AIBU - to not know how to feel about this , let alone discuss it....

[justilou]

I have started and deleted this several times in the last few days - this could be a long one - brace yourselves.

My mother has a very extreme Narcissistic Borderline Personality Disorder. In a nutshell, she was very physically and emotionally abusive to me when I was growing up - and was manipulative and clever and nobody ever believed me. (Until the last few years, I was very much the scapegoat and the black sheep of the family. Have had many apologies since then....)

My family moved from Australia to the Netherlands seven years ago. (DH, DD 12, B/G Twins 10 & me) Soon after that, my dad was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease and Mum loved it. Mum got lots of support and was allowed to be a martyr for nursing him for three years - lots of attention, etc. when in reality she spent most of her time out on the verandah reading e-books and chain smoking, or roughing him up, verbally abusing him and telling him that she couldn't wait until he died. (We suspect she sped things up at the end, but that's another matter). She's an ex-nurse and loved being told how great her nursing skills were, and how lucky Dad was to have had her, etc....
Soon after this she was diagnosed with Lung Cancer and Emphysema and has had lots of life-threatening medical experiences - mostly because she has a lifelong history of anorexia, so wouldn't eat and is non-compliant with medical advice - so does stupid things with medication, etc...

Up until the last year she had people enthralled with lots of very creative stories about her illnesses (they got so grandiose, and my favourite was "It's a rare form of TB I picked up in Bulgaria at a rabbit farm") I wouldn't be surprised if she said that being sick has been the best time in her life as she loves to be the centre of attention. (My husband and I crack ourselves up with this joke - How many Justilou's Mums does it take to change a lightbulb? Just the one - she stands on a chair and the world revolves around her until it's done - but it's never done properly) As she has not kicked the bucket, people's interest has waned, and their attention has petered out - so of course it's time she got really sick, isn't it?

I have flown back from the Netherlands to Australia to her deathbed five times so far. (Most have actually been genuine medical emergencies, but I am fairly sure that one was a cry for attention... Regardless of the time spent away from my family and the enormous cost involved, she's never been remotely grateful. None of that has been acknowledged.)

The last time I was there was about a month ago - when she was admitted to hospital and was very weak, etc..... She was very clever and was discharged by the locum doctor who believed her when she lied and said that I'd moved back to be with her in her last days - and it was a long weekend, so the discharge coordinator wasn't there to assess her needs. Anyhow, after leaving my husband to manage with the three kids and dog while I was gone, (being Cinderella for Mum - who has not mellowed at all with age or illness) nothing much was changing and she wasn't allowing any support systems to be set up for her, so the community nurse coordinator said I should go home. I arrived on Saturday night and by Monday morning she was back in hospital where she's been for about a month.

While in hospital this time her symptoms deteriorated, and it's been discovered that she has now got a brain tumour. She is weirdly gleeful about it. Most disturbing. It's untreatable and she's dying faster than she was with the lung cancer/emphysema thing.

Now - here's where it gets more complicated.

We are moving back to Australia. As you know, it's a rather large continent. The city we are moving to is two hours flight away from where Mum lives. We are leaving here next Thursday. (SO MUCH TO DO!!!)

She has just managed to get discharged from hospital and told the palliative care team there that my Aunt (who is very kind, and she treats like crap) is more than happy to move in with her until we all arrive. We had agreed to spend Christmas with her, but not move in!!! My aunt has set the community care nurses straight on this situation and my aunt and Mum's cousin (who she also treats like crap) are tag-teaming until we arrive.

My conflict is that I am torn between being a good, loving daughter and a positive example for my kids and not wanting them to be at Mum's place with all this going on. (I can't be there for them AND Mum while she's like this - and they can't do anything at her place.) Mum has made her feelings on going into a nursing home or hospital to die very clear, but has no empathy for the people she's affecting by being at home. I am fantasising about someone calling an ambulance and sending her off to hospital or arriving in Australia to find out that she'd died already. Siiiigh. It would be so much better if she just shuffled off now. *Massive guilt trip.

Your aunt, your cousin, and you all need to grow some balls and tell the palliative care team you are NOT caring for her at home also

This with bells on.

Speak directly to her palliative care team and tell them she's misled them about the extent to which you will be available/willing to care for her, and that alternative arrangements will have to be made. Then you can decide independently how much time and energy you are going to expend on her.

You could always just not go....

What can she do? You have massive responsibilities and a very complicated schedule of your own right now, your children need settling in a new country and it's all highly inconvenient. You've done your bit rushing back and forth already - enough now. Enough.

If you don't particularly feel a need to be with her in the last days and hours then just don't rush to change your plans. Do as you always planned to do, in your own time and your own way. If she's still alive once you've got all your ducks in a row then by all means go and see her if it's what you want for closure, but don't let your life revolve around hers now. She can't hurt you any more and she can't make you do anything you don't want to and there is nothing she can do about it.

You sound like you have about a million contradictory feelings zipping around your mind - on top the massive stresss of a huge house move. I think you're doing really well just to be standing.

I agree with others that you need to firstly, find out the truth of the situation in terms of how ill she is and how long she has left from someone reliable, i.e. not her! In particular, find out what her escalating care needs are likely to be. Second, informed by that knowledge, decide what you can and can't do and draw clear and firm boundaries about this. That might mean having a very difficult conversation with your mum. However, it may be that the part in (1) about the escalating care needs helps here. If it's likely she will have to go into a home or hospice anyway, then moving there now may be less awful for her. Third, build a team to do the bits you can't do - other family members, professional nurses, care staff, cleaners etc. If resources allow, there is no point you running round doing work that can be done by others. The most important thing is that you spend the time she has left in the way that is happiest for you both, whatever that is.

No advice sorry, just wanted to send some flowers . Your situation sounds stressful.
Fwiw I lived with my gran whilst she died, I was five, I don't remember it at all, but 10/12 would be much more aware.

I don't know if uouve ever full time cared for someone in their last days. But having done so I can tell you it is both distressing, stressful and full on. There is no respite, between the emotional and the physical, and the physical can be, I'm sorry , very unpleasant , very intimate and very very hard to cope with. And we had a Marie curie nurse through the night, but the nurse still comes to uou when something bad happens, and it can happen often.

Please don't have uour children there. It's hard for adults, never mind kids.

Whatever you plan to do, the first thing uou need to think of is to ensure uour children are not present. Once you have that sorted, then uou can plan when uou need to be there, and if uou can't get the kids not present then you can't be either.

It's nothing to do with how uou feel about her, but it is absolutely to do with coping with the care required for someone dying. I'm sorry,

Has she been diagnosed BPD/NPD or is this an internet diagnosis?

I'd wash my hands of her personally but that's a decision only you can make.

There is a whole world of difference between caring for a loved one in their last days out of love, and being at the beck and call of a manipulative old woman as she squeezes out her last drops of bitterness. My children visit their much-loved great uncle regularly, and he is likely to die in the not too distant future. Visiting is fine, but no way would I want them to have to see the day to day awfulness of his illness and neither would he.

Most people would rather die at home (although I'm hoping for death in a fog of drug-induced oblivion myself and I'd need a hospital for that). Sometimes we can't have what we want. Where it is practical I absolutely support the right of terminally ill people to make decisions about their own care, but in this case it is only possible for your mother to get what she wants if other people are made miserable. She isn't asking you to do this (as many people would ask a child with whom they have a loving relationship), she is making demands and manipulating you.

I think you need to detach to a degree that you feel comfortable with. Don't stay at her place, certainly don't become her carer and have a very frank talk with her care team. And book some counselling because no matter how this ends you will come out of it feeling battered I'm afraid.

I think you should make the decision on the basis of what you want. Not on what you feel you should do or what your Mother wants you to do or what other family members expect but what is right for you both practically and emotionally. When your Mother dies the difficult relationship you have with her is going to have an impact on your grief. You have to consider whether becoming her carer will make this worse or better for you. Nobody can judge you whatever decision you make. Hugs xx

Do what is right for you, first, and your family, OP, and ignore what you "should" be doing or what is somehow expected of you.

My mother and I had a very difficult relationship; she also had strong narcissistic traits, she too was diagnosed with cancer and she, too, had a strange, dark glee about it. She reverted in some respects to being a child, and it was as if a part of her finally got what she wanted in some perverse way. I call it the slow and quiet horror of her death, at the end of a life of some profound disappointment on her part.

I chose not to be there when she died, and instead travelled to the US to be with friends. My sister understood, my brother did not. It was what I had to do for myself, though, and convention be damned. While I wonder "what if", I don't regret my decision.

So, yes, do what feels right for you

It was validating reading Davina McCall's account of her own mother's death, if you're of a mind to look it up ...

Thanks for all your advice, lovely people. Those who have said that I have conflicting feelings are right. I'' exhausted and overwhelmed with the physical and emotional needs of moving back to Australia and now this on top of it.... I'm knackered. I don't want my kids near mum like this but I feel that it's important for them to get a chance to say goodbye before she dies. You are all totally correct that their needs come first. (She has never had unsupervised contact with them and her relationship with them is quite different to the one she has with me. In her own fucked up way, she's been quite good to them - but now they're verging on puberty I suspect the girls would become targets if left in her company for too long. They all switched on and can all see that she's very screwed up. One of my best friends lives near Mum and she is happy to take them (and it's summer and she has a pool, so not bad for them). I'm just totally overwhelmed and don't know how to process my own feelings. I know better than to expect things to ever get resolved between us. I don't like the woman, but I am understanding enough to know that she is basically a recalcitrant toddler in a dying 70 year old's body, and I feel very sorry for her. Neither my aunt nor me take any shit from her, don't worry. I did have therapy for years after I left home (at 16) and I think I am very realistic when I say that I also have to be there for her for my own closure and emotional growth too. I have told my husband to drive a stake through my heart if he thinks I'm heading down a path like hers. However, if she were to be put back in hospital I think it would be best for us all.
All the advice about the palliative care team is great. She won't have them in her house....The hospital had more than enough info on her file to know her situation (from my aunt and from mum). We are both going to complain.

Also - nobody'S hosting Christmas this year. She just wanted to see the kids again. Aussies tend to refer to the time between the middle of November to January as Christmas as this is when we get our summer vacation which refer to as the Christmas Holidays.

My conflict is that I am torn between being a good, loving daughter and a positive example for my kids and not wanting them to be at Mum's place with all this going on.
But do you want the example you show to be someone who lets a nasty person walk all over them from a sense of obligation?

Sorry, should have added, I'm sorry you're going through this, it's hard regardless of the relationship.

The fact is that I have protected my kids very well from my mother and because of this, their relationships with her are very different to mine.

Hi. I hope things are better for you. Maybe she kicked the bucket? Lol... I just wanted to say that I have borderline personality disorder & in so shame or form do I behave in that way....

extreme Narcissistic Borderline Personality Disorder.

Was she diagnosed with this whilst she was working as a nurse ?