This process put a shocking amount of stress on the family. We have a large family (11 living siblings),
and we are all very opinionated and different. I never imagined the sort of ugliness that arose. It was unreal,
truly shocking, and I know I’ve said that twice now. There have been accusations, hardships, unreal stress
and exhaustion, and some pretty serious fighting. Most of the fighting revolved around one family member
who had a certain amount of control over the situation, and used that control to leverage the rest of the family.
We were all absolutely dedicated to helping and respecting our parents, so our only choice was to remain
engaged and try to find solutions whenever truly untenable situations arose. Thankfully, solutions, though
not always ideal, were always found.

The process nearly destroyed two of my sisters mentally, and has had reverberant effects on every one
of my brothers and sisters. It is strange, but this stressful situation seemed to be compounded in many of
our lives by external stressors that attacked us all in different ways. Nervous breakdowns, job loss,
businesses losing clients and threatening to fall apart, marital stress, and some other things. It was
truly confounding to me the amount of stress that converged on our family.

For my part, I have tried to do whatever I could do keep communication going, to get accusations to stop
and try to encourage everyone to accept things as they are, instead of demanding that “this is not the way
things should be.” I believe this is one of the biggest lessons of this entire event…that we need to accept
things as they are rather than lament why they are not the way we think they should be. I know I myself
have been broken of the need to know what is next, and of the need to control my financial stability (only if I
continue to remind myself of this new understanding on a daily basis, because otherwise the panic attacks
begin to rear their ugly head again).

Our family did make it through everything, and in the end my mother’s funeral was one of the most
beautiful and spirit-filled events I have experienced. I am certain she was there to witness it with us.
Right up until two days before the funeral there were things that threatened to ruin the tentative peace
we had achieved, but miraculously, and through the valiant efforts of people putting their egos aside,
the problems fell to the side and we were able to create a beautiful tribute to my mother’s truly
amazing life.

Well, I just wanted to let you know that I understand the stress you are going through, and if you can follow
Deepak’s advice, you will feel a relief of the loss of expectation, and this blessing will allow you to move
forward and take care of your parents and yourself as well. Good luck to you, and God bless.