I have an uncle. He is my mother's brother. He would be in his 50s. He's a bachelor. He never met anyone and he lives alone in the house that he grew up in. His and my mother's mother/my grandmother died over 7 years ago. At some stage after her death, an issue arose.
My mother gets a lot of calls from this uncle.
These calls are more annoying than anything else and there is no anger or badness behind these calls. I think my uncle is more simple than anything else. He is on disability allowance so he would be at his home a lot and he probably doesn't have a lot to do. So he probably thinks everyone else is the same - sitting at home doing nothing. Things is, this isn't the case with my mother. She does keep busy. She finds these calls so annoying.
Like, on Sunday morning she turned on her phone in case a call would come through from one of my brothers abroad.
The calls would start from my uncle. More often than not, he has little to say and she finds the calls more irritating than anything else. Sometimes she doesn't feel like talking to him or she's too busy to take the call and she would let the phone ring out. Thing is, my uncle is persistent with his calls. 20-30 minutes later she might get another call.
Other aunties, had the same problem of persist calls from my uncle but they managed to shake him off. One aunty claimed vertigo and claimed she has to limit the use of phones due to that.
At one stage my mam asked an aunty, would she tell the uncle that my mam lost her phone the next time she is speaking to him. She was hoping this would be enough to shake him off. Before the week is out, my uncle had a letter in the mail to my mother with a cash gift to help her buy a new phone. My mam felt bad after that.
Lately, my mother is getting me to answer the phone and tell him something: she's gone away for the weekend
Or she's gone to bed early
Or she's in town
Or she's sick
I'm not always at home to help her like this.
There is no badness whatsoever from my uncle. The calls aren't malicious.
My mother has a budget phone. Not a smartphone phone so there is no option to block his number on the phone.
My mother is at her wits end in relation to these calls. On one hand she wants to keep the line of communication open but she is getting too much calls and she wishes he would just stop or cut down. She doesn't want to come out and say it to him either.
Today, things came to a head. She said she will have to take the phone to the river and throw it in. Thankfully she said it to me before she did that and I explained, it's a good phone. You don't need to throw it away. I showed her the some card and explained this is the piece that she needs to get rid of, if she wants to and she can get a new number.
I suggested to my mother on getting a new phone and number and only giving it to the people she wants to and not the uncle, and she can still have the other phone and turn it on once or twice a week. Maybe tell the uncle an excuse about the battery failing in the phone.
My mother doesn't think this is the answer either.
What do you think we can do here?
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My uncle is persistently calling
20 replies
SMJYellow · 18/10/2017 17:23
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