I don't understand why my mom, 82, widowed, refuses to make changes that would help her stay in her home and be more comfortable and a little bit safer. She has plenty of money, and even if she didn't, I could help her financially.
Her mattress is more than 50 years old (but my late father slept there, and so it must stay, shrine-like). She won't let us move her washer and dryer out of the basement or convert the den into a first-floor bedroom (her house has 10 rooms and she lives alone). She won't use a cane...just grabs onto the backs of chairs and walls to steady herself. She often doesn't wear her hearing aids. She hates the chair she sits in every night and b*****s about it (my sister bought it for her and has offered to replace it, but Mom won't let her).
Why? I don't get it! She is so uncomfortable in her own skin and house. She refuses to move but also hates that the house needs work (it'll be a total tear down after she dies…poor construction and a money pit). In a nutshell, she won't do anything intelligent to stave off a disaster. My guess is she'll die at the bottom of the stairs because she didn't want to admit she shouldn't be using them.
I just hope and pray (and plan!) not to follow in her footsteps. She is my second job, and I HAVE a fulltime job! I would never torture my kids with worry and stupid choices the way she has to my sister and me. It's totally degraded our relationship to the point where I want to scream. I know it's awful, but I hope she passes away sooner rather than later, because every day, there's some flailing on her part that could be avoided with just a teeny bit of common sense or acknowledgement that she's not 40 anymore. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH GETTING OLDER! But why be so STUPID about it???
Okay, venting is over. Thanks, forum.
I am 81. I can tell you that there is a whole lot wrong with getting older. Start at the top. The hair thins, the eyes weaken and get all kinds of conditions requiring surgery, shots into the eyes, and ultimately you go blind. The balance because of brain changes is dreadful no matter how much you want to do exercises for it, and you had better do them! You cannot hear as well. Your neck muscles stiffen and hurt, and headaches can result. Your bones ache, as do your joints. Your heart will act up eventually in some manner whether weakening pump or arrhythmias. I could go on, but we are heading toward the bowel and bladder, and honestly you don't want to KNOW.
So instead of going through every system, I will just assure you it is a time of great loss. Family often moves and certainly have their own lives and nuclear family to deal with.
Your children, who once came for advice now have a whole lot of advice to GIVE you.
I am one of the lucky ones. No major systems have given out. I can still walk, garden, read, foster dogs, manage my own life, and no one is yet trying to manage my life FOR me or tell me what to do (Thought I have heard the phrase "do you have plans"). And that will change, and there's no upside coming. I will only get older. Things will get worse. My daughter will become worried.
So that is from the perspective of someone more near your mom's age, than your own. You might also want to consider if she is honestly a whole lot different. Wasn't she always someone who wanted to manage her own life.
That's my own vent. Now to MY advice.
I would have a gentle, honest sit-down talk in which you SEEK information from your MOM. Tell her that you have now a tendency to want to try to make things easier for her. Ask her if that bothers her. Ask her to let you know when you can help if she WANTS help, and HOW can you help. Tell her you may be annoying her, but it is out of love. Tell her that you, yourself are a bit scared. Because just trying to give you another perspective, your mom think that much of what you want HER to do, you want her to do FOR YOU. So that you don't worry. So that you don't get "that call" you don't want from EMS that your Mom fell on the stairs. But you WILL get it. It IS coming as surely as your mom's balance is going. She's my age. My daughter, 61, will be getting "that call" as well, no matter what we all do about all of these changes.
Believe it or not, my heart goes out to you, and to my own daughter as well. As soon as you can get us all neatly packed away into some lovely ALF you will feel better. We may feel better as well; who knows.
This is the face of aging. My own opinion as an old retired RN is that we should be issued our final exit pill at age 65 or when we start collecting SS, whichever comes first. But that's me. It would at least give us some CHOICE in all this.
My best to you, OP. I can identify from BOTH sides.
Would make me look old.
I'll just clutch the furniture to keep my balance.. I look so much younger doing that.. Like a cute baby learning to take steps. Add a bit of teen sass & I'm invincible attitude & "I'll manage just fine, thank-you".
Until I can't & then you'd better be at my beck & call so I can keep on looking young & being independant.
Pick and choose your battles. The mattress is no big deal (IMO). Sure she deserves a better one, but unless you feel it’s keeping her awake at night, leave that alone.
Tell her the washer and dryer is getting moved upstairs for everyone’s benefit and then do it. Tell her it’s happening and she can’t make it not happen. It’s important and it’s for everyone’s convenience.
Let go of the rest of the stuff. Like my MIL, something bad is going to have to happen for real change to occur. That is just how it is these days.
When that something happens, it’s not your fault. You are doing what she wants.
My mother swore she wouldn’t be like her father and refuse to wear hearing aids when the time came to need them, but she did exactly that. My brother even stopped talking to her because he was sick and tired of having to yell everything to be heard.
Who knows why they're so resistant to change, but they are. Better to just go with the flow and practice selective deafness at the complaining.
...i think i'll start writing a script for a movie. sounds like the start of a comedy..............or...............a tragedy. MJ, you'll be in the script, too.
❤️🙂
Even a friend "Jane, if I had this house, I would move everything to the main floor. The w/d I would bring up here. I would be afraid I'd break my neck on those stairs. My bedroom too, bring it down here. Then everything would be so much more convenient. They don't listen to their children.
My RN daughter says, you let them think they made the decision.
my mother told me she plans to live at least another ten years. That would make her 93 and me 70. I literally walked away and started to cry! I can’t imagine the thought of spending next ten years in this situation. I am frickin old myself 🤦🏻♀️
good luck!!!
hopeless situation.
we will all die before them.
His house was a wreck, disgusting, he actually used Priority Mail Tape to shore up his windows from the cold, that was when the post office handed out rolls free.
It took me two months to clear out all the crap and rehab the house so it would be saleable.
So he dies and leaves everything to me as I was his only child, guess what I do? I spend it!
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