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Dear Eric: My 87-year-old mother has pancreatic cancer. My husband and I moved out of state to live with her for four months while she went through radiation and enough of the recovery for her to live independently.

Her cancer is back after about a six-month reprieve. The doctors have said she cannot have more treatments due to health and age. She refuses palliative care and hospice.

She has difficulty walking (wobbly), severe brain fog and fatigue and has trouble remembering things. She is also medically anorexic due to nausea, probably from the cancer’s return.

She blames all of her symptoms on radiation and insists she will get stronger once the radiation effects wear off. She still drives, although the doctors have recommended that she doesn’t drive. She has always been socially active and fiercely independent.

She and I have a complicated history, and her refusal to face what is likely to be the end of her life causes me great stress. I want her (as well as others around her) to be safe and comfortable; however, I have no idea how to interact with her to have the discussions that we need to have.

When I have broached conversations about having help or ideas that may make her life a little easier, it usually ends with me acquiescing to what she wants but both of us are feeling the strain. I’ve tried reaching out to her oncology team and they have done an exceptional job of trying to give my mom a reality check, but she denies their facts.

At this point, I will not live with her again unless it’s an end-of-life situation, but I am quite willing to help her sort out home healthcare and/or rides to and from places she needs to go, which she also refuses. I feel like I’m in a no-win position.

– Concerned Daughter

Dear Daughter: I’m sorry about your mother’s prognosis and I’m sorry that you’re both stuck in this difficult position. She’s in the midst of something that is painfully human: a struggle to accept reality. Unfortunately, we can’t make others accept what they don’t want to, or can’t, accept. We can impose the strictures of reality on them, but sometimes the best thing to do is to detach with love.

That sounds like what you’re doing. You’re not abandoning her; you’re simply resigning from the debate. This is part of healthy boundary-setting. You can’t argue your mother into accepting the truth or having an easier life. So, it makes sense for you to avoid situations where you’ll be drawn into debate. This also frees you up, emotionally, to show up when she really needs help. Sometimes we have to let our loved ones make choices we don’t agree with, but we don’t have to co-sign on those choices.

Dear Eric: I have several siblings. Our mom always showed blatant unapologetic favoritism toward her oldest and youngest children, for no apparent reason.

Mom passed away recently. She left a sizable estate to her two favorite children, and Number One Son’s two children. She did not leave anything to me, my children or to our other sibling. The favored siblings/grandchildren inherited many millions of dollars each.

The lifetime of favoritism put significant strains on sibling relationships growing up. It’s hard to watch the favored siblings and (especially) their children enjoy secure futures, and lives of ease and luxury.

I asked the favored siblings and the two grown/favored grandchildren if they would share my grandfather‘s treasure (my mother inherited her estate from her father). The four favored family members declined to share. With absolute straight faces they claim it would be disloyal to

our mother to give money to people she chose not to give money to.

I became pretty resigned to my mother‘s favoritism growing up, but I cannot get past my resentment of her treatment of my kids. I miss my siblings, but I don’t know how to overcome the divisiveness she embraced. Do you have any advice?

– Left Out

Dear Left Out: This is such cruel behavior. I’m sorry. The poisoned fruit, when left to rot, sets down poisoned roots and grows new poisonous trees. That’s what’s happening here. Her true inheritance, it seems, was this divisiveness. But you don’t have to accept it.

Because your siblings have chosen to embrace that divisiveness and greed, these may not be relationships that serve you anymore. There may be a part of you that suspects if you show enough of an effort or acquiescence to the right conditions, they’ll treat you the way you deserve to be treated. This is probably not the case. If you can say to yourself, “these people can’t or won’t show love to me in the way that I want to be shown love,” it may free you.

(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)

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