I try and be brief, but I want to avoid drip feeding.
My Mother is a casebook narcissist. All my life everything has been about her. Despite trying to please her all my life, I finally realise I never will. Every opportunity she puts me down, and is critical of everything I do. She bullied my Dad who had a merciful release from her domineering a few years ago. I remember I made a cake and took about 10 hours decorating it. I won first prize in the competition and all she could say was ‘I can see what you were trying to achieve’. I raised over £2500 last year by doing a sponsored swim, three years before that £3000 for GOSH and not once could she say I’m proud of you. Every Christmas or birthday present was rubbished. If I sent her flowers, she would take great delight in telling me they died too soon. For all intents and purposes we were the perfect family. Being taken to stately homes etc, reading books, learning musical interests, trying to make out she was the perfect mother. She has few friends left now, as I think most of them got tired of her domineering personality and having to be the centre of attention.
I have two sisters (one older, one younger) and she has played divide and rule since we were knee high. Playing one off against the other until I walked away from my sisters a few years ago. No row or anything, we just didn’t contact each other, and any chance Mother had would try to widen that divide. Too much toxicity. My elder sister is pretty much the same as my Mother. My Mother would delight in running me down to both of them.
She has now been diagnosed with vascular dementia. She is in hospital at the moment, waiting to go into a home. Her house will need to be sold to pay for this. I have made every effort to make the 4hour round train trip to see her, on every day off I had.
A few days ago my sister announced that her and my younger sister had joint power of attorney to deal with her affairs. She had gone to a solicitors with my two sisters to arrange this, and none of them heaven had the guts to tell me. My Mother obviously doesn’t trust me to do anything for her, yet she was quite happy for me to all her shopping throughout lockdown and since. I never minded doing it, and every shop I could add some flowers and other treats to her delivery. I rang her local newsagents and arranged to have some magazines and a weekly paper delivery for her (at my cost) so she could keep up to date with things. (She is not online at all)
Since finding this out about the POA I have felt like I have been kicked in the teeth. All the while I was helping her she knew what she had done with the POA, and would have known how that would make me feel, yet she couldn’t say anything.
I haven’t been able to visit for 10 days because of the train strikes, but I don’t want to visit next week. One half of me is compassionate, and doesn’t want to think of her sitting there waiting for visitors, yet the other side I don’t want to go and her see her as she is too far gone to discuss it, and I feel I need to process something that has really hurt me. AIBU to leave it a few weeks before I visit her?