relationship with caree breaking down

[bowlingbun]

If you Google "RAF Benevolent" all sorts of things come up. I wonder if they have someone who would like to talk to dad and hear his memories?

[hamsterwheel]

Alas, he repels all boarders. He doesn't like socialising.

Brilliant thought, though!

[bowlingbun]

Would it not appeal to his ego?

[hamsterwheel]

Nice try!

He's basically a recluse. I don't think he likes people much - not just his family when he was growing up. Not that he'd ever admit that as he goes vague about anything personal. No self-reflection. It's not age related - it's another thing he's always had. *sigh*

[bowlingbun]

He sounds really hard work in that case.
Looking back on my now dead family members, I realised with sadness that I can't remember one person I loved ever laughing out loud at finding something funny. I'm sure being a teenager in the war, with parents caring for a grandparent with dementia, scarred that person for life.
Unfortunately, however hard you try, you can never change this sort of thing, but it's really difficult trying to maintain your own happiness under these circumstances.

[hamsterwheel]

Unfortunately, he's very hard work. Caring begins to bring things into focus, doesn't it? It's made me realise how cut off my childhood was - Dad had basically cut all ties with his family, and most of my mum's family lived oop north. Once my gran died (I was 11), they didn't keep up contact with any rellies or friends except my awful aunt or an occasional visit from my northern cousins. But the cousins married and stopped coming. My parents never went out, except to see a movie. Even that stopped when my mother retired and "took to her bed" for the rest of her life.

I grew up in an Edwardian villa in west London. The sort that now sell for 3 million.Two massive front rooms, three double bedrooms (two enormous) and a box room. It seems a shame that, between 1972 and about 2003 it was home to 2 people who basically only lived in two small back rooms in it.

https://tinyurl.com/y84qsogd

[Melly1]

Very much like where we lived in London, before we moved, "down South." My Mum and Dad and I shared the house with my Grandparents and a lodger.

Melly1