Why is she telling these ridiculous lies?

[chocolatemademefat]

My father died six months ago and my mother is still - understandably - really upset. She talks about him all the time and will hardly leave the house - and never on her own. She has started telling ridiculous lies about people visiting her and bringing her presents and people arriving at her door who have just found out he has passed away.
I spend as much time with her as I can but I have a full time job and a family so can't be there all the time. My sister has decided to leave her to her land of make-believe and rarely goes near her.
I phone my mother every night and I dread it now. She's making up lies about my sister and seems to think I agree with her as I cope with it by being a bit non-committal so as not to upset her as she's always on the verge of tears.
She's never had many friends in her life as she's just not a very agreeable person. I don't know what I can do for her to make things a bit more bearable for all of us. Have any of you had to deal with a parent like this and found a way around it?

Give her time, she sounds like she is overcome with grief. Tbh ime the first year after a death is pretty much anything goes, people handle things very differently.

Sorry about your dad

Have you spoken to her GP?

When my Dad died my Mum became very difficult indeed. I'm an only child so the stress of caring for my Dad in his final few months had taken it's toll on me as well as her.
She began to make things up, first of all her burglar alarm was making noises it couldn't possibly make, little things like that to get me over there (and I was already over there daily anyway).
It came to a head a year later, we'd taken a much needed family holiday to Egypt and when we got back brought her straight over for lunch etc. As soon as we took her home and left she became so ill she was calling 999. DH bless him told her enough was enough, I couldn't cope with her games and she needed to speak to someone. She made a Dr's appointment as she still claimed she was incredibly ill.
By this point I was on my last nerve and before I picked her up I called in to the Dr myself and had a word with the GP. Mum doesn't know to this day.

GP recommended grief counselling and anti depressants. Within 3 months things improved massively and now 6 years on she's ok. She never fully got over Dad dying. She is still incredibly needy and demanding of my time, but I've gotten better at saying 'no'.

I hope things improve for you, it's so bloody hard in the first year. Try and get her into the GP, maybe have a quiet word with them yourself. Worked wonders for me.

Its so hard the first year after,I know when my dad died, my mum behaved very strangely, almost manic to start with and then crashed.We probably all did,and looking back we all did some odd things.

She had grief counselling and it was a turn around for her,I would also suggest a visit to the GP,if she wont go,I would be no harm to go yourself and chat to them and see what they suggest.

Sorry about your Dad.

Could this be dementia setting in though?

My dgran used to talk to df in the evenings on the phone (200 miles away). He'd ask her about the day, and she'd say along the lines of:
"I got up early so I could catch the bus to town. I bought the bread from the shop on the corner, but I missed the bus back, so I went to the cafe to have lunch where I met X and Y. I thought while I was there I might as well do the shopping and brought washing powder, potatoes and food for next door's dog.
For dinner I had fish and chips which I got from the chippy by the bus stop..."

He'd repeat this to dm, who would say "the early bus was cancelled last year, the shop on the corner shut over 5 years ago, Y died 15 years ago, she would never have managed to carry that amount of shopping back, next door never had a dog as long as I've known them (30 years) and the chippy by the bus stop because a Chinese last year. There's something wrong."

Df didn't want to admit to this until we went to visit and found she'd been living off increasingly stale bread and never went out. Her freezer was full, it has to be admitted... of 30kg of lard and about 6 dozen eggs.

The fact that she was living in this dream world hid the problem for too long. But she was happy in the dream world, happier than she'd been for some time, I think. Unfortunately, it also meant that she wasn't safe in her own home. Although the lighting of the gas fire decided that by her method:

1. Turn gas on in lounge
2. Go to kitchen and switch on gas hobs.
3. Light rolled piece of newspaper from gas hob
4. Return to lounge and use flame to light gas fire
5. Return to kitchen and put newspaper in sink (hopefully full of water)

At any point she was liable to forget what she was doing and just drop (literally) what she was doing. The neighbours told df that they were having to bang on her door and get entrance (they had a key) to turn the gas off when the shared drive started smelling of it after she'd stopped after step number 1.

Good point about dementia. People often make up things to hide the fact they aren't remembering anything very much.

Also, check for a UTI, good nutrition and drinking enough are important too.

When all of these have been ruled out, then look in to the grief and loneliness being the cause.

So glad somebody else mentioned dementia. This was one if the first symptoms my FIL showed, not that we recognised it as such at the time unfortunately.

Yes as mamma mentioned, a urinary infection is a common cause of dementia symptoms in older women.

What everyone has said. You need to get her to her GP & have ITI infections checked for, depression & memory checks.

I really hope it is just an infection.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I dont think dementia comes into it but having a talk with her GP is a good way to go. Depression sounds about right - I know she won't agree to counselling but perhaps just making the GP aware of the problems will make something happen.

When MIL died FIL was a pain in the ass for a bit. Didn't help that DH blamed him for her death, which to be fair he wasn't blameless. Everything with him was a crisis. He would phone 15 times a day about needing to be rescued (he lost his clothes at the hospital, or couldn't find his car keys), then cry if we ignored him. He was doing this as she was dying in the hospital too, trying to make it about him. Then he would talk about not being able to afford the funeral once she died (knowing damn well we couldn't afford it) because he stopped paying her life insurance a while back. Waited until DH's uncle paid the expenses and my husband was good and upset before mentioning he was thinking about getting a new car. Only reason we couldn't disown him is because MIL made DH and FIL promise on her death bed to always take care of each other.

I don't remember what stopped it or how long he kept at his stupid games. I'm sure there were a few blow outs between them. Somewhere along the lines we started telling him we were confident he would figure out how to rescue himself and he always did. 4 years later and he's doing just fine, more or less.

I had a friend flip out at me claiming I didn't care that his brother died because I didn't post something on a forum or something trivial. Was confused but I did what he wanted and he went off the grid for a bit. He's fine a few years later too, and we're still friends the same as we ever were.

Death brings out the crazy in people sometimes, but they get over it with some time and patience.