Today, I called my Mom twice and after finally reaching her, she told me ale was trying to pay her electric bill as they were going to shut it off today for non payment! She couldn't figure out how to pay the bill even with the prompts that were given over the phone. As soon as I found out, I used their bill pay service to take care of it for her. There's still a chance she may be sitting in the dark tonight if they didn't see the payment in time. She's well off and paying her bills is not a hardship, however she has forgotten to pay 2 of her bills in the last month. I was able to put both fires out, thankfully. She truly doesn't see that she is having memory issues. Denial is where we're at. These 2 bills are just a couple of things that have been going on with her and her memory failing. How do you deal with someone who's in denial? Even her doctor doesn't think she should be living alone. I'm at a loss how I can help her?! She already harbors resentment from me trying to get her tested for dementia last spring. She thinks I'm trying to be the "boss". I've had to pull back and spend less time with her in order to protect my feelings from being battered. (Life long story of self-centeredness.) She's getting worse and I'm at a loss as to what I can do. Fyi, I do have her POA for her health while my brother has her POA for her finances (he lives in another state). She's turning 90 this April.
Matilda
Hopefully, he can be trusted but it seems he isn't interested. My wife and I went through a rough patch 12 yrs ago. She put her finances in care of her live-in son with a POA. He was (now passed) a recovering alcoholic. She now has Dementia and no longer knows who I am (since Nov 2019) In June 2021, she asked me to help her find out what her finances were since her son had stopped reviewing them with her. I knew something was amiss, but waited for her to ask me. (long history here of her doing everything for him and the marital conflicts it created) So we set out teleconferencing with the banks (still under COVID then). We found he had misused the POA and stole over $62K of her retirement funds and set up the deed to her pre-marital home to go to his best friend when she died. It's all corrected now but, as Ronald Reagan quoted, "TRUST BUT VERIFY!"