Ok firstly apologies bc this is a long old story! And secondly yes I realise it's mother's day and I hate the fact this happened today, but I felt like this had to be said and it just happened to come up today.
Background on this is that my mum has been married twice, my dad died and then she divorced my stepdad about 10 yrs ago. Mum is engaged again but no plans to marry. Since my dad's death, mum has received a v generous annuity and worked part-time as well, she was able to move to a bigger house with only a 20k mortgage after his death. However, she has taken on an increasingly luxurious lifestyle, i.e. 2 or 3 cruises per year, she owns 2 luxury cars, goes out for lots of meals, buys clothes every day etc. At first we didn't begrudge her this as she'd been thru a hard time but after a while we found out she'd re-mortgaged so may times that there's no equity left in the house, all her credit cards are over the limit and she is in arrears with mortgage and hp agreements. She won't answer her phone unless she knows who it is and is getting very stressed. However, she doesn't know we know this. When we spoke to her about it she was more worried about how we knew rather than the problem itself.
In the meantime, the house is getting more and more untidy, things are not being replaced when they are broken, the shower doesn't work, there are holes in the floorboards and the boiler keeps breaking down. The biggest problem, however, is the garage. It is a double garage, filled to shoulder height with everything that has broken or been grown out of over the years. There's an old kitchen, a fridge, a huge photocopier, 2 TVs, a computer, a sofa plus other various bits of furniture. It is infested with mice and is also blocked from the outside as one of her posh cars is broken and cannot be moved off the drive!
My brother and I have offered to help clear out lots of times and have told her to sort out a date, hire a skip and we'll chuck it all out. She hasn't taken us up on the offer but a fortnight ago, our nanny died and she needs to store nanny's stuff in the garage. So...she sent us a text saying she'd booked a skip for today, would we come and help? My brother and I both said yes and we also all met on Wednesday to discuss the final details, i.e. size of skip and what to do with the fridge. Last night I texted her to ask what time to come and she told me that she'd not booked a skip as she didn't know we were definitely coming (!) but would we come anyway to sort stuff out-this is impossible as the garage is totally blocked. My brother and I did go and start sorting but it was totally pointless, however the reason we got angry was that absolutely none of this was her fault.
I know that this is a really petty thing to get angry about but our point was that she'd asked us to come and we did, yet it seems that she's not pulled her finger out and sorted her end of the deal-it's the principle more than anything. Anyway, we spent 3 hours "discussing" it this morning, she did not say sorry once and spent the whole time blaming everyone but herself. I told her that I think she needs to get professional help as she seems so overwhelmed by the problems around her and is just lashing out because she couldn't bring herself to start sorting things out. She fully admits that the stuff in the garage is junk and she wants it gone but can't seem to get organised enough to pick up a phone and get my brother, me and a skip at the same place at the same time.
Again, apologies for a super-long post on a v trivial matter but...am I right to think that she's got some issues? Or am I just being overly harsh and shouldn't be angry for her lashing out at us?
Please help! Thank you!