Some details changed rather than name changing.
My mum is nearly 78, in good health, no dementia, no depression, but recovering from a broken foot after tripping in the summer. She has a history of falls spanning 15 years or so. Foot is fully healed and although a bit stiff and painful she's doing ok on it. Not using a stick or any other walking aid. However she's still not back to driving and is relying on others for shopping, transport to appointments, routine errands etc. She's about a mile from the shops but involves a big hill that has pavements in very poor condition. There's a local bus which she'd have to walk ten mins to get to the stop.
She's been pretty much housebound for 3 and a half months although a family member has taken her shopping a handful of times and a friend takes her to an exercise class.
I'm finding she's becoming more and more apathetic over things and I'm stuck as how to help her out of it.
For example there's been couple of birthdays and anniversaries in the past week. She got taken to the shops to get the cards but then didn't get stamps so had to ask a neighbour to post them. Knowing she'd need more than one stamp she didn't think to get a book of them and was then stuck again for the next card so it was late.
She was invited out to a birthday lunch (a couple of days after the actual birthday itself) last week but instead of thinking great she was more annoyed that the friend hadn't come round to see her beforehand so that she could give her the card and present. That made her complain that she couldn't get the card posted in time as though it was the friends fault for not seeing her earlier.
She's like this most of the time with her approach to things and it's really getting me down. Instead of a positive approach and problem solving she's tending to leave things up to others to sort out for her. Her siblings tended to look upon her as "poor converses mum" and this annoyed the hell out of her as she was and is quite capable.
If I say anything she says I'm not helping her by pointing it out and making her feel worse and like she's not capable of doing anything. That frustrates me more as my point is that she's perfectly capable of doing these things and organising her own life but relies on others to help her out.
She'll ask me for telephone numbers, shop opening hours etc all of which she can access via google just as easily as I can. I've shown her several times how to do this. Runs out of milk or bread then asks me to get her some and take it there. That would take me about 90 minutes to do so isn't a small ask. She asks me because she doesn't like asking the neighbours that drive even though they've offered to help.
She'll complain no one rings her or goes to see her but doesn't ring people herself or go to see them. It's as though she doesn't get that it's a two way street and she needs to be proactive.
When she broke her foot I was there every day helping her shower, doing all her cleaning, shopping, washing, and cooking. Attending to any admin stuff that needed doing and whatever else she needed. I don't drive, am a single mum to 3 children and live a good mile and a half away. My home life suffered as I was at her house for 5 to 8 hours a day, every day, the children were stressed by the changes to routine and it was a difficult time. We couldn't get any carers for the times she needed them after the first week so that was a no go. It was hard work but she's my mum and I happily helped her and no one else could would.
This fall has obviously knocked her confidence but she was like this before, just not as much. How can I help her to help herself more and be less reliant on others?
I feel really disloyal and mean writing this but it's getting me down and I don't know how to help her.