Hello, have nc'ed for this as certain people I know come on here.
Lovely df sadly died last year.
Dm lives 60 miles away. She's in her 70s and has a significant disability, but one which does not cause her pain and which is stable.
She has a relatively active social life (1-2 activities per day) and has a decent amount of hours of social services support in her home.
However, she gets lonely in the evenings - she is an extrovert in the truest sense of the word and she 'needs' people to be with her in a way I don't quite understand, as an introvert myself.
I currently spend two days a week with her (I either go to her or she comes to us) and often dh will spend a separate evening a week with her to provide extra support. Her friend stays over 1-2 weekends per month. And as I said, she has daily activities and socialising, so there is never a day when she is home alone. She also receives bereavement counselling. She has a dog. She speaks to me at least half an hour each weekday evening and phones her friend for half an hour each day.
However, what she has is not enough. She often complains of being lonely and is desperate to live as part of a family. She gets upset when she hears her neighbours, who are a couple, laughing together. Every time I am about to leave her house, she begs me not to go.
This is where I am stuck. I would love to be able to move to her village and be around more. We just can't afford it - it would take another £600 a month we haven't got. Things are already pretty tight for us at the end of the month. Also, we will soon have school ties to our area.
Dm would love to move in with us but we live in a tiny three bed semi with two small kids. There just isn't the room. We don' t have the money to move anywhere larger in our own area. Plus she is a massive hoarder, to the extent I was barely able to fit my pregnancy bump through her bedroom door as there's so much stuff pushing against the door. Her and my dad have always had a tendency to hoard, and while I am no minimalist, I cannot cope with the state she would inevitably make of my house. There is no room for food prep in her house, except the hob (balancing plates), and barely space on the family size table for one person to put down a plate. She is not keen on cleaning, although she is able to clean. I grew up thinking the hoarding was normal and don't want the same for my children.
She could move closer to us without moving in but it would mean leaving a lot behind. Our area is not as nice as hers and services are poorer. She would have a limited social network. Also, she has a council house and our area doesn't have council properties, just HA, so concerns about how that would work. Df counselled her strongly about giving up her tenancy. I think he hoped me, dh and kids would somehow move into their two-bedroom bungalow when he'd gone...!
I really feel stuck here and burdened down with guilt. Obviously I want my mum to be happy but I am in a position where there's not much I can do.
The other thing that is causing me lots of worry is that my eldest starts school in Sept, which will mean I can't come and stay with dm as often. She can still come and stay with us each week but I'm worried as she gets older, this will be a burden she won't be able to cope with. If I could, I would homeschool so we could still go to see dm as frequently but I need to work. I feel like the start of school has doomed us all. Dm hasn't mentioned September yet, but when she realises I won't be there as much, she will not be happy.
Has anyone been in a similar situation? I feel like I'm the only person in the world to live so far from a bereaved dm but this can't be the case. How do people cope? I find the tears really hard to deal with. She has mentioned she sees her life as pointless, though she is not planning to take steps to end it. I feel so sad. I don't want her to be unhappy but I don't know what to do.
Sorry for the long post.