The Student Room Group

My grandparents - unusual problem!

What can you do with two old people who are going senile? :frown:

My grandparents, particularly my grandpa, are driving my mother up the wall. I think they're going to make her have a nervous breakdown and I don't know what to do!

My grandpa was in the RAF during WWII and when he was 20, his plane was shot down over Berlin and he spent the rest of the war in a POW camp. He was deeply traumatised by the event. He met my gran years later and married her when he was 31. They had three kids, my uncle, my mum and my auntie. For years he used to have nightmares and wake up screaming in the middle of the night, but he would never talk about what happened to him during the war.

About 10 years ago, he started writing his memoirs and everything came flooding out. At first it was like a release for him, talking about what had happened, and he started going to reunions and contacting other veterans etc. He wrote his story for a book of war stories which was published, and he was interviewed on the radio, and so and and so forth.

However, in recent years, he's started to become obsessive. In September, he and my gran and my younger brother went on a lottery funded trip to Berlin to visit all the memorials and stuff. My mum is a languages teacher in a secondary school and speaks fluent German, and she's often translated things for him and written to people on his behalf. She used to really enjoy it, and see it as a challenge. She was supposed to be going on this trip with them, but then she was made redundant last year and her new job started the week of the trip, so she couldn't go. Although my brother went in her place, obviously he can't speak German and couldn't ask all the questions my grandpa wanted to ask, and my mum felt really guilty about not being able to go, so she promised to take my grandparents back to Berlin at half term and see all the things they personally wanted to see.

My mum did everything they asked of her, and even got in touch with German journalists, who advertised to see if there were any old people around who remembered the crash etc. The trip was a great success and they were in all the Berlin papers, talked to people who remembered, had a conference about it, were taken up in a plane and everything, but for months beforehand my grandpa had been phoning my mum for at least an hour a day to talk about it, and it was driving her slightly crazy. She's incredibly busy and always has work to do, so spending so much time on the phone with him means she doesn't get things done. But since the trip, he's gotten worse, not better. He's phoning even more often, emailing her loads every day, emailing the German journalist, phoning my mum to ask why she thinks the journalist hasn't replied (an hour or so later), you name it. He's completely obsessed.

This is completely draining my mum, both emotionally and financially (when you think of the cost of all the international phone calls, plane tickets etc.) and she really can't take any more. It's also affecting my gran, who suddenly feels like she's much less important than something which happened to my grandpa before she even met him (they've been married 52 years). He spends all his time obsessing about this and won't let it rest. He said he was too busy to take her to the opticians when she was having trouble with her eye, and she's now lost pretty much all the sight in it. They might have been able to prevent it if she had been treated earlier, but like everything else, it wasn't a priority for my grandpa.

We all love him, but he's driving us loopy. They're coming to stay later for a few days and my mum's worried there will be a huge argument, because she just can't take any more, and he is impossible to reason with. I've largely missed all of this because I've been at uni, and I don't know what to do.

What would you do? Should I try talking to him, or would it make it worse? Neither of them are going to last forever, and we'd all feel terrible if we told them to stop bullying us and leave us alone, and then they died. On the other hand, they could go on for years and years and turn my mum into a complete wreck.

I don't know what to do! :frown:

Sorry for the long post.
I reckon you should try talking to him (or your mum could). I don't think there is anything wrong with being honest. Your mum and gran have lives too and if its beginning to affect things then it needs to addressed. He probably doesn't realise what he's doing and how its affecting other people. Sometimes you get so wrapped up in soemthing that you can't see anything else.

Hope that help :smile:
Reply 2
Yeh, i know it may sound drastic but Alzheimer's is a possibility, my nan had Alzheimers which progressed to full on dementia between 1998-ish to when she died in 2003. Contact the Alzheimers society they can put you in touch with people who can help your family with support workers not just for your grandparents but for your family as well.

I know how it feels to feel like everything you say to them just doesnt get through, as they forget, with my nan she forgot who i was first and couldnt remember me being her only grandchild and slowly started forgetting the names of her own children (my auties and uncles) and there were 12 of them, they would remind my nan that my name is martin and she would say i was her son Martin (which she did have but died in 1971) and so that was hard becuase no-one else understood that she wasnt actually talkin about me but her son, thinking she meant grandson when saying son. Or when she would go to my old house after we'd moved out a year earlier, or get on a bus and and get off and not know she where she was or how to get home and police would find her with a coat on over her nightdress.

I hope you and your family can cope, and best of luck, remember to contact the Alzheimers Soc. and like Firebird sed you can pm me too at anytime. Just tell your mom to take it one day at a time. Have a good Christmas, god bless. :smile:
it sounds like he is being very irrational, but you can kind of understand it. what he went thourgh must have been awful and this sounds like a relatively good/healthy way of coping with it- taken to the extreme, however.
your grandad is an adult, and should be treated as such. your mum needs to sit him down and explain exactly what he is doing and how he is making everybody feel in no uncertain terms.
you must have some compassion though.

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btw: is obsession/compulsion/paranoia of this kind a sypmtom of senile dementia/alzheimers?
Reply 4
Wow - it's a bit of an understatement, but this certainly is a problem! It's difficult as you all love your grandpa, and want to do what's best for him, yet when it's affecting everyone else in such a way, something has to be done.
Can I ask a couple of questions though - I may be entirely wrong, but from you post I suspect that your mum may be faced with most of the brunt of all of this - what do your uncle and auntie (her siblings) feel of this... compared with your mum, are they as involved, perhaps as 'pestered' (for want of a better word) by your grandpa so much?

Regardless of your grandpa's stories, and outpouring over the years ocmapred with so many years initially spent bottling up all emotions, no-one can truly empathise with what your grandpa went thorugh... the emotional suffering is clearly having an effect on him today, and although fellow veterans on both sides are perhaps closer to such empathy, I can't help but feel that your grandpa needs some more professional 'talking therapy' of some sort - it's all very well relying on close family, but when such experienes literally begin to consume your every being and affect your family in such a way, that's when it becomes a problem rather than a more expected reaction.

From the sounds of it, I think the most significant issue is not necessarily your grandpa's 'obsession', but the fact that quite innocently he is oblivious to the effects it is having on loved ones, as signified especially by your grandma's sight issue. For this, although easy for me to say, I think he must be told, in as gentler way as possible. Perhaps your mum along with your auntie and uncle (not necessarily your grandma) can all sit down with your grandpa and talk it over? Yes, it may get argumentative, chances are it will considering your grandpa may feel that everyone is ganging up on him, but if you stress that you love him and that you understand the need for him to follow his war experiences through but also let him realise the effect it has had on you all as well as the effect it has had on himself, then some sort of conclusion could be reached?

It's difficult to suggest what to do, but just imagine what would happen if nothing was done: it would continue, and I think that will do much more harm in the long term, not only for your grandpa, who needs at least some closure on the past, but for your mum, gran, and of course yourself.
Reply 5
This will initially sound a little strange, but have you considered seeing if he wants to see a counsellor? Or really, anyone who he could talk about the war with, so he'd know that at 10 o'clock, every Tuesday, he could talk to Y about WW11 and his feelings/experiences.

The reason I'm saying it is that my mum is a psychotherapist and she does counselling for the charity 'Age Concern'. Some of her clients there are war veterans, and they just basically talk through their time in the war, and it really helps them. Your Grandad will have seen some horrific things during the war that he may need/want to explore before he can fully close this part of his life. Through talking about it with my mum, her clients are able to work through their feelings and thoughts which are still as fresh as they were 60 years ago, as I think WW1/11 are the sort of experiences which will live with people forever and they need to do something with them.

From what I gather (my mum isn't allowed to tell me much, obviously, due to confidentiality laws) some of my mums clients are seeing her as an alternative to 'bombarding' their family with memories in a similar way to what you've described. Now, the families are finding it easier to cope as the situation has been removed from a personal level between father/daughter, to father/my mum.

If you want any more information about this kind of thing, PM me :smile:
Reply 6
I would suggest a home. Its what I am going to do to my dad as soon as I can. Shame they wont accept him because he is too 'young'. He's almost 50. Thats old!!! Sooner I can get rid of him the sooner I can enjoy my life.

Don't mean to upset you but maybe its the best thing??
I believe that your first priority is supporting your Mum, try taking some of the calls from your Grandpa, just do anything to take the pressure off your Mum. If you have any brothers/sisters/cousins then perhaps you could get them to give you a hand. If you get enough of the family together then you might be able to help your Mum and Grandpa simultaneously.

Other people to possibly get in contact with could be:
www.combatstress.org.uk
www.rafa.org.uk
http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/
http://www.ssafa.org.uk/
http://www.raf-benfund.org.uk

Hope all is sorted out :biggrin:
Thanks for the replies everyone, you've been really helpful. I think I will have a chat with my grandpa tomorrow. I don't think he's quite lost his marbles yet, but he has certainly lost all sense of proportion. He can't understand why my mum can't just take time off work to do this and do that, and because he's been retired for so long, he doesn't remember what it's like to actually have a proper, time-consuming career. My uncle is never in because he works such long hours, and my auntie is always tied up because she has lots of small children, so my mum's the one sitting at home doing paperwork who gets all the phone calls.

The problem is, they think they're still capable and in control, which makes them even more difficult to look after, even though they really need it! :frown:

I'll have a chat with him tomorrow. Cheers everyone!
Reply 9
SciFi25
I would suggest a home. Its what I am going to do to my dad as soon as I can. Shame they wont accept him because he is too 'young'. He's almost 50. Thats old!!! Sooner I can get rid of him the sooner I can enjoy my life.

Don't mean to upset you but maybe its the best thing??


Great idea. Just palm him off when he becomes too much trouble :rolleyes: Jackass.

To the OP, I would definitely raise the option of psychotherapy with your grandad and mum. If you sell it in the right way (say he can talk about what he experienced etc.), he might like the idea of trying it and it would almost certainly provide some relief for your mum.
Reply 10
Vitriol01
Great idea. Just palm him off when he becomes too much trouble :rolleyes: Jackass.

To the OP, I would definitely raise the option of psychotherapy with your grandad and mum. If you sell it in the right way (say he can talk about what he experienced etc.), he might like the idea of trying it and it would almost certainly provide some relief for your mum.


Hey! I said no offence! I would do that. If they are passed it, its time to get the professionals in or ship them out to em. That way you don't have to see them.