Made me cry...
It's so hard to know where to draw the line... Luckily my parents are not too old yet, but I am the only granddaughter of 3 rather old grandparents. It's very difficult, especially when it comes to my 85-year old grandfather (we just had a huge banquet for his BD 2 weeks ago, complete with custom-made songs, poems, etc.). Sometimes I pretend like him asking me the same thing a hundred times is normal, but then occasionally he'll catch on and get very upset about being treated like an invalid; so it's important to keep balance. With my grandmothers, I try to let some things go, but not others; when they say or do something that I know to be totally wrong, I try to just say, nicely but firmly (as in not "that's stupid", but as in "no, this is wrong, period."). The most difficult part for me came a year ago, when my grandmother was recovering from over-agressive chemo, and my grandfather just refused to understand the hell she was going through (he tried to have her get up in the morning, not take long naps, eat only during meal times, etc.), which of course made things all the worse for her. At one point my parents were away on vacation, and I actually had to talk to my grandfather about basically being a better spouse. It felt awful! I was very aware of how inappropriate this was - a girl with less than a year marriage experience telling her grandfather what to do; but OTOH, I was aware that the situation as it existed was literally killing my grandmother, so I felt I had to do something (grandma was already spending about half of each week at either my parents' or our place, but even the remaining few days at home were getting too tough). Things slowly got better, but I do dread the day when those same problems will come around again, only with my parents instead of grandparents...
