Dear LPG, 

I am lucky enough to have two sisters, a brother and four children and I love them all very much.  When each of the generations were young, things were harmonious enough.  My children were quite close but as with most sets of siblings, including my own brother, sisters, and I, they all went off on different tangents as they began to grow up.  It is not unusual for youngsters to leave the nest and find their feet in far flung parts of the world these days and my family is no exception.

My sisters and brother all retired in different parts of the world and my children have followed that trend.  One is now based in the USA while another got married and moved with her husband to the other side of the world.  I have also managed to produce a member of the armed forces who is never in the same place for any length of time which just leaves one who is based about ten miles away in Surrey.

It is impossible to get to my stage of life without falling in and out of favour with at least one or two of your generations’ family members, but I am lucky that I have never really fallen out of love with any of my children.  They all make contact with me regularly; some via Skype, WhatsApp, and the phone while others send regular letters.  Like many of my friends, I am extremely proud of what my children have achieved, and our offspring and their offspring are frequently the topic of conversation when my friends and I get together.

But I am under no illusions about their love for each other.  As they have grown, they have had their differences of opinion, both relatively petty and major, but it is easy, as a parent of my age, to ignore them because I rarely see or talk to them altogether.

I recently watched as one of my friends decided that it was time to enter into a Power of Attorney arrangement so that she could be as sure as one can that someone she trusted would be in control of her affairs if there was ever a reason she could not.

She wanted to leave more than one of her children in control but, because of their inter-related conflicts she suddenly began to address the reality of being able to do this in the knowledge that she would not provoke a full-scale family argument into the bargain. 

The dilemma is far from resolved but it occurs to me that my husband and I need to work out what we will do when we get to that point in our lives.  It is one of those considerations that we all know we will need to address at some point, but even if we have the time to, we often dismiss it.

I cannot say that we have found any solutions but, having had the odd discussion on the subject with other friends who, whatever their family make up, nearly always have a couple of family members that don’t see eye to eye.  It is quite easy to ignore the problem until it comes to sorting out your affairs but putting it off is not the answer either.

I hope that my message and its focus on such situations will help to remind my fellow older family members not to postpone aiming to find a way out.  My advice is to have the conversation with each of the members of your family individually because it is so often the case that while they are all arguing, they have the same ideas about the answer to many of the difficult questions that ultimately need to be asked.

PC, Catford 

PC has found some internet help… 

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