That's a worry @Ethne Alba . Have you had any help from Social Services regarding finding a new place?This site is a useful place to start on your search, https://www.carehome.co.uk/ if you need some ideas.
All families are in the same boat- no one’s fault, no blame, no disgraces..... just one of those things. Everything starts Monday and in our case there are a few more complications to enliven proceedings.
The mercy is that nothing Can happen until after the weekend though. So this household went to a very quiet beach, took photos, collected shells, bought four birthday cards from a local artist and finished off by purchasing THE most glorious five stemmed , super sturdy, apple mint.... the size of an adult’s arm for £1 from a roadside stall.
I ll take that, thank you Lord!
Similarly chilled day planned for tomorrow plus phone conversations with other siblings. Maybe the last chilled day for a while, I am going to embrace it!
@Sarasa that website is on my list, third I think! Thank you thank you.
I used to work in Care , but long ago and have not had hands on responsibility for AP. This now changes. Steep learning curve coming up. First port of call present managers. Second the resettlement team.
In these kinda times I m sort of going to trust in God and systems..... and build in Plenty of long walks for when I can’t hear the first and the second crashes.
Sounds like a lovely way to get away from the stress @Ethne Alba . I've always found the Dementia Talking Point forum a good place for advice and general off-loading https://forum.alzheimers.org.uk if you need it.
I'm off to visit my mother on Tuesday. I seem to have got into a routine of going once a month, the difference being that since my last visit I've moved 160 miles away. I'm combining it with a last visit to my hairdressers in the area. I booked the appointment six weeks ago when I wasn't at all sure the move was actually going to happen. One of the things I need to decide is whether to leave mum where she is or move her to home near here. Pros and cons with both.
Thinking of you @North East Quine .
@Sarasa , I did wonder what would happen to your mother when you moved. Once the Dowager had settled in it would have taken a lot to make me move her, especially as she had local friends who visited more often than I did!
Good luck to all of you still coping with an AP or two
Isn't your mother reasonably near your brother @Sarasa? Wasn't that part of the decision in placing her? How would she cope with moving now she's settled somewhere?
When my dad needed to go into full-time care, the local authority in Orkney tried to persuade my brother and sister that he should be moved to a home in Edinburgh, but it wouldn't have been practical - for one thing the Edinburgh authority didn't see why they should take someone who had never lived there (understandable), and for another, he'd probably have more people visiting him in Orkney than the family in Edinburgh could have managed (they were all working).
My mother went into Assisted Living the first of May. My brother sold her house a week ago so I went down to help clear the house this weekend. I went down with a small pick-up (van) thinking I could rent a trailer for some of the large things that would not fit into the pick-up. I was shocked to find out there were no U Haul trailers for rent in all of Southern Idaho. So brother and I loaded the pick up as much as we could and then I will have to go down again later.
Going down I had very mixed feelings. Mom is still alive, but we are dividing her possessions. I wish we could wait until after she was gone, but with the house sold we have to get it ready for the new owners.
Mom is 96 and is on oxygen. She gets easily confused. I went to see her yesterday, but she had expected me to see her on Friday. Today, when I called, though, I don't think she remembered I saw her yesterday. She did remember I was going to take some of her belongings, but she could not place when I had done it.
Hey ho
This end of life thing is odd isn’t it? Especially when protracted and the mind starts to close down before the body. @Gramps49 , sympathies as we also found it hard to clear up APs belongings. Mostly as AP was SO very disinterested in taking anything with them into this new phase.
My AP has outlived relatives and friends of equal age who would be able to visit for reasons of love/ care / friendship. Any local visitor had to be fairly resilient as AP usually took one look then very firmly closed their eyes. I think the church just decided AP was not worth visiting . ( whole other rant thread there) The monthly holy communion people moved away, AP’s church minister changed, no one has picked up AP and frankly we were done pleading.
Then COVID.
So apart from designated visitor -& one window visit from relative- nothing since March 2020.
Sister Useless. She has pretended to be concerned with my exhaustion. Frequently she says that if I go on a bit of a retreat, she would come down to take care of any needs of our APs. So, when she asked where I would like to go if I could, I told her my little dream (mentioned somewhere above, I believe) of going to a spring north of here for ten days. She (goodness, gracious) couldn't come for ten days...how about two days in the middle? That's exactly what she did the last time I took a few days...two years ago!!! At the time, when she said she'd take care of the APs, she didn't mention that she didn't mean the whole time I was gone!!! But, she has frequently reminded me that she will be staying in a place during July where it would actually be easier for her to come down for two days to make sure the parents are cared for.
So, a friend is staying in a lovely vacation home for three weeks in July, and invited me and a couple of other friends to stay with her the third week. When I hesitated, she said she would call Daughter-Unit so they could double team me. And she did! D-U was thrilled that I had a chance for a little R&R. I checked the calendar, and miraculously, the APs have NO doctor visits that week! I told my friend that I would be very pleased to join her!
So...Sister Useless. I let her know the dates...in July as she suggested...and she sent a curt response that she would be travelling those dates.
As usual, I thank God for D-U and her dear husband, who have been faithful in visiting and caring for their grandparents. They will be available for anything my APs need. They're already making plans to take them on outings. These two angels I consign to Heaven...at a much later date!
JJ, so pleased you are getting a well deserved break. It sounds like DU is, an apple that didn't fall far from the tree
(I don't know if that phrase is used in the US, but here in NZ, it is used of an offspring who grows up with the same values their parents taught them).
Huia, we do indeed use that phrase! And thank you for that heart warming compliment! Sojourner, I'm afraid she (my sister) won't give a care when our parents are gone according to some of the things she has texted to me. I hope her children will be kinder to Sister Useless than she is to our parents, but she certainly isn't leading them by example, is she?
I'd agree about the right home being more important than distance, though having not managed to get back to London to see mum due to train difficulties last week, a home in this area does seem rather tempting. @Curiosity killed , we were going to move mum near my brother rather than me, then he became seriously ill so a home near me made more sense.
So many connections with your stories as they unfold - I'm sorry I'm an infrequent visitor here as you are really all so supportive of one another and I feel like a sort of FIFO (mining jargon I think, "fly in fly out").
Mrs Z turned 99 yesterday. I booked a week or two back to come up and be with her - tricky as Kuruman is currently in Oz and I'm under a bit or pressure with a big work assignment this coming weekend. But you know (where's my halo emoji? ... you know ... just so you all notice my virtue ... not)? So I drove-and-ferried up on Sat/Sun and here I am.
At any rate it transpires that Mrs Z was trundled off into hospital last Friday after another fall ... bruising and a slight unrelated and as yet undiagnosed fever, probably a UTI. So #99 was spent in hospital - the staff were gorgeous, one of my sons joined me, and we made the day as special as we could for her. The fever has largely abated.
As a special birthday present the gerontologists or geriatricians or whatever the Dealing With Old(er) People Specialists are called these days drifted in, totally coincidentally of course, to see her while I was there. I dunno how the staff pulled that one - it was about as coincidental as the sunrise but masterfully played. Fooled me.
And after a few normal test "silly questions" (said gerontologist #1's own words) to which Mrs Z knew the answers by rote and I thought shit here we go, she's out-foxed them yet again, gerontologist #2 arrived, greeted gerontologist # 1 in a "fancy seeing you here" way for display purposes only, and immediately popped the statement. "Mrs Z, happy birthday, but I'm afraid we have something to say." They had assessed her home circumstances (Brother Z and Mrs Z have argued for a year now that she's wonderful and no problems, Sister Z and I have argued she is living in unsanitary conditions and is a danger to herself). She went in for a fight, and they smiled, waited, and then presented her with evidence. She capitulated at last, asking only that I be there to assist the transition ... which the gerontologists insist should be asap and preferably with no interim return home.
So Mrs Z has acquiesced at last and the specialists were wonderful. Independent/assisted living is to be it.
She'll make her 100, I suspect.
Except that two hours later the case social worker came in to start the next round of conversations.
"NO ONE IS PUTTING ME IN ONE OF THOSE PLACES."
Sigh. She was belligerent and angry and harkened back to a (faulty, I would say) assessment she had many months ago where she had convinced the specialist of her amazing independence (he never saw the shit on the floor or the incontinence pads scattered or the rotten food in the fridge or considered the number of black outs and falls she has, believing her "Oh that happened once." ) She had or chose to have no recollection of the morning conversation.
So yeah. In a couple of hours we start again and the gerontologists and the social worker and Sister Z and I will present the case once more. Brother Z is unable to get here, and he too capitulated when I rang him yesterday but hasn't been told about the uncapitulation ...
If you've survived this long tail I'm sorry to bore you. Guess I needed to vent somewhere and you peeps are wonderful, even to this FIFO visitor!
And tonight I have to drive and ferry 800 kms/500 miles home again. More virtue signalling (rolleyes).
Trying to deal with my folks from afar--my stepdad keeps sending me rather pitiful emails, attempting to build a relationship with me (okay) and always but always including a plug on me calling my mother more often (NOT okay). Though I love her, there is 50 years of severe verbal abuse there, and I have had to set some extremely firm boundaries on our conversations--and I still go away from a phone call depressed for two days, more often than not. She is on a low-information diet (because information I give her is often weaponized against me later) and I refuse to listen to criticism of beloved relatives, my weight, my health, my work, our church, my marriage, and so forth. Nor will I pass on confidential information pertaining to others, or get involved in speculating about it either. So you can see that it becomes a bit fraught trying to find a topic. In fact it usually devolves into a monologue where she tells me how horrible a neighbor or healthcare worker has been to her, while I say nothing. This is just not good for my mental health.
I tried an experiment several months ago where I responded to one of her outrageous speeches just like a normal daughter would--one who had not been cowed into silence. As expected, it was like walking into a buzzsaw. She did actually amend her behavior on that one thing a tad, but I'm not sure the price was worth it.
Sorry about all the background. My issue now is, do I talk to my stepfather, even in the briefest hints, about why precisely I am not calling my mother daily or every other day? He has in the past refused to hear me or my sister when we attempted to explain the issues. "Settle it with your mother," he says. Which means that for 30 years he has had only her view of our relationships, and has parroted her line on pretty much everything. But now that my sister is gone and my mother has that much less outside input (she alienated my brother years ago), he is possibly singing another tune--reminding me out of the blue that he has training in confidentiality, for instance, if there's something I want to tell him.
So I'm torn. If I spoke to him (and how? It's not quite the thing for an email), the substance of it would be brief--"My parents abused me emotionally and verbally during my childhood, and my mother has continued this into my adulthood, which makes it difficult for me to talk with her when others are not around to prevent her starting up again."
I rather think he won't believe me, and that would change my current situation not a bit. I doubt he would tell my mother, but if he did, that wouldn't make much difference either.
If he DID believe me, either as a result of having seen/heard some stuff, or maybe because my sister told him things--well, that gets stickier. It would mean that he finally had an explanation for why I call in such a limited way, and why I refuse to do things like basing my professional writing gigs on my alleged idyllic childhood. So I wouldn't get those appeals anymore. But then, am I going to fuck up their marriage in some way? Should I just let sleeping dogs lie?
Mr. Lamb thinks I should just start upping my call frequency and bear the resulting depression, on the grounds that "she's your mother" and "old people are like that." I'm taking his advice with a shakerful of salt, as his mother died when he was very young, and he idealizes all mothers as a result. He also brought up the fact that I call an old lady in our church daily precisely because she has alienated her own children in a similar way and is left alone in the world--and thinks I can transfer that energy to my own mother. Me, I think it's always easier to do somebody else's heavy lifting, because there's no prior emotional history between us--which would not be the case if I called my mother daily.
I don't know what to do, and have been sleeping badly as a result. Not to mention crappy concentration at work.
Can you plan a topic in advance for each phone call and a planned timed call? So you maintain contact, but manage it?
An eight or nine year old child I've heard of does this. Her mother is in prison and the child has to make regular calls to her mother, but the whole thing is a bit fraught as child now lives with her full brother, father his new partner and her children. Mother fell out with father for a number of reasons including him reporting her for child abuse, which garnered her one of her prison sentences. So there are a number of topics that are not to be covered - father, stepmother, other siblings as mother only acknowledges these two of children she's abandoned and doesn't do so well on the stepmother's children, drugs or mother's relationship with drugs or education and school.
The other children the mother abandoned are almost certainly the result of forced sex with her drug suppliers. This daughter and her brother are the only two from this relationship, which was consensual. But the grandparents were left with these two and three other abandoned children, by social services as family kinship adoptions is better for kids. Others have been given up for adoption. And the current sentence the mother is serving is partially a result of the life changing injuries the youngest child this daughter knows suffered in mother's care. Which gives a whole host of other taboo subjects.
This child has a list of subjects already pre-planned - favourite cakes, other food we have tried, Halloween traditions around the world, an interesting book. And she will use her planned topic the minute the call starts veering on to the huge list of taboo subjects, and stick to it for the length of time involved. Researched in advance if necessary to have enough material to last.
@Zappa, good luck with persuading your mother into somewhere where she is supported.
@Sarasa - difficult deciding what to do with your mother now she's settled then.
Lamb Chopped please look after yourself when interacting with your mother. Yes, she is your mother, for me that made it so much harder than a random old person with whom I didn't have a history.
No one I ever knew could hurt me as much with a few words and she wasn't a particularly bad person.
Echoing what @Huia said, take care of yourself @Lamb Chopped . @zappa, do you have the equivalent of Deprivation of Liberty Safeguarding protocols in NZ. Here in the UK mum moved to a care home much against her will, but was judged at not being capable of making sensible decisions any more so a DoLS was put in place. It's reviewed once a year, but mum's dementia has moved on since then and I think she is quite happy where she is now. I'm wondering you you could tell your mum she is moving to the assisted living place to convalesce, and as soon as the doctors think she's fit she can go home. I know it's a lie, but sometimes you have to do that to keep an elderly person on-side. It's all horrible and tough I know.
Lamb Chopped, I was thinking along the lines of what Curiosity killed said; have a script ready for any conversations you have with your mother. And I don't think anyone can really tell you how often to call your mother! Having a time limit might be a help to your mental health, too.
It's a shame nobody is telling your mother how she should interact with you, and (it seems to me) only making demands (or strong suggestions) to you.
Why is your step dad so insistent about you calling your mom? Is she telling him that she misses talking to you? Or is she giving him a lot of grief about your lack of calls and he's trying to take the heat off of himself?
Just some thoughts as I read your post. (((Lamb Chopped)))
I suspect this suggestion is no use, LC, because I think you are a better person than I, but I have got through difficult phone calls with my mother in the past by having a bingo card of some of her favourite phrases and topics. Mine had squares which said e.g. "someone I apparently knew in the 1980s but cannot recall has died"* "update of random person's illness" "rapid changing of subject away from good news" "criticism of X's housekeeping standards" etc etc
So you could have squares for "criticism of my weight" ""complaint about neighbour" "criticism of my church" etc etc, and tick them off as the call progresses.
I found it made phone calls a whole lot easier. I know, I know, I'm not a nice person.
*"You do know who I mean! Her eldest son was the year above you at school, or was it two years above you? He married the girl X, you know, her cousin was in your year, what was her name now? Red hair. Then her second son was the year below your brother, he bought that house diagonally across from the Smiths, and then her youngest went to the same Uni as you, though not at the same time of course, because he'd be, what, seven years younger than you? Plays golf Anyway, she died last week." **
**The scary thing is that I've caught myself saying the same sort of thing. Shoot me now.
I think nobody is making suggestions to her because either a) they believe that she is wholly in the right (i.e. have bought the party line) or b) more likely, realize that saying any such thing would get their heads into close contact with a buzz saw. I know that my gentlest attempts to "steer" her unhelpful conversations with my sister, nephews, etc. resulted in close contact with helicopter blades. Any sensible person would refrain.
As for my stepdad, I don't know. I am dead certain she is complaining about how I don't ever call her (and in those terms, I doubt she's being just about the frequency) and I'm fairly sure she's playing the "I'll be dead soon" card as well, because she's played that card with the rest of the family for many years (it used to be "they'll be dead very soon" on account of my grandparents--who both died in their mid-nineties after about 30 years of this line!). I don't know that she's exactly putting heat on him--don't see how she could with any logic--but she could certainly play on his sympathy. And he does have a tendency to do the whole white knight thing and charge into battle, showing people the error of their ways--though I think he got a sharp comeuppance last year when he tried to do that with me and I bit back. Which is why he seems to have mended his ways, and is only asking rather than yelling.
Lamb Chopped - (my sister and) I can really relate to your description of your relationship with your mum. And in the case of Mrs Z I see an old and belligerent women and feel torn between anger and pity.
She ripped into the gerontologist and social worker at the meeting just after my post. We got nowhere. The two specialists have seen it all before. So have sister and I in a way, but not the same way. So I drove and ferried my 800 kms home and feel better now. "I have my books and poetry to protect me."
... The scary thing is that I've caught myself saying the same sort of thing. Shoot me now.
You may jest, but your tale made me laugh out loud.
My sister and I had a very similar conversation just the other day, when I told her I'd heard of the death of a well-known gentleman in Orkney whom we both knew vaguely, but not quite well enough to know how old he would have been. We spent an inordinately long time trying to work it out by knowing the ages of two of his sons (one a little older than me, the other a little younger), and that of one of his nieces. What threw us was that I knew there was an older son, but not how much older he was; I'd assumed that my sister might have remembered him, as she's 6 years older than me, but she didn't.
'The telephone works both ways' sometimes worked for me (not often, I grant you, but might work on your stepfather!)
I've actually said this to them a number of times over the 32 years we've been living half a country apart. It's only in the last year I think that she's actually started to pick up the phone at all. (And yes, travel has always been this one-sided as well, though we're the ones without money, and it means plane fare for three people as opposed to two.)
There's a distinct aroma of "I'm the parent and you owe me" about this.
I'm trying my best not to do this to my own son.
The other thing that complicates matters is that she reliably bricks her phone the moment it is put right, so there is never a time when a phone call to her is picked up. I can generally get through to my stepfather, in any of three ways, but not to my mother. When I do finally have speech with her (a callback, or more likely my stepfather handing over his phone or telling her to call), she spends the first few minutes lamenting how horrible the service providers are on her phone (her computer, and so forth), and how she has given up trying. She has a perfectly capable adult grandson within easy range who seems to be out of the electronic picture now, and I'm suspecting it's for good reason.
I went to see mum today. She was quite happy but didn't want to leave her bed. I don't know if this was just a blip, or if she is beginning to fade away. My mother-in-law is also not in good shape as she has a chest infection. The joys of getting ninety-three I guess.
Told mother about Mr Lamb's fall down a flight of stairs, badly bruised but no hip fracture, thank God. Was then told that she tore an artery open two weeks ago (vivid VIVID description of the bleeding, she estimates two units of blood), but did not consent to leave camp for medical attention, and although she got some a day or so later, it's still oozing two weeks later... All attempts to remonstrate get nowhere, as she used to be a nurse.
Apparently AP was not in possession of the full facts when making their decision to remain where family could only visit once a month.
However AP is now in possession of the facts and has unset an apple cart by expressing a desire to family and management team in current home that they wish to move to Scotland. Somewhere near me. Where it is cooler and they can have weekly visits.
A lovely video call (what?!) with AP today clearly shows that living in a care home during COVID has taken it out of them. AP has lost none of their wit and dry humour, but oh the Time it takes to get that across to others.😢
I would value your prayers going forward, that all involved in this situation can truly act in APs best interests.
Ethne Alba - I've been in a similar position with my mum. It's heart-breaking and you have all my sympathy. If I could say anything more helpful than 'You can't do more than your best' I would.
Comments
@WormInTheGrass , @Doone and @Sarasa (( thank you))!
All families are in the same boat- no one’s fault, no blame, no disgraces..... just one of those things. Everything starts Monday and in our case there are a few more complications to enliven proceedings.
The mercy is that nothing Can happen until after the weekend though. So this household went to a very quiet beach, took photos, collected shells, bought four birthday cards from a local artist and finished off by purchasing THE most glorious five stemmed , super sturdy, apple mint.... the size of an adult’s arm for £1 from a roadside stall.
I ll take that, thank you Lord!
Similarly chilled day planned for tomorrow plus phone conversations with other siblings. Maybe the last chilled day for a while, I am going to embrace it!
@Sarasa that website is on my list, third I think! Thank you thank you.
I used to work in Care , but long ago and have not had hands on responsibility for AP. This now changes. Steep learning curve coming up. First port of call present managers. Second the resettlement team.
In these kinda times I m sort of going to trust in God and systems..... and build in Plenty of long walks for when I can’t hear the first and the second crashes.
I'm off to visit my mother on Tuesday. I seem to have got into a routine of going once a month, the difference being that since my last visit I've moved 160 miles away. I'm combining it with a last visit to my hairdressers in the area. I booked the appointment six weeks ago when I wasn't at all sure the move was actually going to happen. One of the things I need to decide is whether to leave mum where she is or move her to home near here. Pros and cons with both.
Thinking of you @North East Quine .
Good luck to all of you still coping with an AP or two
Isn't your mother reasonably near your brother @Sarasa? Wasn't that part of the decision in placing her? How would she cope with moving now she's settled somewhere?
Going down I had very mixed feelings. Mom is still alive, but we are dividing her possessions. I wish we could wait until after she was gone, but with the house sold we have to get it ready for the new owners.
Mom is 96 and is on oxygen. She gets easily confused. I went to see her yesterday, but she had expected me to see her on Friday. Today, when I called, though, I don't think she remembered I saw her yesterday. She did remember I was going to take some of her belongings, but she could not place when I had done it.
This end of life thing is odd isn’t it? Especially when protracted and the mind starts to close down before the body.
@Gramps49 , sympathies as we also found it hard to clear up APs belongings. Mostly as AP was SO very disinterested in taking anything with them into this new phase.
My AP has outlived relatives and friends of equal age who would be able to visit for reasons of love/ care / friendship. Any local visitor had to be fairly resilient as AP usually took one look then very firmly closed their eyes. I think the church just decided AP was not worth visiting . ( whole other rant thread there) The monthly holy communion people moved away, AP’s church minister changed, no one has picked up AP and frankly we were done pleading.
Then COVID.
So apart from designated visitor -& one window visit from relative- nothing since March 2020.
Sister Useless. She has pretended to be concerned with my exhaustion. Frequently she says that if I go on a bit of a retreat, she would come down to take care of any needs of our APs. So, when she asked where I would like to go if I could, I told her my little dream (mentioned somewhere above, I believe) of going to a spring north of here for ten days. She (goodness, gracious) couldn't come for ten days...how about two days in the middle? That's exactly what she did the last time I took a few days...two years ago!!! At the time, when she said she'd take care of the APs, she didn't mention that she didn't mean the whole time I was gone!!! But, she has frequently reminded me that she will be staying in a place during July where it would actually be easier for her to come down for two days to make sure the parents are cared for.
So, a friend is staying in a lovely vacation home for three weeks in July, and invited me and a couple of other friends to stay with her the third week. When I hesitated, she said she would call Daughter-Unit so they could double team me. And she did! D-U was thrilled that I had a chance for a little R&R. I checked the calendar, and miraculously, the APs have NO doctor visits that week! I told my friend that I would be very pleased to join her!
So...Sister Useless. I let her know the dates...in July as she suggested...and she sent a curt response that she would be travelling those dates.
As usual, I thank God for D-U and her dear husband, who have been faithful in visiting and caring for their grandparents. They will be available for anything my APs need. They're already making plans to take them on outings. These two angels I consign to Heaven...at a much later date!
(I don't know if that phrase is used in the US, but here in NZ, it is used of an offspring who grows up with the same values their parents taught them).
This move is complicated in very many ways, so I am currently blessing social workers and Care Home managers for the fabulous jobs they do!
We are at the “Suitable Care Home V Distance from my home” stage. I ‘m up for me travelling further to get the right home, others less so.
Hey ho
@Curiosity killed , we were going to move mum near my brother rather than me, then he became seriously ill so a home near me made more sense.
Mrs Z turned 99 yesterday. I booked a week or two back to come up and be with her - tricky as Kuruman is currently in Oz and I'm under a bit or pressure with a big work assignment this coming weekend. But you know (where's my halo emoji? ... you know ... just so you all notice my virtue ... not)? So I drove-and-ferried up on Sat/Sun and here I am.
At any rate it transpires that Mrs Z was trundled off into hospital last Friday after another fall ... bruising and a slight unrelated and as yet undiagnosed fever, probably a UTI. So #99 was spent in hospital - the staff were gorgeous, one of my sons joined me, and we made the day as special as we could for her. The fever has largely abated.
As a special birthday present the gerontologists or geriatricians or whatever the Dealing With Old(er) People Specialists are called these days drifted in, totally coincidentally of course, to see her while I was there. I dunno how the staff pulled that one - it was about as coincidental as the sunrise but masterfully played. Fooled me.
And after a few normal test "silly questions" (said gerontologist #1's own words) to which Mrs Z knew the answers by rote and I thought shit here we go, she's out-foxed them yet again, gerontologist #2 arrived, greeted gerontologist # 1 in a "fancy seeing you here" way for display purposes only, and immediately popped the statement. "Mrs Z, happy birthday, but I'm afraid we have something to say." They had assessed her home circumstances (Brother Z and Mrs Z have argued for a year now that she's wonderful and no problems, Sister Z and I have argued she is living in unsanitary conditions and is a danger to herself). She went in for a fight, and they smiled, waited, and then presented her with evidence. She capitulated at last, asking only that I be there to assist the transition ... which the gerontologists insist should be asap and preferably with no interim return home.
So Mrs Z has acquiesced at last and the specialists were wonderful. Independent/assisted living is to be it.
She'll make her 100, I suspect.
Except that two hours later the case social worker came in to start the next round of conversations.
"NO ONE IS PUTTING ME IN ONE OF THOSE PLACES."
Sigh. She was belligerent and angry and harkened back to a (faulty, I would say) assessment she had many months ago where she had convinced the specialist of her amazing independence (he never saw the shit on the floor or the incontinence pads scattered or the rotten food in the fridge or considered the number of black outs and falls she has, believing her "Oh that happened once."
So yeah. In a couple of hours we start again and the gerontologists and the social worker and Sister Z and I will present the case once more. Brother Z is unable to get here, and he too capitulated when I rang him yesterday but hasn't been told about the uncapitulation ...
If you've survived this long tail I'm sorry to bore you. Guess I needed to vent somewhere and you peeps are wonderful, even to this FIFO visitor!
And tonight I have to drive and ferry 800 kms/500 miles home again. More virtue signalling (rolleyes).
PS - have a couple of haloes - you deserve them!
Happy 99th to Mama Z!
Trying to deal with my folks from afar--my stepdad keeps sending me rather pitiful emails, attempting to build a relationship with me (okay) and always but always including a plug on me calling my mother more often (NOT okay). Though I love her, there is 50 years of severe verbal abuse there, and I have had to set some extremely firm boundaries on our conversations--and I still go away from a phone call depressed for two days, more often than not. She is on a low-information diet (because information I give her is often weaponized against me later) and I refuse to listen to criticism of beloved relatives, my weight, my health, my work, our church, my marriage, and so forth. Nor will I pass on confidential information pertaining to others, or get involved in speculating about it either. So you can see that it becomes a bit fraught trying to find a topic. In fact it usually devolves into a monologue where she tells me how horrible a neighbor or healthcare worker has been to her, while I say nothing. This is just not good for my mental health.
I tried an experiment several months ago where I responded to one of her outrageous speeches just like a normal daughter would--one who had not been cowed into silence. As expected, it was like walking into a buzzsaw. She did actually amend her behavior on that one thing a tad, but I'm not sure the price was worth it.
Sorry about all the background. My issue now is, do I talk to my stepfather, even in the briefest hints, about why precisely I am not calling my mother daily or every other day? He has in the past refused to hear me or my sister when we attempted to explain the issues. "Settle it with your mother," he says. Which means that for 30 years he has had only her view of our relationships, and has parroted her line on pretty much everything. But now that my sister is gone and my mother has that much less outside input (she alienated my brother years ago), he is possibly singing another tune--reminding me out of the blue that he has training in confidentiality, for instance, if there's something I want to tell him.
So I'm torn. If I spoke to him (and how? It's not quite the thing for an email), the substance of it would be brief--"My parents abused me emotionally and verbally during my childhood, and my mother has continued this into my adulthood, which makes it difficult for me to talk with her when others are not around to prevent her starting up again."
I rather think he won't believe me, and that would change my current situation not a bit. I doubt he would tell my mother, but if he did, that wouldn't make much difference either.
If he DID believe me, either as a result of having seen/heard some stuff, or maybe because my sister told him things--well, that gets stickier. It would mean that he finally had an explanation for why I call in such a limited way, and why I refuse to do things like basing my professional writing gigs on my alleged idyllic childhood. So I wouldn't get those appeals anymore. But then, am I going to fuck up their marriage in some way? Should I just let sleeping dogs lie?
Mr. Lamb thinks I should just start upping my call frequency and bear the resulting depression, on the grounds that "she's your mother" and "old people are like that." I'm taking his advice with a shakerful of salt, as his mother died when he was very young, and he idealizes all mothers as a result. He also brought up the fact that I call an old lady in our church daily precisely because she has alienated her own children in a similar way and is left alone in the world--and thinks I can transfer that energy to my own mother. Me, I think it's always easier to do somebody else's heavy lifting, because there's no prior emotional history between us--which would not be the case if I called my mother daily.
I don't know what to do, and have been sleeping badly as a result. Not to mention crappy concentration at work.
An eight or nine year old child I've heard of does this. Her mother is in prison and the child has to make regular calls to her mother, but the whole thing is a bit fraught as child now lives with her full brother, father his new partner and her children. Mother fell out with father for a number of reasons including him reporting her for child abuse, which garnered her one of her prison sentences. So there are a number of topics that are not to be covered - father, stepmother, other siblings as mother only acknowledges these two of children she's abandoned and doesn't do so well on the stepmother's children, drugs or mother's relationship with drugs or education and school.
The other children the mother abandoned are almost certainly the result of forced sex with her drug suppliers. This daughter and her brother are the only two from this relationship, which was consensual. But the grandparents were left with these two and three other abandoned children, by social services as family kinship adoptions is better for kids. Others have been given up for adoption. And the current sentence the mother is serving is partially a result of the life changing injuries the youngest child this daughter knows suffered in mother's care. Which gives a whole host of other taboo subjects.
This child has a list of subjects already pre-planned - favourite cakes, other food we have tried, Halloween traditions around the world, an interesting book. And she will use her planned topic the minute the call starts veering on to the huge list of taboo subjects, and stick to it for the length of time involved. Researched in advance if necessary to have enough material to last.
@Zappa, good luck with persuading your mother into somewhere where she is supported.
@Sarasa - difficult deciding what to do with your mother now she's settled then.
'I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned'
No one I ever knew could hurt me as much with a few words and she wasn't a particularly bad person.
@zappa, do you have the equivalent of Deprivation of Liberty Safeguarding protocols in NZ. Here in the UK mum moved to a care home much against her will, but was judged at not being capable of making sensible decisions any more so a DoLS was put in place. It's reviewed once a year, but mum's dementia has moved on since then and I think she is quite happy where she is now. I'm wondering you you could tell your mum she is moving to the assisted living place to convalesce, and as soon as the doctors think she's fit she can go home. I know it's a lie, but sometimes you have to do that to keep an elderly person on-side. It's all horrible and tough I know.
It's a shame nobody is telling your mother how she should interact with you, and (it seems to me) only making demands (or strong suggestions) to you.
Why is your step dad so insistent about you calling your mom? Is she telling him that she misses talking to you? Or is she giving him a lot of grief about your lack of calls and he's trying to take the heat off of himself?
Just some thoughts as I read your post. (((Lamb Chopped)))
So you could have squares for "criticism of my weight" ""complaint about neighbour" "criticism of my church" etc etc, and tick them off as the call progresses.
I found it made phone calls a whole lot easier. I know, I know, I'm not a nice person.
*"You do know who I mean! Her eldest son was the year above you at school, or was it two years above you? He married the girl X, you know, her cousin was in your year, what was her name now? Red hair. Then her second son was the year below your brother, he bought that house diagonally across from the Smiths, and then her youngest went to the same Uni as you, though not at the same time of course, because he'd be, what, seven years younger than you? Plays golf Anyway, she died last week." **
**The scary thing is that I've caught myself saying the same sort of thing. Shoot me now.
As for my stepdad, I don't know. I am dead certain she is complaining about how I don't ever call her (and in those terms, I doubt she's being just about the frequency) and I'm fairly sure she's playing the "I'll be dead soon" card as well, because she's played that card with the rest of the family for many years (it used to be "they'll be dead very soon" on account of my grandparents--who both died in their mid-nineties after about 30 years of this line!). I don't know that she's exactly putting heat on him--don't see how she could with any logic--but she could certainly play on his sympathy. And he does have a tendency to do the whole white knight thing and charge into battle, showing people the error of their ways--though I think he got a sharp comeuppance last year when he tried to do that with me and I bit back. Which is why he seems to have mended his ways, and is only asking rather than yelling.
She ripped into the gerontologist and social worker at the meeting just after my post. We got nowhere. The two specialists have seen it all before. So have sister and I in a way, but not the same way. So I drove and ferried my 800 kms home and feel better now. "I have my books and poetry to protect me."
My sister and I had a very similar conversation just the other day, when I told her I'd heard of the death of a well-known gentleman in Orkney whom we both knew vaguely, but not quite well enough to know how old he would have been. We spent an inordinately long time trying to work it out by knowing the ages of two of his sons (one a little older than me, the other a little younger), and that of one of his nieces. What threw us was that I knew there was an older son, but not how much older he was; I'd assumed that my sister might have remembered him, as she's 6 years older than me, but she didn't.
I've actually said this to them a number of times over the 32 years we've been living half a country apart. It's only in the last year I think that she's actually started to pick up the phone at all. (And yes, travel has always been this one-sided as well, though we're the ones without money, and it means plane fare for three people as opposed to two.)
There's a distinct aroma of "I'm the parent and you owe me" about this.
I'm trying my best not to do this to my own son.
The other thing that complicates matters is that she reliably bricks her phone the moment it is put right, so there is never a time when a phone call to her is picked up. I can generally get through to my stepfather, in any of three ways, but not to my mother. When I do finally have speech with her (a callback, or more likely my stepfather handing over his phone or telling her to call), she spends the first few minutes lamenting how horrible the service providers are on her phone (her computer, and so forth), and how she has given up trying. She has a perfectly capable adult grandson within easy range who seems to be out of the electronic picture now, and I'm suspecting it's for good reason.
Lack of immediate family or contact there is of less importance than AP’s wishes.
Aged Parent 1. Extended family 0.
Quite amusing………..
Told mother about Mr Lamb's fall down a flight of stairs, badly bruised but no hip fracture, thank God. Was then told that she tore an artery open two weeks ago (vivid VIVID description of the bleeding, she estimates two units of blood), but did not consent to leave camp for medical attention, and although she got some a day or so later, it's still oozing two weeks later... All attempts to remonstrate get nowhere, as she used to be a nurse.
However AP is now in possession of the facts and has unset an apple cart by expressing a desire to family and management team in current home that they wish to move to Scotland. Somewhere near me. Where it is cooler and they can have weekly visits.
A lovely video call (what?!) with AP today clearly shows that living in a care home during COVID has taken it out of them. AP has lost none of their wit and dry humour, but oh the Time it takes to get that across to others.😢
I would value your prayers going forward, that all involved in this situation can truly act in APs best interests.
I could weep
Well tbh I have wept
I m crying again !
((Thank you))
Just putting this situation out there Helped Me.
Also, prayers.
Such that …..this morning I was having a Totally Different and not at all difficult conversation with APs social worker.
We ‘re not out of the woods yet, but there are some very clear pathways available to us.
Now excuse me but I suppose I had better get up to speed with testing and PPE. I know Nothing of such matters!