I just had a phone call from a woman thanking me for walking with her though the placement of her mother in a care facility. Her mother is gradually making the adjustment although dementia makes it hard to really know what she thinks. The important thing is her mother's health has improved. Care facilities get a lot of negative publicity and we hear horror stories all of the time, but there are some positives there also. The mother is getting much better care than the family had been providing by hiring round the clock "nursing" care in the home. Her catheter has been removed. She is receiving much better nutrition and seems to be more at peace knowing that care is near at all times. The daughter who called is very relieved and pleased that she found the strength to make this very tough decision.
Believe me, this was a hard decision to make. Her mother had been very vocal about her dread of such care and tried every manipulative trick in the book to pressure the daughter not to take this action. As it became more and more evident that some kind of action had to be taken, the pressure from outside forces began to mount. It is bad enough when there is disagreement concerning care within the family, but when it also comes from well meaning "friends" it intensifies and becomes almost unbearable.
Free advice is usually worth about what you pay for it, but it will inevitably come. People seem to come out of the woodwork fully equipped to tell us what we should do about the care of a loved one. How do they get so well informed? What is it that makes us so ready to give such advice?
As the care decision was being faced, the woman who called, had a deacon in the church pressuring her unmercifully. He came loaded with more guilt than anyone should ever have to carry. He accused the daughter of not loving her mother, of greed and making the decision simply for financial reasons. He thought she wanted to preserve what little money there was for her own use and pleasure. She was already so laden with guilt she could not think, and then this guy came along with his own special load to dump on an already overloaded woman.
After his every visit, my phone would start ringing or the emails would begin to fly. "He said I didn't love properly," do you think that is true?" When we are in the middle of making highly emotional decisions where there is no clear cut right or wrong, it doesn't take much to make us doubt our own sanity and even agree with whatever accusations we hear.
As we begin to face these situations it is best to recognize that unwanted advice is going to happen and we need to be ready to ward off as much as we can. I think the best defense is a good offense. At the start of any conversation that could possibly lead to advice giving we could say, "You have been a close friend to us and I know you want to help us face this decision. What I really need is someone who will just listen to me without giving advice as I talk through all of my options. My mind is so full right now that there is no room for any other ideas or thoughts. I hope you will be that kind of a friend to me." It takes a person with no sensitivity or care to give advice after we have told them in such a nice way that advice is not welcomed. If they barge on anyway, we need to just tell them the choices are ours to make and we must be free to do so without this kind of pressure. Nice does not work with folks who know they are right.
We really cannot stop the advice from coming. We dare not let that advice cloud our thinking and dominate our actions. These are tough decisions that we and we alone must live with. That means it really isn't anyone else's business, is it?