Appalling behaviour-dressed up as old age-it has to be addressed

[BlueLegume]

Hi all, having followed and contributed to several threads on ‘Elderly Parents’ I want to thank so many of you for helping me look at my/our situation. I won’t name check you just yet but you know who you are. This thread is not to be unpleasant about the elderly who are having a hard time. It is to address a very honest point that my parents have always been difficult. Impossible to discuss anything important with, always known better and having watched them alienate good decent people I am angry that they made no effort in life to do anything other than fun stuff for themselves and now expect me and my siblings to pick up their mess. It seems so many middle aged people have fallen foul of these ‘war babies’ as my mother still refers to her and Dad. Yes I accept they were born at the end of the war and they will have had to live in a post war country. For our mother that is all she talks about. She doesn’t accept they had the boom years post war which she has photo evidence of living it large in the 50s and 60s. She was an incredibly authoritarian mother yet after a few drinks would party all night. Always a case of do as I say not as I do. Now as I approach 60 I am wracked with worry and anxiety because she now ‘can’t cope’. It’s ruining life . I have all the therapy theories and have shared much of it. That said I am mad at the fact I am still dictated to or it feels so by her. Father is in a nursing home after a lot of denial that was what he needed. She will not have any help in the house so it is all falling to us. We are broken. My own family are fed up and rightly so. Selfish as it sounds I did not retire to look after a very unpleasant woman who has never liked me. I appreciate that sounds very bitter.

I walked out of my elderly mother's one day and never went back. Never spoke to her again. It wasn't planned, it was just the day I decided I had had enough.

She was a shit mother and a very difficult old woman.

It took a long time for me to realise it was guilt that had kept me in her thrall. A totally misplaced sense of loyalty. It's a form of trauma bonding.

Choose life.
Your life.

Because you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't, so you might as well choose what's right for you and YOUR family.

Sending solidarity.

(She's dead now and I have zero regrets.)

I wish I had done that. I have had many periods of NC but always went back for more out of guilt. It isn’t worth it.

@Sicario well done you. It’s so interesting that you just did it - I have massively overcompensated with my mother always turning up with bouquets of flowers, really well thought out gifts on the off chance that I might do something right in her eyes. Nothing. Literally nothing has ever been right. There always has to be a little dig or something to tarnish a nice thing. Thanks for posting so honestly. I really appreciate it.

My dad's funeral, organised by my mum was hilarious. According to His obituary, his life began when he married her, they went on holidays to celebrate their marriage and significant birthdays, they looked after my name checked dogs nice random detail.
And survived by named younger brother and then me plus two unnamed grandchildren.

That was it until another relative stood up and did an off the cuff thing filling in the gaps.

I'd take a month's break, get the family to invent an ailment that leaves you bedridden. Do not answer the phone.

She needs to swing in the breeze.

@Septoctwed resonates loud and clear although not a funeral story. We eventually had no option but to find a nursing home for our father. They sent my sister a “history” pack so we could fill in information about our father. Each page had a different header. She left it with our mother to start it . When she picked it up all our mother had completed was all about herself. Not a mention of her 3 kids, not a mention of any grandchildren. And before anyone flames my post - yes she has full capacity. Her reason was “ well I don’t know much about him. He’s never told me anything “ Been together 60plus years. Been all over the world.

I think that's what saddened me the most. My mum talked about a project he'd worked on in their early days, an obscure unsuccessful film but failed to say he'd previously worked on Star Wars!!

What is helping is allowing others to witness the madness. So DH and DD overhead my weekly get talked at telephone call, it was on speaker but they are generally not around.
It really, really helped when my mother claimed she can remember going to parties, weddings, what she wore from the age of two. I even double checked this!
We never hear stories from my childhood and she often claims to not remember disagreements or events in less than a perfect light.
After the call, we all laughed together. It wasn't mean, it was just witnessed and I felt less alone.

@Septoctwed completely same story with ours. My sister and I lost it abit a few years back when she kept going on about a part time job our brother had as a teen. On and on and on about him getting up early to do it. We both worked from very young age and even in our Saturday jobs had to hand over some ‘board’ unlike our brother who got to keep everything. She conveniently said she didn’t recall us working. She’s been ‘rewriting history’ for many years. Every drunken disaster she had has been rewritten as ‘my drink was spiked’ or ‘Greek food never agreed with me’ (perhaps the pint of retsina didn’t help!). Never her fault, no responsibility. Always something or someone to blame.

Can I balance up with a nice post- my intelligent and funny FIL at 85 is upping sticks to be closer ( will be 11 miles away) rather than 4 hour drives- we viewed 2,places on Saturday- he didn't embarrass us, asked sensible stuff and rang me today to thank me for all my efforts last few weeks on pre vetting places and towns and sending over suitable places as his requirements are exacting- specific towns, bungalow, min 3 beds , no huge gardens, move in condition etc - not easy to find. He is offering today and I have fingers crossed!! Hes almost embarrassingly greatful - He's already told me he will get in as much outside help as needed at every stage which is one reasons he's downgrading by £175k -I read posts on here though to be prepared -!!!

@Crikeyalmighty i think about your FiL and have even used him to try and shock my mother into trying! I think we all have a crush on him - in my head he is Charles Dance😬

@SnoozyTeaBags Just a correction - Anyone born after 1954 also had to wait till they were 67 for a state pension. Yes, they certainly benefitted from the low earnings:house price ratio, but quite a few also had to surrender keys in the Nineties when mortgage rates rose to 15%. Yes, they had free uni education, but fewer than 15% went to uni. I totally agree many "never had it so good" but they also bore the brunt of steel works, mine closures and loss of swathes of jobs to computerisation (cars, clerical ) and were too old to retrain. The lucky ones know it and are grateful, but just as high house prices, unemployment, high child care costs are not the fault of the post baby boom generation, neither is the comparative wealth for the baby boomers.

@BlueLegume he's a really nice catch for someone- he still likes women - preferably with 'very few wrinkles' to quote him. He's a bit a creature of routine- has a dish of olives and cheese biscuits and a glass of red every night. Very very clean - his house is really clean and tidy and he has no help and he's gone semi veggy these days. The funny thing is he is moving somewhere that is quite funky and alternative - let's hope he quits watching GB News!!

It's really important that you learn to emotionally detach from her. The trauma-bonding thing is very real. I mean, why do we bother so much when we know the well is dry?

You wouldn't believe some of the things I did to try to please my mother. I must have been mad. (Although I now understand that I went to these lengths because of the "FOG" - fear, obligation and guilt - which you can look up and read about.)

It brings to mind the phrase "setting yourself on fire to keep someone else warm".

Stepping away takes some balls, or you just get sucked back in to the hideous vicious circle.

@Sicario yes FOG is a very good source of information I often refer back to it and recommend it https://outofthefog.website

@Sicario beautifully put . As I've said below I'm really lucky but my own mother was not the nicest, it was all about her and I've been NC for 20 years- hence why I really appreciate my FIL

@Crikeyalmighty it is so sad that some mothers seem to struggle with us daughters but have our male siblings on pedestals. So sad especially as we seem to people pleasers.

@BlueLegume I do agree- one thing I find an issue with isa great many women over around 75 have spent a lot of time being housewives with maybe a bit of part time along the way , ( not all I know- but an awful lot) often had their parents and grandparents on the doorstep and expect their daughters will be the same and have plenty of time for them when the reality is that many people move around more- work longer hours either necessity or choice and are simply unable and often rightly unwilling too to be 'on tap' in the way that maybe their mothers are. Many have different expectations of sons because of their 'big jobs' etc -

Star Wars! I’m in absolute awe. As a child of the 70’s it was the biggest cinematic event, ever. It was such a huge, huge film and obviously has spawned a whole host of sequels and prequels and off-shoots.
It is not the same but I had a friend whose mum wrote the ‘speech’ she wanted her DD to read at her own funeral. It was like something a Hollywood scriptwriter would put together. Also a work of fiction.
My friend assured everyone she would keep it and read it out. Well she did get it out at the funeral and joked that she’d fact-checked it, and so had written her own.
She wasn’t mean but most people there knew how awful her mother was and there were plenty of laughs.
Nobody thought it was distasteful as she’d had a bloody awful life with this woman and the original piece was all about her kindness, charity work, being the beauty in the area as a young woman and so very generous with her family. Yep, I had a read.
But Star Wars - every generation knows it, what a fantastic film to be involved in. Well I am super-impressed.

@Crikeyalmighty You have a valid point there. My mum would never ask my brother for help unless it was a 'manly job'. He was married with no kids and worked on the rigs, so when he was home he was off work for 4 weeks solid and had the time.
But she would expect me to drop everything and cater to her needs and as a single parent of 2 toddlers with a full-time shift working job and my own home to look after, it wasn't always possible.
If I said, "ask DB. I am on a stretch of nights" it would be met with " Oh I can't possibly do that, he's on his days off. Can't you come in the afternoon before your night shift?"

@reesewithoutaspoon - yes I think many elderly women think the daughters and DIL job is 'a bit of a job' and by choice - because for many of them it actually was- whereas the sons jobs are an actual 'job' where weekends and days off must be respected.

I so get this. My brother is absolutely 'golden boy'. Despite not having visited her or even phoned her for more than two years.

The care agency has been in touch to say they've matched mum with another carer. Am sure this will pan out the same way the last prospective carer (PC) did, but I've got to try.

Saw the nice neighbour when we went to see mum. Apparently mum didn't hear the carer repeatedly knock and ring the doorbell (she also has a visual bell if that makes sense). So the neighbour got the key from the key safe and let the PC in (mum was expecting her as I'd arranged the visit with her) and the PC was in the house for less than five minutes. According to the neighbour, mum was not in a good mood.

When my father was dying he expected me to drop everything ( full time job and teenagers etc) to look after him and give my mother a break even though I lived over four hundred miles away. My brother lives 20 miles away but somehow was not expected to lift a finger.

@AskingQuestions45 interestingly our brother has always floated in and out of our parents life - very top surface interactions. My sister and I on the other hand have lived and breathed every (non) event - pandered at ridiculously OTT celebrations, hauled our mother off the floor after yet another drama, menopause, father getting made redundant-she never batted an eye when our husbands faced redundancy when our kids were small. Dad was almost 60 and they had no financial worries. Suddenly in the past 2 years our brother is judge, jury and executioner on what we should be doing. Yet he can’t/won’t even answer an email from the nursing home. So he makes extra work for the nurses then needing to contact us. Put simply he has buried his head in the sand, just like his parents about anything needing attention to detail.

Sounds very familiar!