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Elderly parents
Original poster

Miss the person my Mum used to be

26 replies

slipperandpjsmum · 08/04/2012 15:38

I feel really, really guilty posting this but I am hoping I will get responses from people who feel the same.

My Mum was always my best friend, we were so close and had a great relationship. She is now 88 and things are really hard. I miss who she used to be. When I speak to her she gets muddled all the time, talks overs me, never listens to me and just wants to talk about her ill health.

I feel this terrible sense of loss that she slipped away without me realising she was going.

She comes round to our home a lot but having 4 dc (the youngest of whom is 3) is really hard work. She repeats things over and over and gets confused. Recently my dd was telling her she was really upset about something and my Mum started laughing, which was difficult.

I don't want to sound horrible but the responsibility of everything is really getting to me. I miss my best friend so much.

OP posts:
purplewithred · 08/04/2012 15:50

You have my sympathy; this must be really really hard to go through. Does she have a diagnosis or do you see this as just her getting a bit old? It does sound more than just old age.

fanjoforthemammaries7850 · 08/04/2012 15:59

Sympathies from me, my mum is ony 74 but gets anxious and confused and she used to be my rock and best friend, feels very lonely

Original poster
slipperandpjsmum · 08/04/2012 17:53

Thanks for your posts. Thats it exactly Fanjo she used to be the one I would go to when I need a chat/advice and now thats all gone. You are right. It feels very lonley.

OP posts:
smartiesrule · 08/04/2012 17:58

Sympathy and empathy from me too. It is heart-breaking when you realised she's slipping away. When people ask how I feel about her I say it's like she's my mother now, not my mum.

CMOTDibbler · 08/04/2012 18:22

Sympathy from me too - other people talk about the lovely time they spend with their mum, and I can't even have a proper chat with mine anymore. I don't even tell her a lot of stuff as she won't remember about it or get muddled over it.
She's not my mum anymore.

gremlindolphin · 08/04/2012 23:06

I sympathise too, my Mum is 76 but major illness and operations has changed her, I do get snapshots of the old her but they are few and far between.

Sometimes I can be with her all day and then when she's gone I think "I'll ring Mum" but I'm thinking about the old Mum in her old house and then I come back to the here and now. Its sad.

x

reddaisy · 08/04/2012 23:16

For us it is MIL. DP and her were so close but now she is a different woman. She is so bitter, angry and aggressive all the time and is incapable of having an appropriate conversation. I caught her discussing DV with our 3year old yesterday.

Dp says he feels like he is grieving for his mum while she is still here and I never knew her before she was like this so that saddens him.

She does things like turning the oven off while we are cooking a roast or rummaging through the baby's room when he is asleep. If you ask her to sit down and relax with a cup of tea, she gets nasty. It is so sad for everyone and I feel for her because she must feel so bewildered inside.

Fil just uses his time with us as respite which we understand but as she will only listen to him, we wish he would intervene more.

gingeroots · 09/04/2012 12:32

This will sound really horrible and lacking in sympathy for those of you who've lost a lovely mum but ...

it's also quite hard looking after a failing person whose personality becomes more extreme with age . Caring and pretending .
And who was never a lovely mum in the first place .

malheureuse · 09/04/2012 12:40

I think thats a different problem ginger.. not everyone would take on that care

being with someone who is different mentally/ cognitively to how they always were is upsetting on many levels

thirdhill · 09/04/2012 13:16

My parents were also changed by their health as time went on. However I was lucky to have had enough time with them, despite living in different continents for 30+ years, to remember that their love, care and support were unchanging all my life and through all the changes I went through. They were completely unable to lose sight of the fact that they loved me and not just how I behaved. That was a tough act to follow but I could do nothing else when it was my turn. We were very lucky, and not everyone will be that lucky.

thirdhill · 09/04/2012 13:20

slipper what I really wanted to say was to be kind to yourself and accept that she's happy and feels safe there with you when she can.

gingeroots · 09/04/2012 17:37

It is a different problem I know .

My mother's behaviour is different ,and she's getting confused .

It is upsetting and I'm constantly having to be reassuring and kind to her .

But I wonder if I'd find it easier if she'd ever been a kinder ,less selfish person .

Possibly my shoulders wouldn't be rigid with tension and the effort to be kind to an old lady with lots of health problems whom I don't like very much .

reddaisy · 09/04/2012 20:19

Ginger, that sounds hard as well. Do you have siblings to share the burden with?

gingeroots · 09/04/2012 22:24

Thanks reddaisy .

I've 4 brothers but they don't live near .

We're not that close ( not entirely unrelated to circumstances ,including parenting ,growing up ) and if anything I think my caring for my mum creates distance between them and me ,because they feel guilty .

Plus if they visit ,it's my mother they're visiting ,not me .

I'm a bit down at present ,but I'll buck up .

claudedebussy · 09/04/2012 22:34

tis so shit when your parent becomes your child. it's very, very hard to deal with.

i'm going through it too.

malheureuse · 09/04/2012 23:13

ginger.. its very hard
Its natural you want to help and kind of you but try to keep a balance and not go ott... you can't put things right by caring for her now iykwim

gingeroots · 10/04/2012 10:23

you can't put things right by caring for her now
Bit of nail on the head there malhereuse .

I think that's some of the trouble .
It was ok when I lived my own life and didn't see much of her .
Now I'm there every day doing a million practical things .....which will never be good enough ,never elicit a normal response .
By normal I mean a thank you or an acceptance that whatever I've done can actually be relied on without checks and introducing bizarre methods of control which completely sabotage the work I've put in .

On days when she's unwell ( not drinking enough ,potassium and sodium levels shot ) her negative behaviour traits become more extreme /visible .
Her immense desire to control , her endless lying , patronising and only ever seeing things from her POV ( which is relentlessly negative ) .

It is sad for her ,having lived her life with a strange combo of high anxiety and inabilty to credit anyone else with any value or sense .

But having to spend so much time with her and experience it all amplified by her illness and realise ,as an adult ,what an impact her personality has had on all of us growing up ,breaks my heart over and over again .

Sorry to have so highjacked this thread .

Ikeatears · 10/04/2012 10:32

Ginger, I understand and I'm going to start another thread in relationships. Feel free to join me. Smile

gingeroots · 10/04/2012 10:57

I'll be there Ike Smile

ssd · 11/04/2012 00:08

op, \i get it and am in the same boat

I feel my mum has given up on life and my problem is I haven;t/cant give up on her being my mum

I need to give up too and accept her as she is instead of constantly looking for a mum when there isn't one anymore

it is indeed very lonely and isolating

I start many threads on here all the time about having no family help and how hard it is, when all the time I really mean no mum help

its just crushing

gingeroots · 11/04/2012 09:18

ssd I'm sorry , it must be like on going grieving ,loosing someone you love .

Life in general can be tough ,I expect you have a lot on your plate with a family .
Hope things improve for you soon .

ssd · 11/04/2012 11:52

thanks ginger and sympathy to you too, you have it tough for other reasons Sad

lavender11 · 11/04/2012 12:05

I was never particularly close to my mum and since I have had two children we are even further apart as having my own children has vividly brought back bits of her mothering to me which were not great. In other ways she was a fantastic mum but a lot of the mothering when I was a child was about her. She is always really positive and nice about my children (her grandchildren) on the phone but really i think she only wants photos - when I have gone to visit her (once) with the children as I anticipated it was minutes before they started to be too energetic and wild for her.

Now she has had a few doctors/consultants diagnosis suggesting she has early or even middle stages dementia / alzheimers. I am one of 4 children myself so there are other siblings to be there as well as my father (not a fantastic marriage between my parents but so far my father is still there).

My problem is I see my mum so infrequently that I am constantly "doubting thomas". In my conversations with her she seems almost entirely lucid but increasingly insistent on being identified as someone who needs to be cared for - listing all my siblings as "coming to look after me" when my father goes away very briefly for a night or similar. But she is not incapable of getting dressed/feeding herself/meeting friends etc. I find myself resenting this as i get this involuntary urge to interpret it as her redressing the balance back onto her and yet just typing that feels sooo selfish - yet somehow i know she would be happy if she knew i feel guilty. I feel guilty even having had children myself as i know I cannot give back to her the way she wants it
In my case it was never a supportive "mother" relationship but i know it is all downhill on the me feeling guilt front from hereon in.

Kikithecat · 11/04/2012 17:57

OP I feel just like you. My mum is younger (78) but showing many of the same signs. She only seems to be able to repeat the same conversations we've had before. Any new thing I try to talk about is quickly brought back to one of her much repeated stories. In groups (ie. more family around) she has trouble following the conversation. She used to enjoy joking with us all but although she tries hard she's always a few steps behind.
I miss the mum I used to enjoy and like you I feel guilty because although I see her regularly I don'y really look forward to it. Some days are better and she's more like her old self - I think her general health affects how she is mentally. I wish it could be reversed.

BellaDesconocida · 21/05/2012 13:35

This is so sad, big unmumsnetty hugs to you all.

My mum hasn't been herself since I was a teenager.
Sometimes I feel terribly sorry for myself feeling that I haven't had a mum for a long time, it does feel lonely. And then I feel guilty about feeling sorry for myself when I should be feeling more sorry for her.
Its worse at the moment coz I'm preggers & just want to cry.

She can barely talk now, has dementia, can't walk. My poor lovely mum. She's abroad in a nursing home so I don't see her often.

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