Sorry, this is a bit long and I'm just venting really. I'm an only child with a widowed mother in her early 80s. I live about an hour from her, phone every other day, take her out for the day fortnightly, and we take her on holiday with us once a year. I know she misses Dad but she's not socially isolated, she is heavily involved with the church, a gardening club, a cinema club, WI (all weekly) and also had a group of friends she's know for years that all meet up fortnightly. She comes from a large family and sees her siblings regularly. She also goes on holiday with them once a year and although she drives locally, is unhappy to drive long distances so either me or DH take and collect her so she can go. I also have bought her and iPad and a mobile phone and pay the bills for the phone. She loves both as she finds them much easier to use than a laptop and so is always emailing or texting her friends. I think I'm just venting as I do try my best for her.
She has long-standing cardiovascular health problems that were stable for many years but have deteriorated in the last 18 months, leading to falls. We've had her staying at our home a lot during these episodes. They've stabilised again recently but she'll need surgery which is being organised and she'll recuperate at our house. However in the last 18 months she's become increasingly querulous and difficult, it's like dealing with a large fractious toddler.
Im used to the repetitive conversations that go into detail about trivia and the continual getting hold of the wrong end of the stick due to her deafness and so expecting that (although the reading out of her emails to me from people I don't know took me by surprise!) but she's driving me mad on this holiday and I'm finding her behaviour a bit upsetting. It probably all sounds petty but it's been continual drip drip and it's getting to me. We're in a lovely cottage with great access for her, inc a ground floor bedroom with en-suite wet room, we've paid for it all, it's in a flat area & we've planned everything to suit her needs. She won't say what she wants to do as she wants to go with the flow. That's fine but then she's says I'm bossy. We know she's got mobility problems that she's in denial about so we're not walking far. According to my garmin watch which is accurate, we've done 3,500 steps in total today. We discuss each morning what to do, she says that's all fine, then when we get to where we are going there is face pulling, we ask if we're walking too far, she says no, then she starts doing this odd walk with her arms out and not bending her knees (she looks like a penguin and even my husband has noticed which is unusual) which is a cue that she wants to go back to the car even if we've just asked her that and she's said no, we ask her if she's warm enough, she says she's fine then complains to complete strangers how cold she is. She has developed an inability to open the car door, (it's no heavier than the door in her car) we have to do this for her, she just sits in the car waiting for us to do this, if we park up somewhere as we've discussed and agreed to go there, we get a surprised ' oh are we getting out again' comment. She'll stand in a doorway of a shop and get snappy when it's gently pointed out she's blocking it, she's randomly told me I was getting angry with her today when she offered to feed the dogs and I said ' don't worry, we'll feed them later as we're going to the pub for a roast dinner and I'm sure we'll give them some roast scraps' she then said ' look what you made me do by being angry with me' as she couldn't get her arm in her coat sleeve even though I was holding it up for her and I was in the wrong for offering drive to the pub as she is 'quite capable of walking' even though a few moments before she was saying tiring how walking was. we've got 4 more days and I'm running out of patience