“In one option I am cold hearted. In the other I am a fool.”

This month, the advice columnist explores a decision-making process for reconnecting with a dying family member. 

Q: I have been estranged from my family for over 10 years with only sporadic email contact from one member. About 2 years ago I was advised my mother has dementia and since then I have been asked numerous times to visit her 'before it's too late'. What do I do? I was the family scapegoat, the estrangement has been very hard but being part of the family was harder. You know how complex these situations are. Do I visit once to say goodbye, perhaps avoiding any after death guilt? Or, do I not visit because our relationship already ended over 10 years ago and they've not reached out in all that time? There is also the potential pitfalls and emotional distress involved in a meeting to consider. In one option I am cold hearted in the other I am a fool. This decision is draining and I seem to not be making any progress.

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Hi friend, 

Thank you for writing in. 

So, the thing about death is that it’s final. No take-backs, no do-overs. As my uncle used to say, “We don’t get a dress rehearsal.” 

Across cultures and contexts, religions and spiritual practice, we understand death as an irrevocable change. When somebody dies, whatever happens next (if anything), we know that something about the world will never go back to the way it was before. 

But isn’t that true of every other moment of our lives, too?

Thinking about mortality can put some things into focus, but the clock only ever moves forward; when we spend our hours (our time, effort, focus, presence, attention, etc.) in one place, it means we’re not spending them in another. 

So yes, on the one hand: Your mother has dementia, and someday she will die, and then the time you’ve spent with her will be all the time you’ll ever have spent with her.

And, on the other hand: None of us live forever, and the hours we choose to spend — or not spend — with each other will all take place within our limited lifespans, and that was just as true two years ago (and five, ten, fifteen, eighty, a thousand, ten thousand years ago) as it is today, and will be tomorrow. 

So if you’re asking me whether or not I think you should go visit your mother, I can’t make that choice for you. Even if I could, I wouldn’t. 

But I can offer you some questions to explore, that I hope will help you feel like you’re making some progress here. 

(Remember — I’ve got no vested interest in your answers, here. One way or another; certain or unsure; constant or changing: The feelings, and the decisions you make about those feelings, belong to you and only you.)

1. Do you want to go and see her? Do you feel, for your own sake, that this would bring a sense of closure, or a chance to put words to things that have so far been left unsaid?

2. How important is it to you to say your goodbyes while she is still alive to hear them?

3. If you do want a conversation/a visit/some amount of relationship with her right now, does this have to be in person? Does it feel different to consider what a letter, an email, a phone call or some other form of contact might look like?

4. Do you have any specific reasons to believe that seeing her in person at this time would help you more than it would hurt you, or vice-versa?

5. Do you have any specific reasons to believe that seeing her in person at this time would help HER more than it would hurt her, or vice-versa?

6. If you were to go see her, would a single visit be “acceptable” (to you, to her, to your family)? Or, if you go once, would there be an expectation for you to stay in contact going forward?

In your letter, you write that visiting once might be a way to avoid “any after death guilt,” and I do want to explore that idea a little bit further. Because, yes, maybe it would work exactly like you suggest … but I can’t promise you that it would be a guaranteed cure. 

Reading that part of your letter, I thought about how I’ve been lucky enough to be part of a family-by-choice for the past six years, and spending time with my chosen grandma has been a very big part of that. 

(The first time I met her — at my first family holiday with this crew — she walked up to me, handed me a Christmas card, and said “I hear you’re part of the family now.” And from then on, for us, it was that simple: She was my grandma, I was one of the grandkids, and that’s that.)

After she moved into a care home, I started visiting her a few times every week. I got to listen to the family stories and flip through the genealogy books with her (the day she invited me to add my page to the family genealogy book will be a memory I treasure forever), tell her about my days, get her advice on sewing projects, hear about her lifetime of travel and adventure and helping others, bring her art prints and posters to decorate the walls. I’ve laughed at her wonderful dry wit. I’ve stayed with her for 30 straight hours in the emergency room before she was (finally) admitted to the ward. Heck, I started keeping a daily journal just to make sure I’d remember all the fun little details of the stories I wanted to tell her, and to write about the highlights of our visits and conversations to make sure I’ll always remember. 

By most accounts, I’d like to say I was a pretty good granddaughter to her. (Recently, some of my cousins have said that they felt bad that they weren’t able to be there for her as much as I was during these past few years. I’m trying to nip that line of thinking in the bud, of course — there’s no hierarchy to love. But I think it would be fair to say I’ve been quite present for her).

Last month, my grandma had a serious stroke, and she died a few days later. 

I’d been there with her that afternoon, a few hours before she was taken to hospital — we’d been flipping through a book of local newspaper clippings from the 1970s I’d picked up at a charity store, looking for places she recognized in the photographs (and there were a fair few!). We got through about half the book before suppertime; we made plans to look through the rest of them when I came back to see her on the weekend. It was a great visit. 

And that night, when I got the news, I felt incredibly guilty that I hadn’t stayed longer. 

But guilt is not a place to sit and simmer. That does no one any good. 

Instead, we can take those feelings — if and as they come — and put them to use; give them shape and direction beyond self-punishment; take them to a place that helps more than it hurts. 

Today, I noticed one of my dad’s shirts has a torn seam and ‘confiscated’ it out of the clean laundry — because my grandma would never have wanted any person in her family to be walking around with a hole in their sleeve, and I got to use her sewing supplies to mend it. 

I’ve been talking with a friend who works at the local museum, and we’re working on launching an “art in hospitals” program to bring posters and prints to cheer up some of these aggressively beige walls, because that was something my grandma always appreciated and I want those small and necessary joys to live on beyond her. 

No matter what you do, you might feel guilt after your mom dies. Just remember, if you do, that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. 

Friend, you are neither coldhearted nor foolish; you’re doing your best, and none of this is easy. 

No matter which path you choose, I hope it leads you — and I truly believe it can — to a place where you feel at peace. 

Take good care,

Hila