A relative of mine died at the ripe old age of 84. The youngest of many children, she, like Peter Pan, was a girl who never grew up. Sandwiched between her well-meaning older sister and her versatile yet misdirected husband, she grew to her ripe old age, never venturing beyond her comfort zone.
Recently, a mother who came to ‘cook’ and ‘take care’ of her 37 year old son suffered a fatal heart attack and the son was left floundering. While the death is an unfortunate one, what was not was the inability of a grown up person, to fend for himself.
We as a race, pride in ‘doing our best’ for our loved ones to the point of cloistering them. In our quest to ‘be there for them’, we end up doing a disservice to them, thus, affecting their quality of life. Our misplaced ‘love’ proves to be our undoing.