My sister told my almost 90 year old dad that his brother died

[JanR]

Rude, and perhaps even cruel.

 

[poche]

Someone should tell him.

 

[PetraG]

Someone should tell him.

Well, in the OP’s example, the person has all their faculties. Of course they ought to know about the deaths in their family and have the chance to mourn with everyone else just like everyone else. I totally agree with those who point out that the oldest members of our families might even have the best ability to show the way in how to cope with loss and the reality of death. We’re not all good at going through mourning just because we’ve been through it a lot of time, but some of us really are.

Possibly 20% of people over 65 and maybe less than that have even mild cognitive impairment–loss of attention span, losing keys, that kind of thing. Far fewer have such serious memory problems that they cannot retain the memory of something as significant as the death of a family member. If you’re taking care of someone in the category who just don’t have their ability to form memories any more, it is important to learn how to adjust to their “new needs.” Telling hard truths to someone who can’t remember them and goes through the loss of hearing them in a raw way every time they hear the news is a different matter than telling someone who has the mental capacity to handle the emotional impact of that news.

Most of us, though, won’t actually go through that, not even if we live to be 90. I think we all want to be as included in the emotional life of our families as our faculties allow when we’re older, just as much as when we are younger.

In these circumstances, I think keeping the news from him, especially since it was possible to do so (he wasn’t able to read a newspaper, and I assume the nurses had been told not to mention it — his son owned the nursing home), was precisely the thing to do.

This is a person that can tell you one way or the other if he has the inner energy to handle bad news from the family–or even just let you know they don’t want the weight of it. You can ask: “Dad, would you rather we just don’t tell you about bad things happening out there? You don’t have to hear about bad news in the family, if you don’t want to hear it. You’re going through so much, if you don’t want to know, you don’t need to hear about it.” Then a person with their faculties can decide they want to be spared this kind of news.

I know it is tempting to become very protective of our older family members (just as it is very tempting to be very protective of the youngest ones) but I personally think it ought to be up to them. One of the things I learned with my parents is that just because someone becomes as dependent as when they were children does not mean they’re children again. They’re not, and they know they’re not, and they want the dignity of being treated as adults who can make decisions for themselves. They have earned accomodations for their age, if they want them, but for as long as possible they ought to be able to make the decisions they’re capable of making for themselves.

I think we all want that kind of respect as we progressively lose our other abilities.

 

[JanetF]

Unless your father is suffering from Alzheimer’s or advanced dementia and won’t remember having been told, then yes, he deserves to know what happened and he deserves to be able to grieve, even attend the funeral (it’s a corporate work of mercy from which he obtains grace).

 

[JanetF]

This is a person that can tell you one way or the other if he has the inner energy to handle bad news from the family–or even just let you know they don’t want the weight of it. You can ask: “Dad, would you rather we just don’t tell you about bad things happening out there? You don’t have to hear about bad news in the family, if you don’t want to hear it. You’re going through so much, if you don’t want to know, you don’t need to hear about it.” Then a person with their faculties can decide they want to be spared this kind of news.

THIS!!! The last year or so of her life, we didn’t tell my mom all the bad stuff, unless it was a death in the family because she would have spent way too much time worrying about stuff. But we asked her before she started to decline, if she wanted to be bothered as her status shifted, before we decided not to tell her things.

 

[babochka]

Absolutely okay. My 89-year-old grandmother’s 88-year-old brother visited her the morning of the day she died. To not tell him would have been unthinkable.