I have a sister who relied upon family to bring up her two children. She gadded off marrying and divorcing her way through life, dumping her kids after every split… only to come and sweep them back up with every new marriage, disrupting their lives, educations, and sense of security of home in the world.

But, in my parents' declining years, she seems to have found her adulthood (in her 50s) in becoming their aids in their last decade. She really stepped up in their last years when most elderly folks in their declining conditions would have been relegated to nursing homes. She was their full time carer, watching over them and providing the kind of loving care everyone craves in their last days.