I wasn’t consulted over family move

DEAR BEL,

I AM 81 and my health and activity levels are very good — I regularly walk ten to 15 miles.

For 25 years I’ve lived in my apartment above the extended ground floor of my daughter and her partner, as well as my granddaughter and her partner and their toddler.

My partner of 20 years, off and on, is seven years younger than me but now has cancer, so the future is uncertain. We have never lived together (we’re too independent) but we see each other every weekend and holiday together.

Now, with no discussion, my daughter tells me that we are selling up and relocating to a smallholding 130 miles away.

She’s searching for a property which will enable all three family units to have their own living space. The move would not be financially possible without my consent.

But I have a good life here. I’m only ten miles from a large town, and I have good friends, a walking companion and a church I’ve attended for 50 years. I am not a joiner of clubs and feel it would be very difficult to start a new social life at my age.

Should I refuse to sell my lovely flat and move away from dear friends and my partner, and spoil my family’s dream?

Or should I just accept that, at 81, I’ve had my innings, and embrace the joy of keeping my family around me and watching my gorgeous greatgranddaughter grow up for as long as I have left? HILARY

YOu say there has been no discussion, which shocks me. that surprising fact serves to underline why so many older people feel sidelined. Does there come an age when, as if by magic, we lose the right to have opinions and decide what we want to do with the life we have left?

I remember a wonderful older woman I knew well, an adored and adoring matriarch with four children and ten great-grandchildren, confiding to me (slightly shamefacedly) that everybody always assumes you want to be with your family, but sometimes you do not.

Those readers who are lonely and long for family contact will read your letter and maybe think you ungrateful — because your situation, with four generations living under one roof, sounds ideal and enviable. And I’m sure it’s made you very happy.

But that doesn’t mean you are not allowed to lead your own, independent life, doing the things you want, when and how you wish.

Your long membership of the church community is likely to increase in importance as you get older — and many people have no idea how vital that can be. there is so much in your life at the moment, activities and people you would miss quite desperately were you to give it all up. that is why it worries me so much that you are being swept along by the family which certainly loves you, yet is selfishly not considering your needs.

I don’t believe that, at 81, you have ‘had your innings’. Who says so? this decision about moving must be a truly democratic one, so I hope that by now you have stated your feelings calmly but firmly. Why can’t your daughter and her partner recognise your rights and seek a compromise?

They could search for a suitable property (say) six to ten miles away, which would enable you to continue with the life you enjoy.

Or let them work out the horrendous cost of moving house, with stamp duty and likely alterations, and reflect that, with cost of living being what it is, such a move would be unwise at the moment.

Whatever happens, I think it wrong that you should be dragooned. Serious discussions need to be had.

Try not to think of it as spoiling ‘your family’s dream’ but as insisting that your wishes are respected.