Birthdays & guilt

It was my dad’s birthday last week, and I felt so sad thinking about it. I couldn’t visit him on the day because of childcare and work commitments – his care home’s visiting hours just didn’t line up.

My mum told me that everyone there sang “Happy Birthday” to him. She said he joined in, smiling and enjoying cake and chocolates. I visited him at the weekend and brought him even more chocolates.

At least this year, he was in the care home – comfortable, safe, and surrounded by people – rather than alone in a hospital bed like he was last year.

Still, I felt guilty. It’s common, isn’t it, to celebrate a birthday with someone a few days later when life gets in the way? So why does this feel like a failing?

There’s a heavy weight of guilt that seems to come with dementia care. Guilt that you need support. Guilt that you can’t always provide the care or attention you wish you could. Guilt when you make the practical choice instead of the idealistic one.

It reminds me of what people often call “mum guilt”, that sense of inadequacy or failure that seems to have been particularly attributed to women. The feeling that you’re not doing enough, not being enough.

When you miss a school play because of work. When you hand over a screen just to get the laundry folded. When you’re too exhausted to play, so you switch on the TV.

I struggled, at first, with how much TV my dad started watching as his dementia progressed. It clashed with everything I’d learned about what’s “healthy.” But the truth is – he’s content when he’s watching TV. It helps him rest. And these days, he needs a lot of rest.

Sometimes I wonder: what would we do without television – both in dementia care and parenting?

There’s this quiet pressure to do it all alone, to be some kind of superhero. Society’s messaging is loud and persistent: Be a devoted daughter. A perfect mum. Hold down a job. Stay fit, eat well. We keep balancing everything until the load becomes so heavy, we realise we’re barely keeping our heads above water.

Birthdays bring a particular kind of stress. I want my kids’ birthdays to be magical. I worry about letting them down. Parties have become a production nowadays, different from when I was young – venues, entertainers, gifts, bespoke cakes. They cost as much as a mini holiday. And somehow we’re expected to handle it all with ease.

Then there are my own birthdays, reminding me of the time passing, the possibilities shrinking.

And now my father’s birthdays feel heavy too. Seventy-six doesn’t seem old enough to be celebrating in a care home, unaware that the birthday song is for you.

Facebook memories sometimes show me moments with him – concerts, family dinners, old birthdays. The ache of missing him can feel so sharp it takes my breath away. I just want one more afternoon with that version of him.

I know this is what it feels like when someone dies.

But he hasn’t died. He’s still here. Just not in the same way.

I keep saying this, but it never stops feeling strange – the dissonance between the dad I remember and the dad I now visit. The time forked. The self split. The twin version of him I encounter every time I go to the care home, who lives there all along, mismatched with the version of him in my memories. And it feels like the wrong one is real.

I think part of the guilt also comes from not knowing how many birthdays he has left.

When I look through my blog posts so far, I notice that they can be quite depressing, so I’m going to try to end this one with some positivity. Here’s what I’ve learned about how to cope with these feelings of guilt:

• Try to let yourself feel them, first of all – don’t sweep them under the rug. Write them down in a journal, perhaps. Talk to friends, family, or a therapist about them.
• Take care of yourself as much as you can. Give your body good food, try to exercise or go for walks, meditate. (This always falls away for me during the school holidays when I’m trying to balance work with childcare, like last week. I don’t have any suggestions for other parents about what to do about this, except get rich?!)
• Practise self-compassion. Talk to yourself nicely instead of criticising yourself for not living up to some perfect and unachievable ideal.

I struggle a lot with the last one, as you might be able to tell from reading this blog. I feel so much guilt and failure around what has happened to my dad. And I’m trying to work through that.

Do you feel this guilt too? How do you handle birthdays or milestones when someone you love is living with dementia?