She will be going if she is well enough – S/FDiL picked a place less than an hour’s drive from her, 10 min from Preferred Sibling, to make it most likely. I cannot see her at the reception though, it’s just too much. Otoh, all of her grandchildren and 6 great grands will be there, which might be worth the fatigue the following week.
If for some reason she can’t be there, the couple will visit her the next day. We already have plans in place for the wedding florals to all be sent to decorate Mom’s facility.
Looks like I will be spending more time taking care of my dad’s affairs. Details too boring to post, but I will be talking to his attorney on Monday. I REALLY don’t have time for this.
Mom has two checking accounts. One from where she used to live that has all the auto deposits set up and auto payments but a local bank to where she lives now so she can withdraw cash. A couple of months ago, she wrote a large check to the account that doesn’t have a large amount of funds. My sibling called and wanted me to pay her bills. But mom did not want me to do that and she literally has 3 bills to pay per month so I was ok.
She was a former state employee, she was getting a large sum of money when the law was changed. I kept asking her if she received an email. No but then she checked and yes she had. Yesterday I asked if she had received her money. No. So I checked her bank account (that I thought I didn’t have access to because my sibling wanted access) and she had a large deposit on 3/7.
I don’t want to take over mom’s finances if she doesn’t want me to. I also am a little concerned how little she checks her email and bank account.
My sibling wants to control everything but they are also not good with details. For instance, they said they would take mom’s taxes to their accountant but haven’t yet. No one ever changed the withholding on mom’s pension or social security for her new state. I do not have access to these things from 400 miles away.
Until this move, mom was on top of things. Moving is complicated. So many things to change, when my dad passed away, mom was on top of these things. Now she’s not.
It’s also complicated because mom hates her new living situation. My sibling doesn’t want to visit because mom is unhappy. My mother is also not the easiest person to deal with but she was certainly easier when she was happy. Mom also lacks empathy and I know that is what is making my sibling unhappy. But they insisted that mom move near them. And now avoid her because it’s hard.
This is exactly what I thought would happen and what I warned everyone would. I don’t like being right. Mom loves to have someone tell her what to do so she can then complain and be upset about it.
I talk to her and the call is so upsetting that then I’m upset for days. It’s been very difficult.
If your mom doesn’t want you to pay her bills, will she let you set up a separate email for her statements and banks and such? After my dad died, my husband took over mom’s bills and banking, but she was fine with that. He set up an email account that he and I only had access to, leaving mom with her regular email account for her 50 mailing lists! He changed all her accounts to this email, so we could see when bills were due, or when accounts had deposits or withdrawals.
Mom was happy not to have to look through the 100 emails she gets a day to find a statement, so we were lucky there. I will forward anything mom needs to her aol account, tell her it is there, and she still doesn’t open it! Maybe this could be a compromise with your mom, making you her back up, but still allowing her some independence?
I wish you mom did not have to make the move to her current location. It just does not seem like a “win” for anyone. I also know that you were not in favor of the move, hands were tied.
I guess I wonder how I can support my mother while not being upset for days afterwards, just to call her again and have the cycle repeat itself.
Talking to my sibling doesn’t help. It’s a litany of grievances against my mother.
My mom wants to tell me how she made a mistake but that there is nothing she can do. She doesn’t want to try and do activities that aren’t exactly what she did at her last place. Or make any changes. She wants to hang out in her apartment and be miserable. It’s doesn’t help that mom claims she hurts from her arthritis, which nothing can be done about. She’s old, she needs joint replacements that she refuses to even consider. Probably not a terrible idea at 87 either.
My mom has what the young people would call social anxiety. My sibling doesn’t understand it, they think mom is being rude and mean.
I have no idea why my sibling wanted my mother to move near them. Except that I wanted mom to stay where she was and sibling wanted to win some sort of prize of having mom near family.
I want to avoid all of the drama myself. That seems mean to do to mom. I’ve told mom that it’s hard for me to hear. Nothing ever changes.
Often it does make sense to be near family. But as you had predicted, moving your mother did not make sense. I hope you find a way to support her without getting overly stressed.
My husband might be more irritated by the move than I am. He wants to be uninvolved in the situation. He was very against when my sibling asked if we would drive 1600 miles to pick mom up for less than a week because mom was being “mean” and their child was in the hospital. I know my sibling is unhappy with us and thinks we are being uninvolved in a situation they created.
It’s also difficult because I do feel in between, my mom, my sibling and my husband.
Your husband and you are a united front. He doesn’t want to see you upset and he also cannot remedy anything either.
At this point, your mom might want a few things ‘easier’ - and see what you can do for this. You can give empathetic statements. Sometimes restate what she is saying in a different way possibly may make her at least feel ‘heard’.
Think about the best way you can see the checking account information and the important emails. Maybe discuss important things on phone calls before ‘fun’ things - which it sounds like mom wants to complain a lot. Try to redirect as much as you can.
Keep in mind to try to keep family relationships as happy as one can. But most importantly look out for yourself - give yourself a pep talk before “I will not get upset for long (maybe give yourself a short time on it) on any things discussed because I can do nothing about a lot of it”.
This sounds awful. I can’t imagine that there is any part of this that you can control, so there’s so little you can change. And advice people would say “limit your contact with all of them” but in real life that’s almost impossible. I’m sorry they can’t see that you were right and just find a better way to cope.
@ddeb922 Sending you support through the ether. It is sad and terrible and hard to live through.
You are not alone and while my situation was a bit different with my mom going though it maybe left some wisdome to pass on. Take what helps (if anything, if not take the hugs and support) .
My husband was mean about my mom, always didn’t like her. Made it difficult to go take care of her (left her in her home in home town too long, then put her into AL and eventually memory care). So even though he would not ever support her in our home or even in our town, he supported me with listening and being the bad guy when it really wasn’t safe for me to drive up to see her on her whims. Maybe view your husband though the lense of he is supporting you and your marriage by drawing those boundaries. And boundaries are your friend in so many cases.
Also, inlist all the help you can from the management and staff. Ask if there are shared “helper” people that come in for others that could come see your mom for an hour when they are doing the same for someone else. You and your sibling don’t have to be the only ones, especially in an AL setting.
We acknowledge you were right in what was going to happen and see it has happened. Sibling doesn’t have to make that acknowledgement and perhaps you both can work from where you landed to make adjustments now.
Professional help for you, too if you find it helpful. If you try to think that Mom and Sibling are doing the best they can, but need a minor shift to do better or more practice doing something different, it might be easier to cope.
I don’t know, but wish you well.
My mom couldn’t be at S1’s wedding, so I sent her a floral arrangement on that day. She was tickled pink and I’m so glad I did it, because she passed away two months later. The last thing we did together before she went into a coma was to look at the wedding pictures. This was the first grandkids’ wedding, so it was important to her.
I hope she’s well enough to attend. It will be special to everyone in the family. We attended a wedding where 93 yo grandma was doing the hora and dancing all night long. It’s a very fond memory, and we weren’t even related!
Does anyone have a successful strategy for coping with unreasonable stubbornness ? And/or thwarting the random behaviors that come with elders who’ve lost much of their problem solving skills but aren’t actually dx w dementia, etc. ?
Right now my strategy is simply pretending to listen while not actually listening, but that is pretty exhausting. For example : we went to the doctor yesterday, a specialist, as scheduled. Mom spent much of the day before, and the entire time after, wanting to ask the doctor about a specific med she is on. This doctor did not prescribe it. Doctor will not discuss a med they don’t oversee. She knows this. She wants to go on ad infinitum about it; I know she can’t help it and all that but “MMm hmm” as a response ratchets her up, distracting has limited effectiveness (she resents being diverted and stores that up for later)
My mom did that sort of thing, and she was never diagnosed with any particular dementia … but every sign pointed to dementia, with executive function severely compromised. I was very disappointed with doctors, because they basically said she was fine when she was not.
It’s been a while since I’ve checked in here because my 95-year-old Dad had a crisis in December and we thought that was the end. But he made it through. The new issue is that he has full-blown vascular dementia (not oriented to time, place, and, increasingly, person–he only periodically knew who I was when I visited him last week). He is in Assisted Living and they have very tactfully lowered the boom and have indicated that it’s time for him to move to “Supportive Living” (aka memory care). I think they are right, but the problem is now my sister. We have always been on the same page and worked pretty well together to manage Dad’s needs, but she is adamantly opposed to the move to SL and won’t even consider it. She has not seen him since December and I’ve seen him twice since then. He does not know where he is, and gets lost in the hallway. The staff has to redirect him constantly, and the caregiver to resident ratios in AL don’t support the level of attention he needs. He wanders (and is not in a locked unit). He believes it’s 1950 and he’s in Kansas. He is incapable of making any decisions in a meaningful way; he is extremely passive and cannot structure his own time. He sleeps constantly and is fully incontinent. He cannot make decisions about what to eat, and they just give him food they know he likes.
My sister is in denial about his decline, and I think it’s because she does not want to make him unhappy with her. She needs his love and approval in a way that I do not (won’t go into the reasons here). I think I will need to say to her, I am willing to be the “bad cop” and deal with his objections to being moved. She is not able to make this tough decision because she cannot bear to have him mad at her. I have tried to explain to her that we are in loco parentis now. He is like our child and we have a duty to make decisions that he cannot make. She does not have children and she does not remember having to make kids do things they didn’t want to do that were in their best interest. He needs us to take over. He isn’t safe in AL and needs to go to SL. I’m not even convinced that he will be that unhappy because his awareness of place is so low now. He’s in his own head and may not even notice.
Oof. You are nicer than I am. How far away is she? Why hasn’t she been to see him?
I would tell her that you are moving him April 1 or whenever (if you can act independently) unless she comes to see him to get an updated assessment of his condition.
This hits with me, because my childless brother also was in denial about our parents’ decline and moved more slowly than my sister and I would. This becomes about safety.
