Your aging father refuses help he clearly needs.
Take this situation apart. Each piece goes in one box: yours, or not yours. There is no third box, and almost nothing falls in one piece.
Yours
- Keeping the offer open, and staying near.Arranging safety where it truly must, offering without pushing, and carrying your own sadness about it: that is your half. Often the presence is the help that does get accepted.
- Your irritation at his stubbornness.The refusal is his; the boiling inside when he says no again grows on your ground. Irritation feels like involvement but does not help him and wears you down. You may care without seething.
Not yours
- His refusal.His stubbornness is also his dignity; the no falls in his box, however heavily it weighs. Whoever wants to break the refusal wins at most the arrangement and loses the contact.
The reasoning. You cannot make him accept; you can make sure there is something to accept, week after week.
- You are bound to a father, not to a good father.after Epictetus
Nearby situations
More on this topic: Pity and compassion