<p>I haven’t been on this thread yet but now I’m ready to fire my 88-year-old mother. So here I am venting! </p>
<p>Quick background: she fell and broke one wrist last fall; as soon as it healed she fell and broke the other wrist. Yet she doesn’t think she has a problem. She got part-time home aides with the first wrist, was very unhappy with the experience. So with the other wrist, she moved to an apartment in a nearby senior home until it healed. Was also unhappy with that experience. Now she’s home in her condo, refusing aides, refusing a button, and insisting on driving herself (took her three tries to pass her driver’s test last week before her 88th birthday). </p>
<p>Luckily my brother lives and works 5 minutes away; I’m a half hour to an hour away depending on traffic on the Tristate. So he’s been dealing with most of it. I try not to feel guilty by remembering that he also got the benefit of years of free baby sitting and driving his kids around (which I didn’t get) so it kind of balances for him.</p>
<p>Anyway, my nearly 97 year old MIL passed away Monday night. She lived in the east and DH had been back and forth three times over the last couple of months; he went out last week and was there at the end. DS and I flew out Tuesday for the funeral which was Wednesday, then back home tonight. DH is sitting shiva in his mother’s home and won’t be back here until next week.</p>
<p>Why am I firing my mom (OK, not really)? Because she hasn’t even bothered to call DH or ask to talk to him when I call her. I called her Wednesday night; she said she had thought of us all day but didn’t want to call because she didn’t know when anything was happening or if there would be people over. Sounded peeved. I guess it was my fault for not giving her the entire schedule, which I didn’t even know myself until that morning. I said no one else was around and DH was free that night and would be at that house for the next several days. My mom started a long dissertation of how she can’t clean properly for Passover and what she is doing. I managed to close off the conversation.</p>
<p>Tonight I called her when DS and I got back. She said she was trying to follow where everyone was but didn’t have all the information. I told her DH would be sitting shiva by himself and that we felt so sorry for him. She again started telling me all about how she was cleaning for Passover. I told her she was fixated on cleaning and obviously not interested in talking about anything else and I would see her Monday for seder. Which I am throwing here for myself, DS, mom, brother, and SIL. My brother actually managed to fly out east for the funeral, a tremendous effort on short notice and connecting flights each way, which was greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>It will be quite an interesting seder, with a mother who hasn’t managed to even extend condolences to my husband, and a brother who took two days out of his very busy life to be with us. If she starts talking about cleaning…</p>
<p>Marilyn- I feel your pain. When my mother died 8 years ago, my mother in law, who knew my parents well and liked them, never expressed condolences to me, though I always got along well with her. When DH said he was surprised about that, she had the same excuse, didn’t know when to call, etc. When she came for a visit here a few months later, she was “off” - more critical, controlling, asking for things that I had already provided. She found out later that she had had a couple of mini-strokes and it was just enough to make her impossible. She had a cold, so she would go to my birthday dinner, but my father shouldn’t join us, for example. I am learning that what you see is what you get as people start to fail and that there is frequently an underlying condition creating limitations. The world view can become very small when all their effort is on staying afloat day to day. </p>
<p>Ultimately, it helped to focus on the basics of what will work and grieve the loss of a more fully engaged person. Safety issues become paramount. It is distressing to me that frail 88 year olds get 3 chances to pass a driver’s test, but that is a particular hot button of mine. By way of encouragement, my MIL has shown some courtesy, compassion and appreciation in the ensuing years. We also re-calibrated our expectations. </p>
<p>How thoughtful of your brother to travel for the funeral. Clearly, you and your DH are straight out with present circumstances, and anyone would be. Take good care of yourselves. Vent as needed. Many here have been there. </p>
<p>Hospice nurse who is case manager for each patient can usually advise family if we are talking “days not weeks” vs “weeks not months”. They observe indicators (nutrition, pulse, breathing, urine color) that say when the body is starting to shut itself down naturally. They will be first to say they can’t predict exactly. But IME these frameworks help travelers to plan, or the In-place to leave town with some greater ease.</p>
<p>We are planning to Skype Passover Seder from my dying brother’s nursing home bed (ALS/Lou Gherig) with my other brother in place there. Bro can only blink and speak at this point but wants to hear the old family songs! </p>
<p>I have to accept that we can’t include our own mother (!!) whose Alzheimer’s makes it too sad for her and her odd interactions distress the dying brother. This Seder is for him. She will have a visit with foods on a different day completely. That was hard on us siblings since Mom taught us everything. Let’s just hope Mom gets a next year and that Skype doesn’t fail us. We are having a tech rehearsal with just my healthy brother beforehand. I long ago read about Arlo Guthrie’s Bar Mitzvah in hospital room as his dad Woody Guthrie was dying of Huntngton’s Corea. So this will be a very modified Seder but at least it’ll happen.</p>
<p>Marilyn Could your mom be obsessing on Passover cleaning as just a symbol of all that isn’t right for her, as in “out damned spot!”. I know you will hold your family together with love and ladles of soup. I’m so sorry for your Husband’s recent loss. Kudos to your brother for dropping everything to attend, I can imagine how comforting that was to all.</p>
<p>Marilyn, I am sorry for your DH and your family. Kudos to your brother, let him know how much it meant because we can see that it did!
I get it on firing your mom. Then she will take another turn (maybe) and be clingy and try so hard to be “good”. I find venting here helped me a lot when there was the angry feeling. Now I am nostly sad and don’t need as much venting. </p>
<p>travelnut,</p>
<p>"“The world view can become very small when all their effort is on staying afloat day to day.”"</p>
<p>That is very very true. That is where my mom is now. She can’t remember what she did yesterday, so she reports on her weight and how she doesn’t eat too many cookies every single day. I just am glad she had cookies there in the AL place that are good and she eats them. </p>
<p>paying3. I am glad technology can help! I hope the Sedar is a great memory and a good thing to think about. </p>
<p>Marilyn, so sorry you are going through all of this. Condolences on the loss of your MIL. </p>
<p>Travelnut’s comment that “The world view can become very small when all their effort is on staying afloat day to day” is so wise. Your mother is in over her head, with her fragile health. She is working so hard on an effort to be self-sufficient that she can’t spare any mental energy for anyone else.</p>
<p>I posted here a few months ago about my mother, who is slowly declining into dementia. She wanted to take me or one of my sisters on a cruise, and we really didn’t want to go. Happily, my brother and sister-in-law went with her. All had a wonderful time! </p>
<p>Next month I’ve set up a family reunion for Mom and her kids, kids-in-law and as many grandchildren as can make it, at a nice resort back East. As Mom declines, these family times together become more precious. (My eldest brother is not attending, with some trumped-up excuse. Grrr. I have to remind myself that like my son, he has Aspergers and doesn’t understand the family dynamics and what it means to our mother to have all of us together.)</p>
<p>I tried finding posts by some of the people who said they posted there to see if I could find the threat that way, but that doesn’t seem to work any more. You used to be able to click on someone’s name and, among other things, it showed you other posts by that person. Anybody know if you can still do that and how?</p>
<p>I was the second to last to post a couple of days ago, and I can’t find my own post. Not controversial (it was about my own family’s situation) and didn’t get any warnings.</p>
<p>To find other people’s posts, you click on their user name. On the left side of the screen that appears, there’s a column that starts “Activity”, “Threads”, “Replies”. Click on “Replies” and you can see their posts.</p>
<p>Good afternoon. I hope all of us parents helping their parents/inlaws will find their way here for now. I posted recently that my dad had a stroke and is in hospice in the hospital. Until a year ago he was caretaker to my stepmother who now has a live-in aide. Her son was going to put her into a nursing home in NY, but after I emailed him (and after he found out how much it would cost), he decided to bring her to Colorado where he lives in his very active retirement from his career as an anesthesiologist. I know he doesn’t like his mother very much (and she could be a very difficult person, I can attest to that as Johnny-on-the-spot for the past 4 years) but I am glad for his decision. My dad must have told me 10 times over the past year that he hoped to live longer than she did because he didn’t want her son to put her in a home to die, which will probably happen but since the laws in NY are different from the laws in CO, it will be a less restrictive and hopefully less grim setting for her. (Cheaper too!)</p>
<p>I have not been able to communicate much with my dad who has been agitated and has been getting a lot of meds that put him out. But after my high school senior daughter’s and my very good visit to the school she will attend yesterday, I am about to leave for the hospital and I will try to tell him that she will be ok.</p>
<p>None of us are the least bit religious or even spiritual but I appreciate the good wishes I always found on the original thread. </p>
<p>I am indeed an “old mom,” will be 66 in June. I adopted my daughter from China when I was 49 and she was almost 2. Before, I was worried that losing my baby to college, all I would have is the burden of caring for my dad and stepmother, which wasn’t easy (although therapy really helped–Dr. Freud Never Sleeps!). And now it looks like I will have neither. Oh well.</p>