Family breakdown

Hi , I’m sorry to hear that your family circumstances as well as your Grandads cancer is affecting you and your family at the moment. I can’t say that I’ve been in a similar situation, but I do think every family including my own wider family has issues at some time, and they often come to a head at times of pressure. I’m in no position to give advice really, but I think in your first sentence you were saying you weren’t sure you were in the right place, so I thought I’d pop in here and suggest an additional group for you

Supporting someone with incurable cancer forum, you can click on the link I’ve put in for you and have a look if you want to introduce yourself and put a question in there. 

I suppose the danger is that stepping in the middle of things can either make things worse or better, which is why I feel I can’t add much here. My Mum always had a great knack of getting people to see both sides of things and of letting people know how she was affected and what she would like to happen, and the sorting out always comes better from the higher up the hierarchy goes. That being said she was 93 when she passed away and sometimes us siblings would need to get together because we were all being told different things, me that my brother wasn’t visiting much and him that I wasn’t when we both were. We all had different roles and we were all varying distances away. My oldest sister dealt with medical appointments as she used to work in a hospital, I dealt with finances and online shopping for her, my brother lived the nearest dealt with local emergencies, and my other sister who lived over 7 hours drive away made cheering up phone calls and when my Dad died stayed for a week with my Mum. We all in a way knew what our strengths were and our weaknesses and all contributed how we could, we took the attitude of pulling together and that if there was something we couldn’t do it was because we couldn’t and not that we didn’t want to. I haven’t experience of any input needing to come from any grandchildren to help sort things out, but I know they gave a much needed role of helping her to have some enjoyment and pleasant times. I haven’t the right experience for your question but didn’t like it to go unanswered. Things must be so much harder with support bubbles and keeping people safe, but virtual communication is so much better now and my children know much better than me how to make best use of it, and we have needed to as my kids live far away so we have virtual Sunday meals together weekly now.

I hope your Grandad is able to find enjoyment in his twilight years and that your family finds a way through these tough times.

Take care