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The impossible task of caring for ageing parents who did not care for you: ‘There’s a lot of reliving old triggers’

It’s hard under the best of circumstances. For those with difficult family relationships or estrangement, it’s even more complicated

The phone call came in mid-2016. “I’ve got cancer,” the old woman announced. Kathy*, a small business consultant, lived in Sydney. Her widowed mother, then in her 80s, lived in a large regional town four hours’ drive away.

For the next five years, Kathy became her mother’s drive-in, drive-out carer, clocking up thousands of kilometres on her odometer.

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