The second new shiny 2019 thread ...

Fantastic news, yolo!

Still plodding on here. All I can do is echo the advice about self-preservation. My mother too wants to make plans for the upcycling/recycling of every item in the house, which I would then have to implement - it’s time-consuming and exhausting.

Mum doesn't have the capacity to agree to anything. She has severe cognitive impairment. She has no capacity to understand the burden she places on us. She has no understanding of anything but that she is frightened and confused and she wants Dad right there right now. Every minute. If he leaves the room she pursues him. I can more or less keep her from going, but if he is in the house she will hunt him down.

It's horrific. They are both 80. He worships the ground she walks on, inexplicably to the rest of the world. He could quite easily kill himself trying to care for her, it is astonishing that he has agreed to this step.

Watching this, I have begged my partner not to do this if I go the same way. It is unbearable to watch.

Bert "when she comes out Dad will still have a companion carer coming in 3 hours 3 days a week, but it is a drop in the ocean. He'll be exhausted again in 48 hours, she consumes energy and attention, and he gets no sleep."

so this is the situation as it stands, and the plan is to return to it in 2 weeks?

how was your mum in terms of agreeing to this 2 weeks? I wonder if perhaps 2 weeks in the home might help her to see that this is too much.

not sure of the ages of your parents....I know there are a lot of elderly looking after each other, but I would have thought that's not realistic beyond just "keeping an eye". Is the lack of sleep due to worrying? Also the "companion carer" thing - I understand he might not want to go out, but could he chill out and read a book or something when the carer is there?

Be it ever so beset by vomiting screaming drunkards, there's no place like home

Bert to be fair, I did really embrace staying over there initially. Where I live is quite rough, I'm sandwiched between pubs that now have late licences and Friday and Saturday is a nightmare.

so when I first stayed there, I was quite overawed by the peace and quiet and niceness of it all.

I'm not saying I won't stay over again at all - I think I'm just in a phase where I need to spend time at home, especially returning to work as well - I literally get cravings for my sofa!

Well done Grace! Staying over away from home is a huge ball-ache, dressed up as "saving you a trip". Ugh.

Mum is in for 2 weeks. She settled ok so Dad and I (and maybe the boy) will visit her tomorrow. See how that goes. When she comes out Dad will still have a companion carer coming in 3 hours 3 days a week, but it is a drop in the ocean. He'll be exhausted again in 48 hours, she consumes energy and attention, and he gets no sleep. I hope he will realise it is unsustainable. I try and take her away when I am off work, but it is so hard, she just wants him. She's like an incubus or succubus or whatever.

yolo that's great news, really pleased to hear that.

Bert sorry, that must be so hard. Is it just respite or will your dad have any extra help when mum returns?

Dint I guess if you like going through that stuff, it helps. But I find it all boring, depressing etc. I live in a small flat, so no chance to accumulate stuff, and I'm really overwhelmed by the amount of stuff, I just find it mad, though I'm sure it's normal for 30+ years in a house.

Part of my frustration is definitely that I would just bin it and mum thinks it's a shocking waste if someone, somewhere in the universe might want it. I talked to mum about how it was stressing me out. She apologised and said "I thought it was light hearted conversation, working out what to do with things".

I said "it makes me feel as if you are adding to my endless to-do list when you want suggestions about how to dispose of specific things - but also, I don't understand why it doesn't just get binned".

She said she'd deal it with herself from now and apologised for stressing me out. I was thinking about how we communicated with each other and how it is influenced by who we are. One of the issues, I think, is that mum doesn't really believe a single childfree woman can be stressed out by just a job and commuting etc.

she likes to be busy. I don't. I feel busy enough.

You know there's an "unspoken judgement" thing that maybe goes on in some families? Both mum and dad are do-ers - dad did a huge amount of charity work on top of his job. I find the thought of all the things they did at my age absolutely exhausting.

I have also told my mother that I won't spending the night there this weekend, so I'll be there most of tomorrow but not tonight. I said that going forward, I really need to think about how we do things because it's not relaxing for me to stay there. I think she found that a bit sad but I had to say it. When Dad was alive, I never thought to stay overnight there - just always wanted my own home and own bed.

yolo wonderful wonderful news!!!!!! So happy for you!!🌺🌺🌺

Brilliant news Yolo, I'm so pleased for you and your DH, it's been a grim few months for you both.

Hope your head isn't too sore this morning!

(10/10 for pissed typing).

Oh yolo! How wonderful!

not sure I can type straight: but brilliant news tonight: 6.30pm call from cancer care nurse: surgeon has seen all scans, all polyps and lymph nodes clear, tumour has reduced considerably. So meeting on Mon is to agree next steps and poss surgery date of June 4. so we went out and got pissed with friends!

mrs bert 🌺🌺hope your dad gets a break. grace you sound exhausted.... your dm seems to be doing ok, step back, protect yourself.
dint awww... it’s making us think about decluttering our stuff. So much of it.
cockroach all......
dm’s Neighbour was wondering if the mobility aid chap was delivering a stairlift to my dm...... they both live in small bungalows!!
yolo how are things?

Thanks yolo. It felt so harsh. If my dad had a broken leg it would feel so different.

Rosa, my mum was a rubbish mum. No emotional warmth, the queen of perma-deferred approval. Violent, and big on degrading, humiliating punishments. It is an accident of geography that I am the daughter dealing, but caring for her has unexpectedly meant I feel that I have overcome her and all she did. I suspect my sisters who live at a distance will not feel the same.

oh mrsbert lots of and for you. I hope she settles and all goes well and that your dad gets some breathing space.

So Dad and I put Mum in a nursing home today. 2 weeks respite for him as he is exhausted caring for her. I shudder to think what she has been like.

That was so hard.

re the smell

it might be fabric conditioner. Turns out mum puts certain things in with fabric conditioner but not others.

posters talking about parents who were not kind to them - how do you square that with caring now? It's another reason I feel bizarre finding my mum stressful, she is a lovely person.

I posted before about how I was seeing stuff on social media about crime in the area and wasn't sure about telling her. Turns out she hears it all from the neighbours anyway. She told me because she wants me to hold tight to my bag!! And I was fretting about someone knocking her down for her bag! (I didn't say that to her).

PS another thing that stressed me out this week....

dad left a mountain of crap behind. It's getting more alarming by the minute - you can't open a drawer without finding it brim full of crap.

if mum would just throw it away, fine, but she thinks it's important to go through it. She has found about £50 in old notes, I admit, but I'm ready to pay someone to take it all away.

I don't mind if she keeps it. What I mind is that for her it's like a project, which she wants me to be involved it. She found a theatre group who wanted stuff for props. Great, I admire the recycling spirit etc etc.

but when I get told "oh you must advise me on what to do with this" and it's a broken suitcase from the 1960s, I just want to scream "give someone all our savings to just MAKE IT GO AWAY".

her idea is that I won't have to deal with it en masse if she goes into a retirement home, or dies, but really, I would rather just pay for skip hire and get rid of that way.

if she wants to sit and go through it for memories, fine. but I don't want to hear about it.

that's another thing some friends have asked - "have you found anything interesting/sentimental from your dad?"

perhaps we weren't that close, but, er no. I have his watch, the photos are all organised in albums and that's it really. There's one other item I'd like to find but it's not important.

Dint thank you so much for your perspective, I think that's true, I haven't gone backwards. I think I have just spent so much time outside my comfort zone I can't cope any more.

I was never one of those people who thought it was good to be pushed out of a comfort zone either.

I need to learn to ignore my mum. That feels terrible, but in spite of her amazing efforts to get her life back together, she still just absolutely radiates pain. And I hate that she is so pleased to see me - does anyone else have that?

the people I know who seem to manage better - they also take calls from their parents whenever they ring! Can be several times a day. I find it extraordinary, how do they do that without yelling at them?

btw not sure I expressed myself well, I'm not hiding from people at all - I really want to because I feel horrendously over involved with people at the mo.

also none of them seem to be surprised to have parents living into 80s and 90s. I think we were overwarned, as a family, about my parents' health problems. Possibly overscreened, as the original things my dad had were discovered during a private company health screening and probably no one needed to know actually.

ugh.

re death, yes yolo I sort of see that. I tend to think of people like George Michael as having left a legacy. I am not at all bothered about leaving one myself.

yolo makes perfect sense re being remembered..... leaving a legacy in some way- family, friends, etc.
noton you are not forgotten here..... how could we??😂😂
cockroach all.

No one remembers me already Yolo, does that mean....?

dint speaks sense, as always.
zany hang on in there, we are always here for ranting/black humour etc.

I was thinking about death today - as one does - and I reckon you are not really dead until no one remembers you anymore. Does that make sense?