Cockroach Cafe 🪳Autumn 2022 🪳

I'll just step in and punt this up the page.

MIL's memory is here and there, she knew Knot was going on holiday and knew the destination but she couldn't fathom that Knot was me. It's like talking to mum all over again in that I feel that I am being compared unfavourably with an imaginary person. I don't know why it annoys me as much as it does. Maybe the other Knot will visit while I'm away.

@BestIsWest My guess is that she's brought the neighbours into play with the shopping. On a good week MIL had three people shopping for her, it's funny how the other two never did quite enough for me to have a week off.

@thesandwich aaaargh indeed. I had to make an emergency dash for milk for her on Friday (What on Earth does she do with it? DB had done a Tesco run for her on Thursday). Bought her a 4 pinter. On Saturday she produced a full 2 pint container. From where??

Oh @BestIsWest i feel for you. Nothing is ever enough/ right is it? Two hours at dms yesterday, doing all the “little jobs” and no she hadn’t run out of loo roll, it was at the back of the cupboard, she’s NEVER run out in the 15 years I’ve been doing her shopping…… then a message at 7.15 from db… she wasn’t answering phone……
quick dash to v indignant m. Somehow the volume was turned down on the phone… arrrgh….. home to rescue almost cremated tea from oven……
cockroach all….

Had a bad weekend with DM. The house she’s lived in for 60 years needs lots of things doing as she and DF hadn’t really maintained it over the last 20 years. Since DF died we’ve carried out lots of repairs, installed new windows, a new boiler and fire, a new flat roof because they had ignored a leak. DH has taken the organising of all this on as well as doing all sorts of minor repairs himself. DH organised a plasterer to do the kitchen ceiling at the weekend as it was falling down.

I spent all day Saturday there with her as she didn’t want to be alone with the plasterer in the house, took her out for lunch, took her to our house for a break. We were there again on Sunday, DH spent two hours replacing an outside lamp for her. I handed over to DB in the afternoon leaving payment for the plasterer in an envelope on the mantelpiece for DB to hand to him.

Went out to do some shopping and got back to a phone call from her saying she’d opened the envelope and how much was supposed to be in it? Apparently she doesn’t trust me not to rip her off, I had never told her how much the job was costing (I had) and she is 85 don’t you know. Then put the phone down on me twice. Then when I rang back and DH attempted to speak to her she put the phone down on him. He is seriously pissed off with her and I can’t blame him and at the moment says he is not going to do any more to help.

At the moment I feel my life is being controlled by her. Life revolves around her appointments and her needs. She’s not capable of doing much herself. She can wash and dress herself and manage some basic meals and limited cleaning but is really housebound unless someone takes her out. I do 90% of her shopping and all the admin, banking, bill paying, hospital appointments etc and I resent it.

I also feel very very guilty as she was a great mum and grandparent, as was my dad. I had a lovely childhood. I hate it.

Sorry, that was long and I know many of you have it much harder.

That's certainly the case where MIL is concerned, @Knotaknitter . Before she was sectioned there were so many crises that were rooted in her quest to go 'home' from the house she's lived in for decades.

Some weeks MIL wants to go home to her mum and dad. The "home" people are wanting to go to may not be the house you are thinking of, it may be a time and place where they were happy that just doesn't exist anymore.

I can't drop her at home when I leave because I'm going straight to meet my friend in the other direction, I think the care staff tell her that the buses are on strike again, the reality is that she couldn't walk to the pavement never mind the bus stop.

MIL has no idea why she is on a psychiatric unit. She asks why she can't go home when she's capable of <insert list of the things she imagines she can still do on any given day>. She repeatedly assaults other patients, visitors and staff. Are we meant to tell her that? I have no idea. In her own mind she's a model citizen, wrongly incarcerated. We just say she has to get better.

@Borntobeamum I have exactly the same conversation with my mum every week although she is not really lucid/articulate. I tell her that she can't come home this week. She just needs to get a bit stronger before she can come home. Mum is doubly incontinent and requires two carers and a hoist to get from the armchair to the wheelchair. When I tell her she needs to get stronger and walk a bit better (not acknowledging that she has been hoisted and wheeled to the dining room!) she tells me that she can walk, the staff know she can walk and after all "how do you think I got in here?" - all whilst sitting in the wheelchair with the straps from the hoist underneath her!

My dad died 10 years ago but mum has forgotten. Sometimes she thinks he is ill and will take her home when he is better, sometimes she says that he has been to visit and stayed overnight. When I took my dog to visit (a tiny white and brown terrier) she was worried that he had lost weight and changed colour (her dog is big and black!) and did Dad mind me bringing him? Was Dad ok without him. I just have to smile and and say everything is fine. For the pain of losing him is not as raw as it is for you so it is a little easier but I do struggle with not telling her the truth.

Sympathy to everyone struggling. Just had a call from mum in tears because she couldn't get cash out of ghe ATM. I know she has £000s in her current account so it's either
Pressed the wrong buttons
Got the PIN wrong
Using an out of date card.
Couldn't get any sense about what the actual problem was just "it wouldn't let me have any money". Have messaged DB as he has POA and access to bank account.
No mention of the heating "problem" that was Thursday's crisis.

DD as is Dear Dad x

Dm is in a care home and asks constantly to go home.
First of all can I say there’s 0% of her going home.
She won’t accept that she needs 24 hour care. On her lucid days, she puts up a fair argument however this includes neighbours looking after her when she needs any help.

Ive told her it would be expensive to have 24/7 care and she then moved on to how bad the home is and how they all get drunk every night and fight.

Do I just change the subject when she asks to go home?
I’ve tried saying we will ask my brother when we see him.
She occasionally forgets DD has died, though it’s only been a few weeks.
Im finding it so difficult to deal with my own grief while trying not to battle with DN constantly.

Thanks for the good wishes Dint and Sandwich, it means a lot when I know you both have more to deal with than me.

I agree with Words that being asked to do things is particularly difficult if you haven't had the support yourself, giving more than you have been given. My DM wasn't given what she needed by her DM. I have no children (never wanted them) and so the cycle ends with me. I'm in my late fifties and a natural declutterer and intend my next move (soon) to be right for my later years, but I still baulk at the notion of premature sheltered living: Golden Girls perhaps.

God I'd delete that if I could. My partner has stafe II cancer and that's quite bad enough. I hope your dh is coping with whatever treatment he's getting. X

I do see that @MereDintofPandiculation . I'm starting the shift to a different life stage now that ds has left home (he may of course come back) and am eyeing up possible futures with some trepidation.

I've no doubt you'll work things out but it has to be said that rationalising and relocating stuff into places I can reach myself doesn't have to be followed by moving. My dream is an empty loft. This is quite a long way off. I'm a couple of steps nearer to it this year than I was a few months ago though.

Hello again, cockroach sandwiches! I've been quietly following your updates. Respect to you all for everything that you're dealing with.
My DM has been a bit unwell recently. Thankfully not too serious but it's given us all a glimpse of the possible future reality of caring. Juggling home, work, travel to and fro for DM, offspring was somewhat neglected and then I had a couple of evil colds. In a way, it was a useful experience as we saw how much it relied on me fully functioning. Mum apparently noticed and had even raised the prospect of finding somewhere more manageable to live - but not just yet, though! Anyway she's much better now and that idea hasn't been mentioned since. The crisis will just have to happen. Now it's half term so I'm going to be doing some overdue mum duties but this evening I'm meeting an old friend and totally ignoring my family 😁

By which I mean, if I'd had a closer, more mutually supportive and less toxic relationship with my mother, I would have been more inclined to help a bit longer, and maybe found the process a bit more fulfilling.

But at the end of the day, Care home was the only viable option and we both recognised that.

As with everything, context and history matter.

I think though that some people won't outsource work to people outside the family. If they can't do it themselves they'll ask relatives who are not always young themselves.

Taking down a photograph album from a now too high shelf is reasonable but lots of gardening and window cleaning might be too much for some relatives.

Big old houses, while holding lots of happy memories, can be such a burden.

It does Sausagenbacon. I think we all just want them to be happy. As someone once wrote, 'Folk are as happy as they decide to be'.

thank you for that humo bean . All this just goes against our conditioning, doesn't it?

The thing about the Australian set up is that my sibling takes the view that she should leave them to get on with things, partially because they are difficult but she's also busy with work, hobbies and kids. Before the 'breakup' with me they admitted that she steers clear of them. Anyway I've no contact now - occasionally I google to see if they are still alive (looking for Australian funeral notices because I won't be informed)