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

She probably wants to leave you all her money in her will.

She can do that without leaving frequent hounding messages on OP's father's answering machine, a man she met once 50 years ago.

They aren't, but, respectfully, this is why so many Mners post complaining of loneliness and an inability to make friends. Human contact is a muscle you need to exercise. If you're the type of person who never answers the door, and gets a crick in your neck from not catching the eye of anyone on the school run because in your head the slightest human contact = drama, then it has consequences.

I mean, this woman hasn't required anything from the OP.

As others have said she may want your advice or help about her future finances . I know in my own family people have made arrangements that they won't die intestate and their money and property go to the government. The death of her mother may have prompted these thoughts .

And even if there is no financial gain wouldn't it be a kind thing to communicate with her . She doesn't seem likely to land on your doorstep. As she is a letter writer , the odd postcard or card would be nice . Sometimes it is a reward of its own just to know that you have made a family member feel less alone if only briefly . P

I think you are doing right thing Op just sending a short letter explaining mum and dad have dementia and are finding her voicemails and letters confusing. Wish her well but I wouldn’t give your address or phone number.
Definitely disable voicemail facility.
My elderly mum has a neighbour in her 80s who lived with mum until mum died. She’s clearly ND but not diagnosed. She latches on and rings my mum frequently. She has 1 cousin she phones weekly at a set time. The cousin I suspect tolerates this call as she is leaving money to her but cousin never phones or visits it’s very one sided.

Quite!

Sod that, honestly, OP. Close family (generally; not talking about yours) are liability enough, who needs distant strangers to add to the burden!

Yes, be careful
My mum came to the UK with me ages ago when the option was a business visa only. She was self employed cleaner, divorced ....not a single relative of hers asked her how is she coping in another country, they mocked her that she came here for the obvious reason - to suck the benefits system. Mum married very well an Englishman who passed her a very good fortune, I went to uni and married an Englishman myself. Somehow someone has traced her on fb and saw her current lifestyle....I have now been made aware that I have family which I never met in the last 40 years who are my family and have something very important to tell me....😆

Ah bingo. Close enough for you to ‘pop over’ if she needs anything.

Another cold hearted bitch here who helped to look after someone special and is not now ‘free’ to take on waifs and strays. Don’t start what you can’t/don’t want to, sustain OP, but you know that. 💐 for you, dementia is an evil bastard disease.

Op in your shoes I think I would buy a nice flowery card and just write a friendly note saying words to the effect of,

“Thank you for getting in touch with my parents, I hope this note finds you well. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to respond but mum is suffering from dementia and my dad has health issues, so unfortunately
they cannot respond to voicemails, and my sister and I are quite stretched between us managing their care. We send warmest wishes to you however and, owing to the circumstances above, many apologies in advance for our lack of frequent communication.”

You can choose to leave your contact details or not. It leaves the door open for basic infrequent communication.

Any reasonable person would understand your circumstances I think and if she understands them, she can start looking elsewhere for support. It does seem harsh but if you genuinely can’t offer anything more then it’s best she knows that.

This is what happened to us. A long lost cousin who had lived abroad for a while, and with a history of being a CF, went around every family member until someone gave her our contact details. Turns out she was basically looking for a babysitter while she spent ‘quality’ time with her husband. She ended up blocked for various reasons.

Yes she might be subtly trying to get your details for a Will bequest.
I tried to get National Insurance details for a friend to put her on my Death in Service and it was impossible. I mean, I can understand why she thought it was an odd request. I had to tell her what it was for in the end and she was really funny about it.
Wish I'd never bothered as it made our relationship a bit awkward for a while.

As the messages are distressing your elderly and rather vulnerable DF, I think a reasonable starting point would be to disable the voicemail function, and perhaps block the number.

You're catastrophising a tad... it's more probable that you are her nearest living kin now and she just wants to make that connection. There's very limited burden in sending an occasional letter really, is there? Decide what your boundaries are. If you don't want any contact, then fair enough. If limited contact is acceptable, then proceed. If it becomes too much, or escalates beyond what you want, then just reign it all in.

but why? Just words which mean nothing...either help , either spare your own fake words...

I'd rather go with complete silence and stay suspicious

@ClairDeLooney She is your cousin too.....She is your first cousin once removed. If you dont want anything to do with her then just ignore the messages but it does sound like she is a little lonely and if her mother was the monster painted out to be probably quite a sheltered life. She may feel now she is dead that she wants to get to know her fathers family.....maybe to find out more about that side. Who knows but would it really hurt to exchange a letter or 2 and see what happens.

OP’s primary concern is her elderly parents with dementia. If repeated voicemails are upsetting them then it’s understandable Op wants them to stop.
I can understand the wariness. You don’t want to suddenly be contacted as she’s put you as next of kin.

This. And I'd also mention to her the health problems that you referred to.

I have written out a short card in reply to her latest letter and have kept my own personal details out of it. I have added my email address if she is online she can contact me that way. That is all I can offer right now. I have kept it polite and explained the circumstances we are all in with our parent’s health and I am hoping she will understand.

If she wishes to contact me via email I have no issue with that and will happily reply but I really have no capacity to take onboard anything else right now. If over time it appears she is struggling and needs help I will find all the support networks near her home and advise, it will be up to her after that.

Given that this cousin and her mum were in regular contact with the generation above you until your mum's dementia made that difficult, are you sure they showed no interest in you? Have you read her/their letters? I'm wondering if this is one of those things where grandparents and parents swap details about what their dc and grandchildren are up to, and people feel a connection even without direct contact.

It's probably also worth remembering that for her generation occasional letters and cards are sort of like adding someone on facebook - they're very low-level contact. It can seem like something a lot more heavy duty to us, but it doesn't have to force commitment.

In any case, as far as being drawn into caring, you won't necessarily avoid being contacted in the future by not responding at all if she already has some details for you, and if you actually are her next of kin. You may end up having to say 'no' regardless, which you will be perfectly entitled to do at any point.

As I think you've said you'll do, it would be good to reply with a bland friendly letter addressed from your parents house saying you can always be contacted there, with a brief update on your lives that will show her clearly that your parents' dementia is taking up all your time. But I wouldn't go into this assuming she wants a lot from you and just ignore her. You're right to do no sharing of phone numbers and to sort out your parents' phone so it can only be letters.

She may care more about the theory of being connected via occasional letters than she does about the practice of actually trying to be in anyone's life, and if she has early dementia may not even be able to write very often.

I'm only your age, but I can see there's a sort of sadness/nostalgia that can make someone suddenly want to shore up these connections, a feeling that's nothing to do with wanting help or even company, nothing necessarily to do with loneliness. It can be as simple as someone wanting to keep the memory of their own parents alive a little bit by maintaining those connections, even in the most low-level way by letters and so on.

It's really easy when you have family members who do all the communicating to take that for granted, and then feel adrift when you realise you have no independent connections with the people they were in touch with. I don't think wanting to make the most basic connection via writing letters is unusual or needs to be looked on with such suspicion.

As I said, I suspect that if someone ends up looking for a next of kin there will be enough information about you in this cousin's possession already for you to be found, so you won't necessarily avoid that by not responding at all.

But OP isnt complaining of loneliness!! OP is saying she is already massively overloaded with other responsibilities- elderly parents with dementia, children with needs, and work.

OP isnt super woman and the fact that some random person might be lonely is not her problem to deal with, not when she is already exhausted looking after other people. If this lady is lonely then may its SHE who should be trying to increase her social circle

She is someone completely random though, I have never met her, I don’t even know what she looks like, we have no photos of her and she has no idea what any of us look like. We could all walk past each other right now and not have any idea we are distant relatives.

Do you have any idea what it takes out of someone to help care for one parent with dementia, whilst the other is also struggling, whilst your ND child is struggling, you have your own health issues and also work?? If you do you absolutely would not have typed that last sentence.

Hello, what things have you learned how to do using YouTube? I'm writing a poem, the more specific the better!!

I cross-posted with you, sorry, Your card sounds good. Interesting though that you're happy to share an email address - I wonder if that's the generational thing? I think probably for her generation the letters and cards are the low-level contact that we tend to use online communication for, although actually letters and cards would keep her at more of a distance than email.

Put it this way - you may be confident she won't actually use email, but what about her next-door neighbours, who might one day find they're always going round to help her because actually she does have early dementia, and who end up looking round for some kind of family member to take responsibility? I think it's possible that by sharing an email address you've made yourself more contactable, not less. You can be emailed on the same day but a letter takes days to arrive, so you might now look more like a good person to contact in an emergency.

I’m far from an individualist, if you have bothered to read my replies you would have picked up on that by now.

OP - having cared for a parent with dementia, your letter is displaying (to me) all the signs of someone at the edge of their tether. I didn't realise how stressed I was until I suffered a panic attack for the first time in my life. You've done the card, now forget her, block the number if her calls upset your parents, and make a sliver of time to take care of yourself. Good luck.