The Cockroach cafe -new look for spring 2021

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Morning all! regulars or newbies, coping with your oldies is a frustrating, exhausting and difficult business however much we love them. The Cockroach Cafe is open to all, with a refurbishment to celebrate the coming of Spring, a place to vent, rant, ask questions, get advice, and hopefully laugh too.

If your question is big, it's best to start a new thread, and get all the advice together in one place. But for everything else, the cafe is the right place.

For newbies: why cockroach? Previous long term resident of "Elderly Parents" Yolo's DM attended a 'small animal event' in a nursing home, and was presented with a "small animal with a hard back" the name of which species she couldn't remember. Her ever helpful DB suggested cockroach, and it has become a toast on here. So cockroach mes amis/amies, and may you all live to fight another day.

I got through the early days by managing to pretend that none of it was real. I was talking to someone else who imagined that her brother was away on a work trip. You do whatever you need to do to get you through the next five minutes. You have to face the loss while you are talking to the insurers/celebrant/bank/registrar and that's what makes those hard. The rest of the time you can potter about keeping your mind very firmly on Something Else.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jun/04/how-can-i-stop-my-mothers-constant-criticism-annalisa-barbieri

This article might be of interest to those of us dealing with critical mothers. I thought this line about trying to avoid confrontation was interesting 'I understand you don’t want the explosions, but in order to contain them you have become her emotional sandbag. That’s not fair on you and will be hard to sustain in the long term.'

Wow nota that's certainly right on the money!

I particularly relate to this:

I suspect that a large part of my hurt probably stems from recognising a lot of both parents in myself, and liking the bits that are all Dad, and not liking the bits of me that are more Mum.

It all gets terribly complicated.

Oooh nota very useful thank you.
I like the two mothers idea. The real one and one in our head.

There's something very final about organising the funeral isn't there. When my dad died the undertaker came to the house a couple of times and we were very emotional.

I like that article from the Guardian - the two mothers. The real one is kind and generous but needy. The one in my head is always demanding, always miserable, never satisfied.

Hello all. How are things? minty hope the plans are going as smoothly as possible.

I've realised that the hardest thing is coping with mum's deteriorating mental faculties. I have sympathy for the pain and the frustration from her lack of sight but when she phones me half an hour after I have left her and tells me she can't find something I left right beside her I feel so cross. On the plus side she has started on new pain meds with the option that if she can cope with them - she's not too drowsy - then they can be increased.

She had a go at me yesterday because I am free to do whatever I want and use her as an excuse not to do things. She is cross because last week my friend took DH to the vaccination centre and I went along for the ride at my friend's request so that I could have a break. She keeps on about me going off and doing whatever I want and she can't do that. She seems to have no memory of the wild trips she and dad would go on.

She seems to have no memory of the wild trips she and dad would go on.

My mum, on the other hand, if baffled that I would want to go on wild trips ("you get that from your dad") as she's never been the adventurous type.

I can sympathise with the frustration with lack of mental faculties. My mum, who has always been very good with tech, seems to have about half a dozen queries a day about issues with the phone/mobile/PC that she never used to have problems with.

We'll hopefully have all the arrangements tied up by the end of tomorrow at the latest.

I'm just working on the photos for the slide show and listening to some of Dad's favourite jazz music and finally, 16 days in, it's hit me like a ton of bricks...that kind of pain that feels like someone is trying to gouge your heart out with a rusty spoon...

I keep telling mum that I want the life that she had when she was my age rather than me being tied to the life that she has now.

What is the group thinking on how far is "popping" distance rather than being a journey? "Can you just pop over and.....?"

Hairbrush You're not free to do what you want though are you, she never lets you off the leash.

My mum lives about 3 miles away. The time it takes to get there varies depending on time of day, school holidays etc. I don't consider it to be "popping" distance. I also have to "gather" my mental & physical strength before I go as she can be very draining.

minty 🌺🌺🌺🌺 be very kind to yourself.
hairbrush I get you... the jealousy and rage at the dying of the light..... but keep doing it. Defend your freedoms. Otherwise your world will shrink further.
knot what do you mean about popping distance? I am about 1/4 mile from dm.
But popping always still takes an hour..

I’m 10 miles away, 30 minutes drive, but apparently I drive the car from back to the future, and can turn up before she calls

I was in and out of the house inside five minutes, easy as MIL is not there at the moment as she's back in hospital. Can I pop over and do X? I mean, I can and I did and it was a five minute job with a twenty minute drive at each end. The only thing that made me time it today was that I needed to do other things so I had an eye on the clock. Google says it's 7 miles and 15 minutes but it took 20 today.

I hadn't realised that it took that long and I'm now thinking again about how much time I spend in the car going to do trivial unimportant things that could easily wait a day or so. The batteries have gone in the clock, my watch strap has broken, the printer's stopped working - can you pop over and look at it? I think the answer now will be "can it wait until shopping day?"

My mum is about 3 minutes walk away so I can pop over very easily.

I have started to get pretty good at "I'll have a look at it next time I'm round", although since that's five days a week atm she never has long to wait.

She had a bit of a meltdown when I left on Sunday (after a 4 hour plus visit), but I pointed out that I'll be round considerably less once I go back to work and left with her ranting after me!

@MintyCedric I understand what you mean. Sometimes in the early months the pain of losing my dad would knock me off my feet.

For me "popping distance" is outside, down the stairs, down the drive and along the decking to her door. But the length of time I spend can be anything from a minute (last night, at 11.00 p.m. because she couldn't find the tablets I had left beside her bed for the morning) to 40 minutes (Sunday afternoon when she could not walk from her bed to the toilet - a distance of four steps - and she suggested I passed her the bathroom bin to pee instead. I refused.)

@Knotaknitter
I would be hugely frustrated by that. I don't think I would cope. I am so bad tempered and irritable with what I have to do now. If I had to drive 20 minutes to do it I would be beside myself.

Thank you all. Sometimes you have to formally phrase the question for the answer to pop into your head. Too much pop there, I know.

I now realise that what is bugging me about the word is that it minimises the work involved. If someone asks me to pop over they have decided that it's no trouble for me. In this case someone could have asked the neighbour with the key to open the door, walk in, do the thing, walk out, lock up but we don't want to impose on them so Knitter can just pop across and do it.

I suspect that I am being unreasonable because I'm also on a standard setting of permenantly irritable and I have a certain amount of long standing resentment with those involved. I hereby resolve to drop the word "pop" from my dictionary.

“Pop” is a lot better than “Bob”

My "popping" over is 12 miles, 25-30 minutes. DM keeps saying maybe she should move nearer to me but I don't want that..she would have no friends locally and would be totally reliant on me (although she is anyway TBH!)

Today I was working, I work freelance and things are starting to pick up. She has got used to me being around and only working 1 or 2 days a week. She called to ask what I was doing. I told her work "oh you don't usually work on a Tuesday". Explained I would be working 3 x a week and she replied "oh I guess I won't see you much then, I will have to go shopping on my own" (like that is even possible-she can barely walk now). Now I remember her working at my age and seeing her DM twice a week if that.. I explained that I was over yesterday, back tomorrow then she starts back tracking. I've had to stop telling her when I'm playing tennis as all i get is oh you are living my old life now..how I would love to be on a tennis court, woe is me I never go out not even for a breath of fresh air!

She has carers 5 times a day as she doesn't cope well on her own for long, they take her out in the car for a drive on the seafront, I take her out when ever I am over but she forgets all this. So frustrating!

I'm perched on the edge of my mum's bed waiting for the ambulance. She has had horrendous diarrhoea and has fallen in the bathroom. I've changed her nightdress but I can't move her so have called an ambulance. I've scrubbed the bed and the bedroom floor and changed the sheets but I can't wash her or do anything about the bathroom.

She's 84 and has been stuck for nearly an hour.

@IthinkIsawahairbrushbackthere

I'm perched on the edge of my mum's bed waiting for the ambulance. She has had horrendous diarrhoea and has fallen in the bathroom. I've changed her nightdress but I can't move her so have called an ambulance. I've scrubbed the bed and the bedroom floor and changed the sheets but I can't wash her or do anything about the bathroom.

She's 84 and has been stuck for nearly an hour.

Oh no @hairbrush I hope it arrives soon. How is DM, is she distressed?

hairbrush that sounds grim. I hope the ambulance gets there soon.

hairbrush Hope the Ambulance has arrived.🌺

Thinking of you hairbrush

I am sorry hairbrush. I hope that the rest of the day improves for you. Hopefully the ambulance service wasn't that busy at 6am and they came pretty quickly.

@IthinkIsawahairbrushbackthere

Hope the ambulance had long since been and gone and you're both OK