DM struggling with her 98 yr old DF

[mullingitallover43]

My DM (70) has a 98-year-old DF (my grandpa).

He’s been living in his own flat independently, albeit with daily visits and help from DM and her sister and more recently, daily carers.

His health declined recently with a heart episode - this sent him to hospital (against his will) then a stint in a rehabilitation centre and he is now in a very good care home.

my DM is worn out from the last few years of caring for her DF. He hasn’t been unwell, but has been dependent on her for many things.

Now he is in a wonderful care home and she still goes to see him every day and says she is exhausted and fed up with it. He has been asking her to visit him every day and gets annoyed with her if she doesn’t come every day. He has other family members coming to visit a regularly too - myself and my cousins, my aunt and her husband, his brother.

he is settling into the home quite well and i wonder if my DM should give herself a break from visiting every single day now he’s in safe hands? She seems resentful about doing it and has called him selfish for asking her to come every day. I think it would be okay for her to gently let him know she can’t come every single day as she needs to rest and have a little break from it. I worry she is starting to dislike and resent him in this final chapter, rather than enjoying their time together.

I know there is no “normal” in this scenario, but do most people visit their elderly parents in a home every day if they don’t really want/need to?

Yes she should definitely take days off. Whether she can allow herself to is another matter. She sounds like she's got thoroughly absorbed in the narrative of being a martyr to his needs. It may be pretty hard for her to give it up and start concentrating on her own needs.
Do you think this is a long established pattern for her @mullingitallover43 ?

thanks for this perspective. Yes it’s a long established pattern which she has resented yet endured and enabled by not setting any boundaries. She is completely frazzled and exhausted yet keeps pandering to his requests while complaining about him to me.

I think there are some deep attachment/enmeshment issues at play here. When I suggest she gently sets boundaries as to her time, she says she can’t.

She would react very negatively if I mentioned anything about a martyr narrative - I think she’d be quite appalled at that.

I think your mum should definitely take days off, and let him moan she is allowed a life,

Yes she should ease up on it. It's very hard to do as the DF piles on the guilt, but it can be overcome.

I am a veteran of this with my late mother. When she went to a nursing home it was exactly the same thing, wanted me there every single day. Actually the nursing home advised me to cut back a lot to give her time to settle in and join in the community.

As it happened, I did limit visits to twice a week, and OMG that woman was delighted to see me when I did visit. I was inclined to do more with her such as wheel her around the lovely grounds, go down the road for a coffee/tea out, and things like that. I will confess that I strategically timed my visits so that after a certain period it would be time for dinner/tea in the dining room and I had my reason to go, a sunset clause if you like.

Absence really does make the heart grow fonder it seems! Well it did in my case anyway.

You bet she would! It sounds like it's become her sense of who she is. Which makes it easier to carry on with than to let go of and face the inner questions.
But she'll have to when he dies.
Also - you can't force her to change. She's got to want to and at the moment she doesn't.
I'd suggest you step back and be a bit less sympathetic, or you could find yourself sucked into the same pattern.

Stop moaning about going mum, just don't go, he's fine. Etc.

Christ alive, of course she doesn’t need to visit every day! What’s the point in his being in a home, otherwise?

If your mum is (like me) in her 60s and still doing this stuff, it may do more harm than good to try to untangle why. She’ll either come to a realisation that she needs professional help to sort her feelings out, or she won’t. (I did - best hundred quid I ever spent - only took one session, therapy doesn’t have to go on for years!)

My worry for you is that there’s a budding similar relationship developing between you and your mum, your getting frazzled and her displaying an inability/refusal to listen. Do be careful to look after yourself in all this. Each time she complains about going, say “Mum, you know I think you do too much. Have a break from it any time you need to” then move on. She’ll either walk through the open door having heard permission, or she’ll keep beating at the closed window instead.

You could suggest that one day when you know other family members are going to the CH, you take DM out for coffee/afternoon tea/whatever you think will stop her from thinking about her DF while she isn't visiting. She needs to break the cycle and probably needs help to do so.

It’s a tough one! I agree that she’s stuck in a cycle but I can’t work out if it’s my role to help her break it or not. Some very helpful suggestions here of ways to deal with it, thank you so much.

Interestingly when I talk to her about my DF (her exDH) who is very sick with dementia, she tends to shut it down and moves the conversation on!

I see a pp mentioned not going every day to help.them settle in, my cousin has also been advised this by her dad's care home and it has eased the burden of visiting every evening as it was for her, could you go that angle for your mum ?

Tell your mum that I visit my aged parent once a fortnight. Once a day is madness. If she's been looking after him for years she deserves a long holiday. I bet he wasn't looking after a 98 year old when he was 70. Selfish old sod.

That’s a great idea; I wonder if the CH has suggested it themselves.

amother pp mentioned timing the end of their visit to coincide with dinner time at the CH …. My DM does this too and finds leaving much easier this way.

As I mentioned in my post above, the NH advised me to limit visits for a while, which turned out to be forever - apart from crises etc.

Would there be a possibility of speaking to the director of nursing or the manager and putting your concerns across about your mother's constant visiting? They might advise your mother to limit her visits on "settling in" or other grounds for a while.

Sometimes when the advice/steering comes from someone with no emotional involvement in the resident it is much easier to take on board. That was my experience anyway. I was given the advice, and I took it. The staff in nursing homes see this scenario every single day, and in some cases (they told me), constant visiting can disrupt the residents' routines, so less is often more!

I know going behind your mother's back to ask the Nursing Home about this might not appeal to you, but I'm just throwing it out as something to file away anyway.

My sister visited my mum three times a week and I went once a week, unless something had happened and we were needed more. Sister was 72 and mum 91 when she went into the home. But as others have pointed out there’s actually not a lot you can do.

Thank you, I appreciate the thought. I’m visiting the CH tomorrow so will play it by ear then and see if I can have a subtle word with management

Good grief, of course she doesn’t have to visit every day. If she doesn’t like the word martyr, it’s because she knows it’s true and doesn’t want the conversation. Nothing you can do here, it is up to her to set boundaries, and it might just be too late for her to change. You don’t have to listen to her going on about this when she knows what to do to change things, she just doesn’t want to. And ffs just ensure you don’t replicate the pattern op.

I really can’t see her changing her pattern with him this late in the day.

this thread is very interesting. I think she positions herself as dutiful, long suffering caring daughter but in reality has gotten quite fed up and snappy with him on many an occasion.

And that’s such a shame in itself. They are not spending quality time together. She’s unhappy about the situation but doing nothing to change it - and likely won’t.

that’s just it, I don’t see the point (for anyone) of spending all this time together if it isn’t quality time and is just breeding resentment.

My DM’s sister will happily book a short holiday for herself - which makes DM furious - but I think she should do the same thing to get a bit of a break.

Would it work if you had a group Whatsapp of all the people who visit, so she could at least have a day off when she knows others are visiting?

That’s a great suggestion and you’d think it would work, but I can see DM still taking it upon herself to go on her days off. I’ll suggest it and see how she reacts.

I visited my mum once a week in my nursing home, plus I missed the occasional week as well, eg when dp’s dad was very ill, or for holidays. I regarded it as a marathon not a sprint and I did what I could.

Being quite blunt can be a good thing. ‘Do stop moaning about other people booking holidays Mum. You should do the same. DF is fine. Where would you go? Shall I book one for the two of us?’

One thing that did absolutely infuriate me is that the minimal other visits DM got (she was much closer to me geographically than anyone else so to a certain extent that was fine, but in four years she probably had ten visits that weren’t from me) they all assumed that they would visit WITH me, so I didn’t get a break. So the family chat suggested above is a great idea, as long as it doesn’t turn emotional with everyone offloading their worries and ideas on how it should be on everyone else.

We did something similar with a friend of mine on the grounds that it was too tiring to have too many visitors on one day, it's better quality all round if they are separate days. Also too many people in the room can be overwhelming.

Your mum also needs to know you are worried about her and you need her to take a breath and slow down.

Is there some fear there? That one day she'll end up in a home and not get visited daily?

It’s quite likely to be fear of what other people will say or think. A lot of people think that someone in a home or hospital should have at least one visit every day, and that more than that is even better.