Elderly relative that I don’t know keeps asking for contact details and wants to stay in touch what should I do

[ClairDeLooney]

Looking for a bit of advice.

For context, my mum is in her mid 80’s and very poorly with advanced dementia, she can not communicate well and is housebound. She lives with my elderly father and my sister and I live nearby.

My mum had a small family and very few relatives are still alive. My nan (mum’s mum) had a brother, he married and had a daughter (more about her in a minute), from everything I know about them the brother’s wife was not a nice person, very controlling and domineering. My mum’s uncle died in the street at 50 from a heart attack and my nan never got over it, she always said the wife killed him off with the amount of stress she put under. As a result she had little to do with her sister in law and niece but they always sent letters, Christmas and birthday cards to one another.

The daughter, mum’s cousin, never married and lived with her mother until she passed away in her 90’s a few years ago. When she became frail the cousin took over the Christmas and birthday card writing and would always add in a little letter. However, they never met up and haven’t seen each other since the 1970’s. My sister and I do not know this woman, we have never met her and my dad only met her once at his and mum’s wedding some 50+ years ago.

However, since her mother passed away a a couple of years ago the cousin has been sending more letters on their own as well as in mum’s birthday and Christmas cards, I get the impression the poor woman is lonely, having lived with her mother all her life and now she is in her late 70’s probably regrets not having family and a life of her own.

However, she has started phoning mum and dad’s home line and leaving messages asking dad to call her back for a chat. We have also noticed that in all of her letters of late she keeps asking for both mine and my sister’s addresses and details, she also leaves her telephone number at the top of each letter obviously hoping we will call her. I really feel for this poor lady but she is a complete stranger to me, I have enough to worry about caring for my mum and helping my father (who is 85 and showing signs of dementia himself), I have my own personal issues and family to deal with and as caring and empathetic as I am, I’m not sure if I can take on the issue of another elderly relative. She lives about 30 miles away so not far and the last thing I want is to find her on my doorstep one day.

However, I do feel for her and feel that I should write to her explaining just how bad mum is now (although she is aware because last year dad accidentally answered the phone when she called), I would also like to know why she is so dead set on getting our addresses as we really don’t know her at all.

My dad says we should just leave it but she is not giving up and keeps writing letter a lot these days. I’ve attached the latest and I am concerned about her saying she wants to keep in touch with my sister and I “always” - what the heck does that mean!?

I really feel for the poor lady and would be happy to drop her a letter every now and then if that was all it was but I have too much on my own plate to have to deal with issues of someone I don’t know.

What would you do?

Edited by MNHQ to say we've removed the image as the OP was concerned it might be identifying

Would writing her now and again be so hard? And this woman IS your relative. Nothing bad will happen if you show some kindness and just exchange a few letters

A relation who you've never met, persistently hounding for your address and repeatedly phoning the OPs father who she's met once isn't quite a "minor human interaction"

And I work in elderly social care and aware of lonlieness in older people. And there's a lot more to lonlieness than refusing to send a Christmas card to someone you don't know.

There isn't some law that just because someone is your relative you're obliged to have a relationship with them or owe them something. Where has this "relative" been for the last 50 years? Why is it ok for this relative to have been completey absent for the last 50 years, providing no support to the OP or her family yet somehow the OP is somehow obligated to sending her letters.

The double standards is off the scale. Writing letters takes time and energy and if you're completely exhausted and spent from supporting parents with dementia and children with ND, it can seem an insurmountable task, especially for someone who has been completely absent from your life.

If you read OP's posts she doesnt just want a letter now and then, she has been ringing and hassling her 85 year old father and leaving frequent messages asking him to ring her back. Her dad is unwell himself and doesnt want to talk to her. She isnt going to just exchange a few letters and leave it at that - look at her current behaviour!!!

Also, I would like to ask, where was her kindness over the last 50 years towards the OP who she has never even met? where was she when OP was young, where was she when OP had a baby? where was she when OP's mum became distressingly ill, where was her kindness then?

This thread doesn't show anything of the kind. It's split into two groups, with one group trying to guilt trip the OP and telling her to be kind and the other showing empathy to OP's difficult situation and recognising that she has no bandwidth at all to build a relationship with a distant relative who didn't bother to get in touch with OP's mum before she became ill.

Gross

The OP has stated multiple times in the thread that she has no interest in an inheritance from her.

What an utterly hideous post. OP is caring for her mum with severe dementia every single day as well as bringing up ND children and working as a home help to elderly people. She has never met this woman who didn't bother to keep in touch with OP's mum.

OP is stressed and already grieving her mum and you post this vitriolic, sanctimonious, guilt-tripping bollocks. If there is such a thing as karma, which I doubt, it will get you first. Your post disgusts me.

This is a great response to everyone thinking the OP should get in touch with her total stranger first cousin once removed! Go and volunteer to a befriending service and help out a lonely stranger yourself!

It’s also worth pointing out that the relative is several years younger than OPs parents and, from talking to OPs father, knows about his wife’s advanced dementia. Is she offering to help her long lost family in their time of need? No, but she does seem to want to be an additional burden to the family by needing frequent contact.

Oh I do apologise! I didn’t have time to read every single comment. Jees!

I also don’t recall saying she was interested. Just merely suggesting that’s probably why she wants addresses.

That’s fine. We are all busy but I am passing on what she said for your information. No need to snark at me.

Have you noticed OP that you have repeatedly justified your position trying to convince strangers some of whom don’t appear to have read or understood your post? It’s exhausting already and you haven’t even contacted the relative yet!

She sounds like one of those people you are better off completely ignoring. I reckon you will get a barrage of return contact to the point you will feel harassed.

I agree, that response was cruel and very mean spirited.

Also, interesting that their response to someone saying they're overwhelmed by caring responsibilities is to tell them they're heartless and threaten them with bad karma.

By that logic, the time @UnderstatedMe spent scolding a stranger on the internet could have been spent phoning a lonely elderly person themselves and making their day.

Or, is showing compassion only for "other people" 🙄

Ok, I'll bite........

The reason I had time yesterday on here was because I was in bed all day with severe endometriosis/adenomyosis pain (not that I needed to have explained that in my OP). That meant having to let my parents down and we had to pay extra for the carers to cover. Not something I feel good about but that comes with the territory of caring and being chronically unwell (I have other issues too).

And where the heck have I been arguing with anyone? I have simply been expressing my concerns that if I were to start making contact with this woman then I may find myself in a situation where I end up doing more and more for her and if you have taken the time to read my replies you will see that I am already up to my eyeballs in caring mode.

But hey! You read into my replies what you feel and cherry pick the ones most appropriate to your miserable reply.

I truly hope you never have to care for a much loved parent with advanced dementia...... or maybe you should, maybe that will be your karma seeing that you like to kick people when they are down.

Exactly.

I think I feel passioned about this because I perhaps see happening in my own family. My sibling makes absolutely no effort with anyone in our family bar our parents, including my children. They don't know him from Adam. If there's a time in 40 years or so, he comes crying to my children and hounding them for a relationship because he has no family left, I'll be absolutely dammed if my children are called "cold" or "heartless" for not wanting anything to do with someone who ignored them through their childhood and never acknowledged their existence.

Curious what your sister thinks since the woman also wants her address? I'm in total support of you by the way! The pile on on this thread has been totally appalling.

@UnderstatedMe -I think you are heartless.

Oh the haters can get out of here.

Lots of you have mentioned dementia. One of my parents friends parents ended up very severe dementia, her son was in Australia at the time and didn’t come home to help.

We were hosting visits daily towards the end after someone gave her our address when we moved. She would turn up, urinate while sitting on couch and swear at us while my mum phoned for help.

In the end we had to stop letting her in as she was violent and we found it very scary. It went from cards, to constant calls to visits when the best we could do was call the police before care was sorted for her.

OP, I am with you. You have enough to deal with. I hope you feel better today

Why? Because then this woman knows the situation and knows clearly where she stands. She is not forever wondering; did they receive my messages, did I use the wrong address, are they ignoring me deliberately, what is going on?

And the words aren’t fake either. Writing her a short polite message saying we acknowledge you but we are at max capacity right now is honest.

It’s basic manners and op responding by email hopefully puts this situation to bed for her too.

I agree.

I do get your point about a form of contact passing down a generation, and I wouldn’t be as dramatic as to say this woman has “forfeited the right” to try. But it’s about reasonable expectations - and most importantly, context. And to me, the context here is that the OP’s relative hasn’t been that bothered about her mother, never mind her.

Yes, OP’s mother and her cousin were ostensibly “in touch” in that they had contact details and exchanged the odd card and letter. But they hadn’t seen one another in over 50 years. The OP’s entire lifetime. That’s a little bit different from someone the OP saw every few years at family parties without having direct contact. Even her mother - the person this woman is supposedly worried about - had absolutely minimal contact with her.

There’s also a massive difference between saying “We must swap addresses; it would be a shame to lose touch” at a funeral or similar and ringing someone vulnerable and confused several times in a week. I know you’re saying in general there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with asking for those contact details, but we can only advise on the OP’s situation. “It’d be okay if…” isn’t really relevant here.

I don’t think this is someone who’s a bit sentimental about family wanting an address just so she can be theoretically, if not practically, in touch. She didn’t care enough about her actual cousin, who she did know, to make any real effort in 50 years, so the idea that she somehow feels she knows OP through her mother doesn’t wash. And it’s no coincidence that this desire for contact has come after her own mother has gone.

I'm totally with you on this so please don't be guilt tripped into trying to build a relationship with someone who you have no shared history with. I tried to have a relationship with a half sibling I met for the first time as an adult. It was a stressful time as we had nothing in common and I regret continuing after the first meeting. Thankfully we have no contact now. I've also had several years of stress as an only child of looking after two elderly parents, one with Alzheimer's and then dealing with the death admin after they died as well as working. It's exhausting and you really do need to focus the free time you have on self care.

Some of the responses here are very strange. This is a first cousin once removed that the OP has never met. The OP's immediate family have always exchanged Christmas cards, so they have been polite, but now the relative is bombarding them with letters and calls.
I have first cousins who I haven't seen in twenty plus years, no fall outs, just not close and we live at other ends of the country. I wouldn't dream of trying to force a relationship out of nowhere with them now, let alone in another twenty years!

All the whining "Be kind" to this poor, old "lonely" woman.

For starters, where's their kindness to the OP?

Where's this pest of a woman's kindness towards OP's dad, 85, and suffering some level of dementia himself, and nursing his wife in her final stages of Alzheimers.

Where's the kindness in leaving him distressed with the level of phone contact and mutliple messages left on his answering machine.

Or towards their daughters, who she has never met or bothered about before, who have more than enough on their plate without taking on social or other responsibilities for a pushy, demanding stranger.