Unreasonable mother

[Fusby]

I wondered what other people think of this? My mother is soon to be 89, she is still fairly mobile (gardens/walks/drives) but needs to rest more, is on a lot of heart medication, suffers from a debilitating bad back which is becoming more and more frequent and she is extremely deaf. She is a widow, owns her property and has no financial concerns. The problem is that she is still living in the house my siblings and I grew up in (I'm 58) and she cannot cope with it - the large garden and large house which is in a poor state of repair and now requires a complete roof replacement. She cannot hear on the phone and has been naive and employed cowboy tradesmen who knock on her door and fleece her. Despite being well off she is also very tight fisted and refuses to pay a gardener or for help in the house. As well as the dodgy roof, parts of the house are dangerous - ie steps down into the garage, garden etc. My siblings and I are all in agreement that she should move to a property more suitable for someone of her age and have pointed out that we have her welfare and safety at heart and that life is only going to get harder for her. If she moves while she is still relatively well then she can choose her property herself, which furniture to take and assuming the property is suitable for an elderly person, then she can probably stay independent for longer. She has so far refused to move and although she has emotional attachments to the house, we also believe that there is an element of snobbery involved. She refuses point blank to look at retirement complexes and says she doesn't like bungalows or flats. Everything came to a head recently when she rang us in tears, saying that water was coming through her bedroom ceiling. My husband went over and had a look at the strategically placed buckets which were no longer coping. My siblings and I have always supported our Mum but we work full time and cannot be there 24/7. Given her age and challenges, we pointed out last night that she really must move and if she remains in denial and continues to refuse, then we will leave her to it (ie we will stop enabling her by helping in the garden, house etc). She responded by saying that she will get her roof replaced on her own and does not need our assistance. Bearing in mind that she is extremely deaf, communication with the roofers and scaffolders will be almost impossible and she will misunderstand a lot. We have agreed to pass on details of a decent roofer but she will manage everything and will not involve us. She has always been obstinate, arrogant and the big "I am" and continued to say she wants to stay in the property for as long as she can. What do you think?

Agree with all that has been said recently. Its easy with all your memory in tact to think it will be fine. Just move your friend in or better still your partner will do it all. What can be hard about that??

Well, friend might decide its just too much of a burden. Partner might get unwell themselves and need assistance.

Life has a funny way of getting its own back on you just when you think you have it all mapped out.

EVENTS DEAR BOY EVENTS - Sums it up well.

@Crikeyalmighty wow that sounds good. Also probably incredibly satisfying for him. We downsized recently and I loved the feeling of getting rid of things I’d hung onto for years. To be fair I declutter regularly partly I think in defiance to my mother’s tendency to have too much stuff- I won’t say hoard because people who genuinely are hoarders have an illness. Our mother just likes or liked going to shops and coming out laden with bags. Good luck to your relative. Also keeping him busy unlike our mother who does absolutely nothing- won’t even read a book but every call or visit a monologue on how awful her life is - but won’t help her self.

TBH I think that you should be helping her to stay in her own home, as inconvenient as it may be.

This type of soft approach is probably the best way. Older people can be very attached to their homes and feel very content surrounded by their belongings and their memories so you being "at" her is not going to change her mind.

In good conscience I probably would assist with project managing the roof while making it clear that because of your love for her to cannot agree with the decision.

It's very tricky. My parents are the same, in an unsuitable, decaying property. It's such a difficult dynamic when the child starts to tell the parent what to do. There are no easy answers.

@Tel12 even when it totally derails your own life? And I mean totally.

How does that work if they don't live locally, work full time and have children to look after then?!

@Tel12 additionally they point blank refuse a cleaner, gardener, food delivery, cancel the window cleaner yet will watch you scrub showers, do load after load of washing. Drive an hour because they won’t answer their phone so you panic and drop everything. But hey they are in their own home while you barely get time in your own and have had to press pause on life. It’s not quite as cut and dried in reality.

Siblings can sometimes a really sticky part of situations like this. When MIL should, logically, have moved out of her large, dilapidated, inconvenient house, one SIL and DH carefully won her round to the idea.

The other SIL visited MIL who said, 'Oh, I really don't want to move!' and looked a bit teary and the SIL said, 'Oh, Mum! Don't cry, you don't have to move, you can stay here!' This happened a couple of times.

To her credit that SIL did do her share of keeping MIL in the house, but she was nowhere to be seen when the crisis struck and MIL HAD to move, at short notice, and DH, the sensible SIL and I were running around sorting it out.

It is so, so hard. DH and I are pushing 60 and thinking very hard about downsizing and future plans.

@BlueLegume indeed- I think he's found it quite cathartic- he's enjoying me sending him bungalows over WhatsApp too and critiquing them, although he won't actually view till his own has completed- he's going to have 3 months in the winter in a very nice lodge complex close to us ( all bills included) - complete with bar too!! Whilst he looks around at places and is coming away with us at new year to European city. He's a great catch for any well preserved solvent lady in her 70s !! And he likes attractive older women and isn't tight !! I want to help him, because he has been really good to us and I want him to have the best later years he can -

@MichaelandKirk beautifully put. We didn't envisage renting in our early 60s and even though reasonably high earners now beyond getting a mortgage over a reasonable term because we didn't envisage a business failure in our late 40s- took time to build things back and hey presto it's not so simple-especially when you work for yourselves. As you say life is what happens when you are busy making other plans. You simply cannot rely on others to ride to the rescue at all times as life for everyone is an evolving situation.

Honestly with some of the attitudes on this thread, I really hope assisted dying becomes legal soon. I would rather die in my own house than be shuffled off into some awful retirement 'community' with forced jollity and patronising staff.

It would be like arriving in Hell early...

The Goodness. So what are your plans to stay in your own place that doesnt involve leaning very heavily on your children?

Mum in the end couldnt see what she was doing. She was always apologising but the ambulance/urgent calls were rentlesses. I missed a threatre trip in London, dinner with some relatives and three times I was just dropping off to sleep when the 'emergency call' was made to me.

If YOU have a plan thats great but do not think you can do it all on your own.

Social services, emergency services always ask the older person who should be called. Mum gave out my details every single time. She couldnt cope with day to day life admin and as she said to me once...

"If not you, who do I call" And then burst into tears.

When I was talking about her moving into a retirement complex she said she wanted to stay in her old house. I said that was fine but what was her plan to manage over the next 2 years. She lived at the time 100's of miles away.

She didnt have a plan! Her plan was to call me. we got carers in a couple of times a week but anyone who has dealt with carers from afar will know they are a very very mixed bag

@MichaelandKirk quite - arguably they do have a plan and you/we are it. Unfortunately we don’t know this until it happens. We have tried to open up conversations over many years just to see if they were looking at how they would cope in a house they have struggled to manage and maintain for years. Sneaky glances at each other now transpire to be that they just assumed we would step up, and we have had no other option. No one is shoving anyone into housing they hate @TheGoddessFrigg we just are on our knees trying to manage essentially stubborn toddlers in our own busy lives.

@TheGoddessFrigg I agree on that too - I don't think jolly complexes are for everyone- hence why my FIL is looking for a nice roomy bungalow with good garden and garage at 85 -however he is fully prepared to spend- be it private care at home if needed etc and he's well enough for it-I do think if people clearly can't cope and are relying on their children or other elderly friends but have all their faculties , it's unfair to expect others to be parenting you and constantly jumping to every need simply because you won't accept outside help of any kind , or they aren't prepared to spend on outside help if they have the means to do so.

I agree that complexes arent for everyone. It took Mum a good few months to come out of her flat. Then she found people just like her. Yes, it was very expensive but renting definitely helped.

The staff dont knock on your door every five mins trying to persuade you to join in something. You are independent and if you want to keep yourself to yourself that is fine. But they will keep a gentle eye on you.

The big issue I have is that some PP clearly have NO idea what its like. They spout off some rubbish and assume THEY wont be like this and will manage just fine. They wont and I fear they will make their children's lives very difficult.

This subject really presses buttons, doesn't it?
I don't think anybody relishes the thought of living in a residential care home or supported living, but the fact still remains that like it or not, we do all age. Unfortunately many people stick their head in the sand, and then when a crisis hits, it's left to someone else to deal with it. Crises happen quickly - strokes and heart attacks fell previously active people without warning. Dementia often creeps up on people; a simple fall and resultant injury can mean long hospital stays, and possibly pneumonia type complications, as well as muscle wasteage and consequently loss of mobility. Physio and rehab units are good, but do not magically make people young and fit again.

@BlueLegume I could have written your bit about parents not answering the phone, and dropping everything to go and check on her. Mine is reasonably considerate in the main, but has been known to do it deliberately to see who would come running. Result - I started being less reactive, not more. She has a lifeline and I decided to trust that she would use that.

I feel that some commenters on this thread simply haven't lived this, and so can't understand the stress levels that it involves. I think it's incomprehensible to them that there are some elderly folk that refuse help from anyone at all, and others that want help from only their families. Some who will do nothing for themselves and complain that no help is good enough, and others who will accept help, but only on their own terms. Others, like mine, insist they can manage when it's clear that they can't. Mine confidently assured a care manager doing an assessment that she showers once a week independently, and demonstrated, whilst clothed, how she gets into the shower. She hasn't been capable of showing unassisted for the last three years! I can't begin to imagine how she would cope if we weren't in there, stealthily doing little jobs around the place while she's not looking.
There is a lot she can do, and of course we encourage this. There have been some quite entertaining grocery deliveries, but she presents a wonderful cat-like ability to say 'oh I meant to do that' when receiving some...ahem...unusual quantities when she has clearly randomly stabbed at products on the online order.

It's just difficult to deal with, and I do always want to leap to the defence of those families just doing their best, and who are being accused of bullying when they suggest sometimes that'll make life a bit easier.

@MichaelandKirk I agree with that too- for some people I think they can be great and really add to later life, especially people who really want more company and enjoy a social life- I think many mix up the idea of the over 55 developments ( for independent living) and care homes- a totally different beast. It's a really individual thing what will suit one doesn't suit another and most of us just want what's going to work for the parent as well as keeping our own sanity

I had a friend a few years ago who had a very diffcult Mother. She did her best and was run ragged by her. She eventually got POA for her Mum and found that a few years earlier SS had offered all sorts to help with care.

The Mum refused and stated that her daughter did it all for her and had insisted that they didnt need any outside help. Thing is she never told her daughter about this offer. It only came out when my friend got her Mum's medical notes as POA. That to me was mean and very very self absorbed. I suspect its not unusual.

Ooh, ouch! That must have stung. Sadly, that doesn't surprise me!

I never said that it was easy. I had years of it before my mother went into a home. Having experienced it, I can honestly say that I'd sooner go to Switzerland than go into a home.

I feel for you. We went through exactly the same with my grandparents and other relatives. There is this mantra about 'staying in your own home' that isn't supposed to be challenged. It's rediculous because lots of people can't cope in their own house and are a danger to themselves and others. They end up in hospital bed blocking due to falls. My elderly aunt lives basically as a hoarder because she can't cope with her home. She lives in her parents house and all their things are still in it. There are stacks of things everywhere. It's a fire hazard. She has carers coming in and out but it's not their job to sort this out. She has no kids. So she relies on the good will of others to help her with basic tasks. She is a burden to be blunt. Currently she's in hospital for six weeks due to a fall. She can't get out until she are recovers. Then she's going back to the house where inevitably she will fall again. She should be in a home rally but there's nothing that can be done as she refuses to go. Out hospitals are literally bursting with old people.

Now, many people do not have the a financial ability to improve their situation. But those that are lucky enough to move themselves into suitable accommodation with a warden and where maintenance etc is managed they should be encouraged to do so. I think you should leave her to it. Let the wheels fall off .

We have watched and complained about many our our family making these selfish choices and I have told my mum I am not doing it. I don't think she is minded like that luckily.

I genuinely don't know why the government don't incentivise older people to move and why the housing market doesn't cater for old people better.

Jesus - that's diabolical.

How did your friend process that, cos i don't think i'd ever speak to my mum again if she did that to me?

Such cruelty.

@ChimpanzeeThatMonkeyNews similar tale here. I retired several years ago and my DH and I bought a place abroad to use as often as we could but not selling up completely as we knew it would be too much for my parents to cope with. Essentially they made it so difficult us being in our place abroad we have stopped going. I happened to accompany my mother to a routine appointment where I met a lovely lady who the GP had apparently put her in contact with to help, can’t quite recall her title but it was along the lines of buddying someone up to boost social engagement etc alongside anti anxiety meds. She introduced herself, I knew nothing about the arrangements- apparently my mother had refused to engage telling her and I quote “my daughter has retired so she can do it”. No communication with me and a very fractured relationship. I can understand how it happens but they or some are such a piece of work.