83 yr.old father receiving no support from his nearby sons. They seem to ignore his living alone & needing help with his home & just had two surgeries. No visits and being ignored even after surgery? As a friend not sure how to inform his sons to help more, or at least visit or call. This is causing depression for their father not supporting him.
Winter is coming, and the first snow is imminent. His depression will get worse if he does nothing. What kinds of surgeries?
You are a good friend to be concerned. Are you part of a service organization or house of worship? Can you help your friend get involved?
If you’re a close family friend and you’ve known his sons for years, then yeah I don’t think it would be a bad thing to reach out but don’t stick yourself in the middle.
if your friend needs help, maybe you can help him arrange home care. Suggest he call the area on aging for a needs assessment & they will determine what services he needs and qualifies for.
The socialization would be good for him, and the Center may have access to small bus or paratransit services that could pick him up and return him home.
I would agree that it's not always a good idea to become involved in family affairs, particularly if there are disinterested sons. You might want to just raise the issue with them, once, but back off if they don't respond favorably. But I wouldn't do this w/o discussing it first with your friend.
Is he mobile? Can he go to other activities that he might enjoy, such as group efforts to reach out to people in need? Packing groceries? Charities might give him a sense of purpose if he lacks that.
Has he talked to his doc re the depression? Not uncommon to get depressed after surgery and/or if in pain. An anti-depressant can help.
Is he able to live alone safely? If so, maybe he needs to at least get in touch with a home health agency and get some home services so that he can stay independent?
I would call your County Office of Aging and see what resources they have. Mine has buses for appts and doctor visits. Does ur friend get Medicaid for health insurance? They also provide transportation and homecare. If he doesn't receive Medicaid then I would check it out. He may qualify for homecare. He would get an aide a few hours a day, maybe.
As a friend, I would do what I could but not get too involved. He may start depending on you and you are really not in a position to represent him. He needs a POA to handle his finances and medical. I wouldn't take on this responsibility if ur about the same age.
If family doesn't want to get involved, then the State may end up having to. If you know the sons, you may want to call them and tell them Dad needs help. If they don't respond and things get worse, you may need to call APS and say there is a vulnerable adult. If ur friend ends up in the hospital again, let the Social Worker know there is no one to care for him. They cannot release him to an unsafe home.
Tell them you don’t want to interfere but before you did anything else you wanted to make sure they knew he had been in the hospital etc.
Some elders will tell you one thing and their family members another. Don’t assume the sons know what’s going on even if your friend said they do. It’s very difficult for some adult children to see their parent as needy or vulnerable.
I had a dear friend who didn’t want to “bother” her only child, a son. She insisted I not contact him when she passed out in a grocery store and was taken to a hospital. The only reason I knew was because each fall, another friend and I would make a trip to see her. We arrived and she wasn’t home. We had just spoken with her the day before. The neighbor told us she was in the hospital. We went to the hospital where she insisted we not call her son. We did anyway. At that time she didn’t appear to have dementia. Primarily she was malnourished and in pain with a hip that needed replacement. She had the hip replacement scheduled but had to get stronger. So we bought it to a degree.
A few years later on another trip she was very confused. We knew she needed help. As her friend I wanted to help but again I didn’t want to overstep. We sent the son emails with our observations. Heard nothing back. We would check on her and with the neighbor.
Finally the neighbor called him and gave him some specific incidents that finally got his attention. He gained guardianship, moved her next door to him and then into his home.
She had Alz and died within three years of our first contacting him. He was concerned and well able to help her but didn’t see her often enough to see through the front she would put up.
He was busy living his life and running a successful business. Overseas much of the time. But still he wanted his mom taken care of. He was just clueless on how to get her to cooperate. Part of her mission in life was not to interfere in his. She did a good job on that.
So you will have to decide if your friendship can handle your talking to the sons and if that’s a step you want to take. It’s not as easy for you to ignore your friend who you see as it might be for the sons who are perhaps estranged with good reason.
You are a good friend to be checking on options and it does take time to heal from surgeries. If your friend can afford it, encourage him to hire help.
Unless you're familiar with the family's history (and not only from the father's perspective), you would be wise to come to no conclusions at all about the rights and wrongs of the sons' attitude. Do you, for example, even know for a fact that they know about the surgery?
I should start by encouraging him simply to call them, whether for a chat or to ask them over, and take it from there.