Dear Your Fiancé Is A Self-Involved Ungrateful Dick,

Hia and thanks for your email. I usually try to give both points of reflection on a subject matter, but on this one there are only absolutes for me. Take a deep breath and read, just note that I will be a fascist and I will not pull any punches.

You are facing a potentially explosive situation and one which — should there not be an agreement — is, in my world, grounds for a justified break-up.

To your point “I will never place her in an old-age home,” I say ditto and ameen. Side note: I am sorry for the passing of your dad, may he be resting in peace.

Main note: When we were pooing and puking all over ourselves, when we were incapable of rational thought and coherent sentences yet still making demands, when we drooled all over parents and burped our food all over their backs, and when we had to be changed a million times, our bums washed and powdered, our parents did not chuck us into a home.

When we were feeling alone and sad, chances are that our parents never made us feel worse or as though we were a burden. For most of us even as adults, the moment we need our parents they are there without question or hesitation. (Naturally, barring that we were neglected, beaten, starved, and / or sexually assaulted by them.)

To me, and it sounds like to you as well, placing a parent in an old age home amounts to discarding our parents, signaling to them that we neither have the time nor the inclination to care for them as they did for us. Anyone who does not clock this reality is a self-deluded apologist doing some amazing moral acrobatics to make themselves feel better when in reality, they are picking up the slack where society doesn’t completely and unabashedly make the elderly feel like a burden and a drain, rather than treat them with the reverence they deserve. [‘Judge-y opinionated Maha.’ (Why do you keep coming back, I wonder…?)]

Which is the segue into: this is a fundamental point of morality and one which if you do not agree upon, is not something you can communicate through. An ailing and / or alone parent is either taken care of, or they are not. They are either treated with kindness, respect, love and reverence, or they simply are made to feel like a burden. Taking it a step further, your parents need not be ill in order for them to live with you. They will age, and they will become tired and more lonely as their friends pass, and you will need to take care of them and ease their world as they did yours when you were a child and later a young adult.

There is nothing that stands above this duty which you owe your mum and dad. And on that note, you are best to remember that this holds true for your partner’s parents as well. If you believe, as I do, that this is an honoured responsibility, and if your piece can’t get on board with it, then said piece needs to be gone. Full stop.

Here’s where you may compromise: If not living together, then maybe you will live in the same building, or live next to one another in the same neighbourhood that you have the blessing of seeing them daily if only to make sure you tell them you love them, to thank them for making you who you are, and to kiss the unwavering hands that kneaded your breakfast bread, that took your temperature, that wiped your tears, that drove you to soccer games and dance class, to skating, swimming and piano, and that held you up and kept you together every time your sorry ass fell apart.

Where they kissed your forehead every night, it has become your turn.

And if doing it because you love them isn’t reason enough, and if doing it because it’s the right thing to do isn’t reason enough, then I don’t know what is. At the end of the day, people who behave with integrity behave in this way even when there is no one around to see them do it. Just as people who behave out of love do so not to receive, but for the pleasure of giving. If your fiancé is not ashamed of his sticking his mum into a foreign home, then there’s not much I would put past him.

Again. JUDGE-Y.

By the way, statistically speaking, the elderly usually pass away inside of six months due to the depression and loneliness they experience once placed into a home. Just writing that out made me want to cry.

Look. What you two are facing is a fundamental difference of family values, and if you plan on having a family with this person then you can not be naive about the chasm of difference this subject matter brings to light. I am the first to say that your partner should trump everyone, but they should never, ever, not under any circumstance stand in the way of your duties toward your parents. Rather, they should stand next to you and support you in your meeting of these duties because that makes better people of you both. A good and worthy wo/man is not someone who would ask any less of you, and birds of a feather always really and truly do stick together. As such, chose your mate accordingly.

A final note: if he’s willing to throw his own mum into a home, then just remember that you won’t be the exception to that rule. BOOM!

Finally, to everyone reading, please take a few minutes to watch and remember before you call your parents, give them a hug, and thank them for the giants they remain always. On this, there are no second chances.