DEAR ABBY: Last May, the six of us had to put our 85-year-old mother and 90-year-old father into an assisted-living facility -- Mom for Alzheimer's and Dad for heart problems and kidney failure. Our mother is in the late middle stages of her disease.
Dad died on July 2. My two siblings who live less than two hours away from Mom decided that it would not be a good idea to tell her that her husband had passed away. Three of us don't like that decision. In fact, two of my brothers have stopped calling Mom because they're afraid she will ask if our father has died, and they don't want to lie to her. She has been told that he is "sleeping a lot."
What do you think about the way this is being handled? I cannot tell you how sad I am about this and the fact that we actually "lost" both parents last July. I am the second-oldest child and could really use some good advice. -- SAD IN CALIFORNIA
DEAR SAD: You have my sympathy for your loss. However, I advocate for telling the truth, unless it is a cruel one. In a case like this, where your mother has no short-term memory, each time your mother hears that her husband is dead it will be as if she's hearing it for the first time. It would be a kindness not to put her through that -- again and again.
P.S. At her stage of illness, I doubt that she'll be asking if your father has died. And it's OK not to volunteer the information.