My mum is driving me nuts, I feel insensitive

[lifesteeth]

This is going to sound horrible but I need to offload.

My uncle was diagnosed with terminal cancer a few years ago, anyway before christmas he fell extremely ill and needed 24 hr care so the family all worked out a rota so that there was always someone with him.

Well I never heard anything other than this rota for months, my mum would complain that the family were not involving her enough and when they asked her to come over she would complain that they expected her to do too much...they honestly couldn't do right for wrong and it was in my ear EVERYTIME I phoned her or she phoned me, she just wouldn't discuss anything else.

Anyway, unfortunately we lost him early on this year , the family were devestated obviously and as usual my mum decided to tell me all the gory details of his final few minutes which really I didn't need to know. Anyway as you would expect it was talked about 24/7 by all the family, I expected that.

BUT 4 months later my mum is still going on about it 24/7, it really is driving me nuts, everytime I phone her she goes on and on about him but its stuff she has repeated a million times for instance "remember when he used to hide stuff all the time?" and then the next day it would be "remember when he used to hide stuff all the time?" and then the next day...everything is being repeated over and over again...or she'll say "did I tell you about that sunday when we ordered the take-away for him?" (she has told me a million times) so I say "yes you did" so she starts with "well what happened was..." and off she goes.

I know how insensitive I must sound but its getting too much, I phoned to tell her I'd got a job, we talked about that for 2 minutes and then the conversations goes onto my uncle for the next hour.

She said she would phone me when I got back from my first day at work to see how it had gone...I wasn't expecting her to as she always says that and doesnt phone...anyway 7pm came (I'd been home since 3pm) and the phone goes.."hi, er..how did it go?" I tell her very briefly and was met with "yeah, oh good...me and your grandma have been talking about (uncle) today..." and off she goes again for another hour.

The most annoying thing about it is she says "I think everyone should stop going on about him now" but she's the worst one for it!!!

Am I being a bitch? I miss my uncle and it was terrible what happened but I would like to be able to talk about other stuff sometimes and there is only so many times you can hear the same story and act interested....

Do you think she is genuinely in grief still?

Some people cope much better by talking about the deceased.

I know when my mams sister died she talked about her a lot, but mainly because she died under suspicious circumstances in a foreign country & my mam was trying to make sense of it all.

I don't think you are being horrible at all, it must be very trying having to listen to this all the time. Was he her brother? Is there any way you could delve deeper into why she won't let him go, perhaps say that you miss him too but you are worried that she is dwelling on these details too much.

You are not being a bitch at all, and your feelings are entirely understandable. Neither is your mother being deliberately insensitive to you and your (quite natural) need to move on from your uncle's death, but it seems to me as if there is some famnily "stuff" going on, some feelings around your uncle's death that has got her and maybe other family members stuck in a bit of a loop about it all.

I would gently tell her next time that much as you understand her grief and feel for her (and that you too have found the loss hard) you find that talking about him constantly quite hard to deal with and could you change the subject? If she persists I would keep repeating that and maybe suggest she is having difficulty letting it go and that she get some counselling. It may not really be necessary but saying this will possibly make her realise that you see her refusal to talk about anything else as serious and it may make her realise you can't deal with it any longer.