Mend the Rifts

An entry I made in the journal I’d kept during my mother’s journey with Alzheimer’s related to an unraveling of relationships in our family. Although I hadn’t recorded the actual issues, the implications were that I was irritated at siblings that I felt could be doing more to help care for our mother. Even though we know we can’t change people, it sometimes still hurts that others don’t or won’t pitch in like we feel they should.

But instead of dwelling on what I felt was unfair, I remembered the advice of my youngest brother Jason that we should not let our mother’s illness cause breaks in our relationships with one another. That’s a little easier said than done when there may already be rifts in the family. Loving other family members doesn’t mean we have to like what they do or don’t do. We love them because we are family, and we mend the rifts for the sake of the person we are caring for. We also do it for our own sakes because it gives us one less burden to carry.

🙋Your Turn- How can you move forward in this?