What to do with a Mother who won't sell her home and expects us to take care of her?
We live two hours away and I cannot give up my job. Where to begin...my mother has been divorced since 1989 but she is obsessed with that. I love both my parents very much, but their divorce is between them and I am constantly reminded by her "what my dad did" and that I should not have anything to do with him. She lives alone in the home that my father built for them over 55 years ago. My husband and I live two hours away and I have a very good job. My husband was laid off several years ago and has not been able to find a FT job since - some contract work in the engineering field here and there.
So, she has a large ranch home with 1.5 acres and thinks at 85 she can maintain it "with some help." She is very particular and enlists the help of some of her friends - who are saints, by the way - to do this. She has alienated my brother, my husband and me with her constant lamenting of how my father left her. My brother lives on the east coast and doesn't visit much (wonder why?). So, we have tried to help my mom over the last 12 years. She does not have a mortgage but very little in savings. She went to a seminar given by a local elder attorney last night, then proceeded to tell me how scared she is because basically she would just have to sell her own home so that she could go to a "dirty old nursing home", unless "her kids would take care of her like she did her parents". (My grandparents lived a mile from my mom's house and my mom did not work - Dad did.)
What should a child do when she knows that moving her parent into her home would be the worst mistake ever? And, what options does my mother have? How can I convince her to sell her home and look for an assisted living facility? I see it all going downhill from here. She is not eating much lately and is losing some weight (she is a little heavy) and says it's from worry. I don't know what solutions to offer her but I think we are just frustrated that she did not sell the home twenty years ago and get a more manageable place to live.
We offered to help her move but she said it's just too overwhelming for her. So, she stays in her home and worries about every little thing. Visiting Angels? Forget it - she won't let Comcast in her house let alone a caregiver!
Bottom line: she CANNOT live with my husband and I. She is very difficult to get along with and thinks she never does anything wrong. She would be miserable and so would we. I do love my mom and appreciate how she raised me, but I am tired of feeling responsible for her mental health and tired of the guilt trips. She really is quite intelligent but manipulative.
So, without knowing me some of you may think I'm horrible but, believe me, I know there are others going through this! I don't want anything to happen to my mom but she is responsible for her own happiness, but I believe she thinks I am.
Present her with options and repeat (CLEARLY) that you will make the move happen and she won't have to worry about that aspect. Then offer to take her to visit the places. If you have done your research properly, only give her a choice of 3 places.
Make sure she is told you love her but cannot take care of two homes and you want her to have fun with all of the activities and events in a senior community. I agree, don't take her into your home, especially not at this point. You would never be able to entertain her day and night and the senior communities can do exactly that. Good luck.
geewiz, we have tried this - sort of. We looked at places in our town and the ones that would be good enough for her were over $5K per month! The others, well, she would never live there because the neighborhood isn't nice enough. She's rather high-maintenance.
Kimber166 - so you also have a mother who tried to make you choose which parent to be loyal too, huh? I have to sit on her most of the time because she compulsively loops every subject back to my dad. She seethes with anger about him after all these years. I just don't tell her when I see him. When my step-sister died in 2010, my husband and I went to the funeral, naturally. I really did not know her well, but out of respect for my dad and stepmother...my mom found out and confronted me, telling me I should have not gone. I told her it was none of her business.
I am going to figure this out.
I ended up having to just take control of things. I started by having her mail forwarded to me via the US Post Office website.
Mom's dementia was a lot farther along than anybody realized. She got a **lot** of help from my dad's brother & his wife next door. She had run off everybody else. She was alone, bored, confused, and in complete denial about the state of everything. She was also hallucinating & sundowning, frequently scared of men with red eyes outside her window 15 feet off the ground.
She will listen to my husband because he is a man, so I had him talk to her - with talking points I wrote for him. Something along the line of:
==it's time you had it easy
==wouldn't you like to have more fun
==we know you are often scared and we can change that.
==it's time you let us take care of you (Mom ate this up! A dream come true!)
Us "taking care of her" involved acquiring a senior apartment in a continuum care facility (using her money not ours). We moved her up with us, and installed her in that apartment. Her choice was apartment A or B. Not if it was going to happen. Not "do you want to do this or that". What she wanted - to stay put - would have been far too dangerous.
6 months after that, she was wait-listed for the assisted living unit. She fell, and had a 5 day hospital stay. She went into the nursing care wing after that. Fast forward 6 months, she had a psychotic episode and was hospitalized again for 5 days. When she came out of that, she went into the secure dementia unit, and that is where she is now, but in hospice care there.
There comes a time where mom & dad aren't safe (mentally or physically) on their own and somebody has to take charge and intervene. What you do & how you go about it will be unique to your situation, but this site will be a never ending source of information and support for you, no matter what you choose.
Her friends told her that I needed to come down to help her with the legal stuff. (Bad daughter!) She comprehended it quite well, actually, and just doesn't have the money to spend on it. Her friends must wonder why we aren't down there all the time. According to her they are always helping her. They don't get to see the side that we do - they see her "public persona".
Glad your mom would listen to your husband. My mom said she is scared of mine. It's because he is very straightforward with her and tells her the truth. Sometimes, when she is going on and on about something he'll just tell her how it is. He isn't disrespectful, just very direct. And she can't handle that - she wants to be coddled. But my husband won't give up - he will keep trying to help her. Just one of the reasons why I love him!
Then you'll be scrambling to sell her place to pay for her placement. That's how it winds up with a lot of folks on these boards. With your mom's personality, that may be the best you can hope for, since she's not willing to consider anything else at this point. Just stay strong on her not moving in with you!! Hugs...this isn't easy!
I told my parents early on that when the time comes that they need help around the house that they would need to hire people to do the work. Yet I found myself running them all over creation because Dad stopped driving. Hard to schedule when one is working. I should have set boundaries back then.
I tried professional caregivers for my parents but Mom told them to leave after 3 days. So what happened was Mom [97] was exhausting herself with her "job" of being the wife do all the cooking, laundry, cleaning, and being with Dad.
As with sandwich42plus Mom in her post above, my Mom fell and had a long hospital stay, then into rehab, and now back to the hospital. Same psychotic episodes and now unable to walk. If only my parents would have listened to me, but I am their "kid" so what do I know. Once in awhile my sig other will step in and make suggestions, lo and behold they will listen to him :P
Elder believe that nursing homes are still asylums, not realizing that the newer ones are like living in a 5-star hotel.
Have you considered independent living? A nice senior's apartment complex can have many amenities without the cost of assistive living. It might make a good stepping stone towards what you want but allow her to maintain her feeling of independence for now.
Same with the "magical thinking" as I see it. Your mom sees her kids taking care of her as the solution, without apparently considering that her son lives far away and rarely sees her, and her daughter lives 2 hours away and works full time. How does she expect that this can happen? I doubt that she would be happy living with you and your husband even if you were willing to allow that.
Sadly, I think Blannie is correct that the status quo will continue until an emergency occurs and you'll be scrambling to find a placement for her. That seems to be my situation anyway. But if you're serious about wanting her to move to a more manageable space, I'd suggest that you not make it too easy for her to keep things the way they are. Don't accommodate her desire to stay in her home by letting her make inroads into your work time or your time at home with your husband. Don't give up your weekends to run her errands and take care of her home and yard. Make her live the consequences of her choices.
Close to 5 years ago, my sisters assured my tearful mother that she would not need to go to assisted living, while I sat there with my mouth open in shock. Since then, my life has not been my own. I'm not the one who made this commitment but most of the burden of it has fallen on me from the very start. Once you start giving the "little help" that your mother needs to stay at home, you'll end up being asked for more and more help as her needs increase. It seems perfectly natural to our parents that we should give up more and more of our lives as they need more and more help. Don't let yourself get drawn into that if there's any other option.
My husband has predicted that when it happens, it will be a fall or a stroke. We will have to empty that house of 50 years of stuff and put it on the market. Granted, she is not living like a hoarder or in filth, but we've been encouraging her for years to get rid of things. She finally packed some boxes and when she found out we couldn't come down on Labor Day weekend, she said we really put her in a bind because she was out of room to set boxes on the table and we told her we would come and take them - we never committed to Labor Day weekend, though. I said, "Mom, I'm sure after all the years you've waited to do this, a couple of weeks aren't going to make a difference." She did not have a reply to that. Foot DOWN!
If nothing else, it's extremely comforting to know there are others grappling with this.
So what did my cousin do, he decide it was time for him and his wife to sell their own single family home and move into a 55+ retirement complex... there just was no way being in his 70's that he could continue mowing THREE large yards and maintaining three large houses. The Moms just wouldn't listen.
How fair was that? His Mom and Mom-in-law got to enjoy their own homes for decades and decades, yet he had to sell his own dream house that he and his wife had worked and saved for for 40 years.
Repeat daily, and sometimes much more than daily. All else can follow after that. This is very common that the parent who needs caregiving loses the ability to have perspective at the same time. Get that durable POA (for the 'in case something happens' ) and wait.
Meanwhile, with the hints, it's up to you - you can challenge them, for the avoidance of doubt; or you can bat them away with a little laugh. I personally would want to challenge them, as nicely as possible, in the hope that your mother might be persuaded to give her future a bit more practical thought.
For your own comfort: you are not responsible for the decisions of another competent adult. Hold tight to that thought.
Then Dad asked about the cost of living in Assisted Living, told him it most likely be half the cost compared to having the caregivers in his home. And that I will preview some places and then let him look at them, too.
Also told him of an option of having someone move in who would be there day after day and the cost would also be less... but in the back of my mind I worry about caregiver burn out even for someone who is getting paid.
Since Dad is able to pay for his own care, I will let him make the choice. Multipass, don't know if that would work for your Mom, give her only a couple of choices otherwise she is on her own. I know, easier said then done.
I think when people don't want to be a burden they should do one of two things, preferably both. They should work long and save money, so that they can afford hired help for the routine tasks that they can't manage themselves. And/or they should accept that they can't manage a house, car, yard, and all the trimmings, and move to the most maintenance-free environment they can afford. Senior apartment, group home, assisted living, etc.
My mother retired at 58 to enjoy herself. I am spending my retirement doing her grunt work for free. She used all her spare cash, when she had it, for vacations, trips, travel. I haven't been out of the state in five years. She takes no responsibility for the fact that things have ended up this way. "I can't help getting old." is her teary attitude. Along with "Can you imagine how it feels to not be able to do these things for myself anymore?"
Blather indeed!
On one hand, I know that as long as I stay here doing what I'm doing, nobody is motivated to look for any other solutions. On the other hand, I know that other solutions are going to be very difficult to come by, and are going to cause a lot of suffering.
"Mom, I can't do this anymore." is the easy part. The hard part if figuring out the answer to her next question, which will undoubtedly be "But who is going to do it then? How can I possibly manage?" Those are the answers I don't have.
What would happen to her if she had no children? Or if you lived in Timbuktu, or were in prison?
Many years ago, I lived next door to a lady who was a senior when I moved in, and was quite infirm and blind, by the time her children approached me to do some caregiving for her. I said no, firmly. Offers to pay, etc., arguments of, but you'll be able to pay someone to clean your house, watch your kids. NO.
They figured it out. They were scattered across the country. One came for a week and got the Medicaid application started and was able to get her qualified for some in home care. I know it's not simple. But it can be done.
If she were eligible for a nursing home, I would not sacrifice my life to keep her out of one. Believe me.
Finally me breaking my shoulder last spring did put a damper on the demands... yet he figured I could still go to Home Depot and the employees would put those 30 bags into my vehicle. He wasn't thinking about who is going to unload that mulch..... [sigh]. Order it, Dad, and have it delivered. Oh no, he wasn't going to pay a delivery charge :P Where is my helmet, this is a head banging moment.
Multipass, start saying you can't do this or that anymore. I found by enabling my parents it had kept them living much longer in their large home, but in the mean time it was stressing me out to where I didn't have the energy to take care of my own home :(