.They can get sibling in parent care support groups. They can take the load of arranging care of siblings backs so they can care for work through the kinks in their relationship, support their parents as they age and be friends in midlife.
Find out more about midlife sibling in my Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition in the Nearly Normal and Dysfunctional Family Chapters.
Midlife siblings have often spent the last 30 years tending to their own families .So the point of reconnection with middle aged brothers and sisters often happens when they are still working or just retiring — unexpectedly thrown into a crisis in parent care.
Maybe there just was not enough love your rickety family nest, making siblings scramble for the few caring crumbs. Kid brothers could have slugged other siblings behind Mom’s back. Maybe a sister got the new prom dress when younger girls did Goodwill or the hand me down. 