🪳 Cockroach Café Spring 2024 🪳 🪳

@ofcourseyes thinking of you.

So Dad is now not expected to last more than a few days.
Everything escalated really quickly last week and I am now working out when I can get there to say goodbye.
Devastated.

There's no perfect answer. Someone on this thread gave some great advice previously - if you're faced with a choice of resentment or guilt, choose guilt. I'm finding that even the guilt lessens when I know that I made a conscious decision not to overburden myself.

@Obelism what do you think you should have done? Do you think you should have moved closer to your mum? How would that have impacted your DH and DC? Or do you think you should have moved your mum nearer to you? Would she have wanted to leave her familiar home and social network? The chances are you didn't do these things because they weren't right for the people affected.

Thanks @BlueLegume - here come the tears again 🫣 I know, I don’t know anything about the woman this morning and it’s entirely possible that she’s got a large and loving family doing an enormous amount for her - I just don’t know. I suppose it just struck to the heart to hear her saying so bleakly that she didn’t want to go home. I could imagine that what she was really saying was that she didn’t want to be old, infirm, left alone after maybe her husband had died and she was nearing the end of her life.

Nobody wants that, do they? We all want to be having an energetic, interesting, useful life with plenty of friends and things to do. But that is the hard reality for many of us. I know even DM, who was 97 and amazingly young in her mental outlook, confessed to feeling depressed in her last year or so. She wouldn’t tell me why or what she was depressed about but my guess was all those things I’ve mentioned. And the awful thing for the rest of us is that we really can’t do much to help them.

I did have counselling for a year or so after DM died and it helped - her final few weeks were quite traumatic. I’m a lot better now but things like today just catch me. Thanks for your kind words.

@Obelism welcome to this brilliant place to vent or just air your worries. You sound lovely and I’m sorry to hear about your DM. I cannot offer you much but I think there is real guilt and false guilt. We all experience the emotion of guilt but it does not mean we are actually guilty. You are probably looking back and thinking things could have been different IF you had done more. The likelihood is they wouldn’t have been. Also, and this may sound harsh, we are not responsible for other people’s happiness. My own mother will tell me she ‘hasn’t seen anyone ALL WEEK’. This is usually on a Wednesday when I will have been on the Tuesday and my siblings over the weekend. She will also tell me she ‘hasn’t been out since you last came’….literally 24 hours then…this is often a lie. It is guilt tripping but we are not guilty. You sound great perhaps try and find out if there are any online resources to help you deal with the emotion.A wise person once told me to replace guilt with self compassion focussing on reflecting on what you did do not what you didn’t.

Can I sidle in for a moment, please? I’ve posted before under different names but I suppose I’m an imposter now because I'm several years down the road from losing my DM. But something just happened and I feel I have to unburden as I’m so upset.

DH and I were out having coffee and next to us was a man and his very elderly grandmother (I think). They'd been chatting happily together and to other people about cultural stuff, music, etc etc…then at some point I realised she was saying' I know it’s awful to say it but I don’t want to go back to my own home' and 'nobody comes to see me', 'I don’t want to be there', and suchlike, and he was placating/reasoning with her in a way that sounded as though it had happened many times before - 'now, you know X will come, and Y will pop over' etc etc…but she sounded so distressed and bleak about it. When they go up to go she was moving very badly on two sticks. Probably late 80s/90-ish.

It just brought all my guilt over my beloved DM flooding back - she lived alone and, while she never complained, I know I should have found a way to try and address that - I visited her regularly (as in, every couple of weeks or so) and stayed for days at a time but I lived 200 miles away and had a job so everything was just so much to juggle. I did that for over a decade (gladly, though) so it swallowed up a big chunk of my life.

But since she died I'm so full of guilt for not doing more. And I just couldn’t bear the thought of this woman this morning being so unhappy and lonely. I’m afraid as soon as they left I was in tears. DH is quite unemotional by nature and never knows what to say to me so there was just awkward silence from him and I feel yet again I’m coping with this by myself. You wouldn’t think it’s been 4 years, would you? But here I still am…😢
Sorry if this is all a bit random but I couldn’t think where it was best to vent. I needed to, though.

My mother seemed to be intent on buying cashew nuts in her last months. I wish I could wind back time and ask her if it was a mistake or whether there was a Mary Berry recipe she was favouriting. Sadly someone took the large MB recipe book collection to a charity shop by accident before I could look. Including one my husband had queued up for ages to have signed for her one Christmas. Just an innocent mistake but i was surprisingly upset when I found out. Strange what triggers us.

Ah, spices aren’t really food though are they? I suspect there are some ancient tins lurking at the back of the corner cupboard which I may investigate one day if my back lets me do the contortions necessary to reach. But on reflection for mum, loss of stock control in the kitchen was in hindsight one of the first obvious signs of her cognitive decline. When I first opened her cupboards and realised there were dozens of tins of the same thing it was clear she wasn’t managing.

a friend of mine found that her grandmother hoarded rolls of aluminium foil, possibly going back in her memory to a habit picked up during the war. Stashed them all over the kitchen.

@funnelfan I want to say ‘you win’ but I still have a lot of house to sort out and I can’t get to all of it yet.

I found some jars of spices that were nearly old enough to be priced in £sd. Older than my brother anyway.

Yes, many, many packets of food out of date in cupboards. The freezer was solid ice and full of ancient mystery.

The other week I cleaned out Dad’s tea/ coffee/ cake cupboard - omg I threw out two cardboard boxes of out of date biscuits, snacks and cakes. He just overbuys, stuffs it in the cupboard and it stays there for months.

We've got a cleaner going in weekly now and she wipes thr fridge every time so she has an excuse to go in the fridge and check. It stops the gagging moment when you open the door and smell a chicken casserole or something that is covered in green mould which is a massive improvement.

Oh goodness the food. I had to move DF out of his house before I was allowed to remove 4 boxes of out of date eggs 🤢 and 2 month out of date yoghurt 🤢. DF believes only in ‘the sniff test’ and not throwing away spoiled food was a hill he seemed literally prepared to die on.

@countrygirl99 I had to remove eggs with a bb date of March from DMs last week. The only way she’d let me take them was by telling her I’d make a cake for her with them. I don’t bake so that was never going to happen plus she’s forgotten about the cake. Funnily enough I also have a strong constitution when it comes to stomach bugs.

Today’s broken item is her dentures. I’ve managed to find a repairer locally so fingers crossed he can fix them as the dentist she used to go to has taken her off their books. I’ve asked for her to be put back on but was afraid to ask how long the waiting list is. It didn’t help that she didn’t tell me so I only found out when I popped in on the way somewhere and that she’d put the broken dentures somewhere and couldn’t remember where. Found them after a search.

It’s just something almost every day at the moment. I spent half an hour on the phone about her broken hearing aids yesterday.
Plus I have my own DC to worry about. DD is seeing the rheumatologist today, having been pretty ill for the past year so I have that on my mind.

@Projectme the relationship was always coolly polite. I didn't know about the comment until.DH told me after his parents had died

@countrygirl99 @BlueLegume can relate. Only last week my mother told me the dress I’d worn the week before was “drab” and she’d ordered a new one for me (I’m 52, not 5), and it was a size 16. I’m a 12. “Well you have put on a lot of weight.” I used to be a 10 pre meno and am still pretty fit but half a stone heavier. Cheeky mare. I swear she does it deliberately- it makes her feel less vulnerable if she can put me down.

Am about to take her to a hospital appointment. Joy.

@Projectme in my parents’ house it’s my mother who screams at my father. Sadly after over 60 years of marriage he’s just collapsed in character and won’t make any decision without “ask your mother.” It’s really sad, and super frustrating, because she hoards and between them they won’t get rid of anything at all and the house looks like a bomb has hit it. Honestly, it looks like one of those pictures you see after burglars have been. But no carers, no cleaners. I do a bit every week, whether washing up or talking somewhere, but relatively minimal, because honestly it’s gargantuan and never ending, I could be sucked in so hard.

wow, that was so rude of your mum to say that to your in-laws! I'm guessing she has no relationship with them whatsoever?!

Absolutely infuriating for you. Especially the fact that they've enjoyed their lives, as they saw fit at the time, with absolutely no thought whatsoever for future needs. Incredibly selfish. DH and I are early 50s and we've got strategies in place already for when the time comes and knowing we have those in place means we can enjoy retirement without any guilt or worry.

My mum is similar to yours inasmuch that she has always had selective competence too. She's always guilt tripped me, all my life so I feel manipulated into doing things even more now because of her medical episode 3 years ago, however, the counselling I've just completed made me realise that the more I do for my parents, the more they want and expect. So I have slowly stepped back from visiting them 3 x week, to just 2 and this will eventually drop to once a week or ad-hoc visits. I've stopped offering to 'order this/that/everything' from Amazon for him; if he wants something, he can source it himself and buy it from now on.

It's a horrible situation because I enjoy helping people, especially family but because of how they've both made me feel, I am now so resentful and angry.

In a way I'm "lucky" that I never had z good relationship with mum. I wasn't the pretty girly girl who liked dolls and dresses thst she wanted. She made it very clear she was disappointed that I preferred to wear jeans, play football and build camps in the woods. When I married DH she actually told my in-laws that she was disappointed with my choice of husband. It makes it much easier to set boundaries and stick to them.

@Projectme absolutely. My parents terrible life choices are now directly impacting us. They have been living with their heads in the sand for decades. Truly have zero coping skills but are, well mother in particular incredibly skilled in manipulating you to feel sorry for her and consequently doing jobs and chores for her. Read something recently about selective-competence being a thing. Our mother has definitely used this.

The other term I found interesting is ‘terminal uniqueness’. Our mother has never been able to wear high street clothing or shoes as ‘they don’t fit me’. They do she just portrays her self as unique. She describes everything at her home as unable to be replaced because it was ‘bespoke’. It isn’t and wasn’t. At my age my parents were travelling the world at their leisure not running themselves ragged and constantly being a a state of high anxiety.

I feel for you, I really do.

My parents had no say in the care package provided for mum after she left hospital so it was a done deal that carer's would be there 4 x day so I fortunately don't have to do any of that. They now do cleaning for them and ironing so this has taken another burden off my dad's shoulders so he can relax more. But it still doesn't seem to be 'enough' or 'good enough'.

And by what you've explained here, I would agree, your Mum is deliberately making life difficult for you all. There really is no need but I'm guessing she was controlling and she still wishes to maintain as much control over things as she can, not seeing how detrimental this is all to everyone involved.

I'm learning so many lessons here. My kids will not have to deal with any of this crap. I've promised them. I'll put myself in a care home if necessary or find sufficient drugs to do myself in if I have a terminal condition. Sounds drastic but I don't want a loved one to go through what I am.

If you were to take a huge step back (it's difficult I know but just imagine for a second), who would be there to do the washing/cleaning/meals etc?

Sorry this was also in response to @countrygirl99

If this was a relationship with a partner it would be labelled coercive and controlling and we would be advised to step away. Instead we have to ‘be kind’ and keep throwing ourselves at their feet. I personally don’t think I’m helping her simply enabling terrible behaviour.

And that is exactly the advice I'm going to give you. Step away. You're right that enabling this type of behaviour isn’t helping. Sometimes you just have to let the crisis happen.