I'm an only child, so there's no one to help out but my long-suffering hubby. We've just moved into our new home, and we built her a beautiful, sunny bedroom with direct bathroom access. We painted it her favorite color, decorated it with her aunt's antique bed, new mattress, and her mother's quilt.
I had all these visions of us fixing wonderful dinners, watching movies, sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch watching deer frolicking in the pasture, and sharing memories.
When we started planning this house, mom said her husband didn't get along with anyone, and he would never live with anyone. She said he didn't like his own kids and their spouses, and he didn't like my spouse, so we shouldn't plan on them living with us. When he died last year, I was sure she'd come live with us. But she's still rejecting us!
She's insisting on staying in her home, paying for a cleaning lady, yard man, and calling us to come over to fix her internet/tv, bring groceries, take her to the doctor or dentist, diagnose her aches, pains, and boo-boos over the telephone. I work from home, but recently she called me to ask what she should do about her chronically swollen ankle that was really hurting.
Instead of getting up from my desk and walking across the hall to assess the ankle, I had to alert my boss and my team I would be away for an unknown period of time to make a home visit and possible ER visit. My boss was understanding but tight-lipped, and I could imagine the eye-rolling of my team who had to cover for me.
The ankle was red, hot and angry looking, so I had to take Mom to the ER for them to officially diagnose cellulitis. Mom protested and argued with me all the way to the ER about why she didn't need to go to the hospital. I finally said, "Mom, this isn't working for me. If you lived with us, your ankle wouldn't have gotten to this state. I know you want to stay in your house, but that's placing an undue burden on us. During the work week, you're going to have to stay at our house, and then you can go home on the weekends." Mom agreed.
She stayed with us for four days after she got out of the hospital, but she refused to return when we went back to pick her up on Sunday! She listed all the reasons why she couldn't possibly live any where but her own home. The biggest reason? She has so many bills to pay, and 3 checking accounts to keep track of! She said, "When Lennie came by every morning to eat breakfast with me, it was easy to keep track of everything, because he'd double check my check-writting to make sure I didn't get my hundreds and thousands mixed up."
My husband complained bitterly about those daily visits because she always had a laundry list of things for him to do: replace a bulb, fix a screen, hang blinds, tote things to Goodwill, bring things up from the basement, chase down a phantom noise, fix the stove, chase off a gopher she hears under her porch, assure her there is no squirrel loose in her basement, put up a new mailbox, fix the storm door the cleaning lady bent..... you get the picture. My hubby complained, "It's always something! I can never do a quick check-in. She eats up half my day, everyday! She insists we eat breakfast. Even if I take her breakfast, she insists on forcing me to eat the eggs she scrambles. I'm not fond of scrambled eggs, but I force them down. By the time I leave, the day is shot. I can't get anything done!"
I totally empathize, but I'm still working. My hubby says this was not how he envisioned his retirement. He thought he would have time for his pursuits; he didn't plan on being mom's fix-it handyman/taxi/errand boy/accountant/exterminator/security force. He, very rightly, complains he can't keep up two houses.
I care for mom on the weekends, and I get stuck in the same situation. We do all her things, none of our own, and on Monday, I feel like I missed the weekend. We're tired! If she just lived with us, it would simplify our lives. Any ideas?
But, it's very understandable that your mom wants to stay in her own home and if she can afford it and that makes her happy, she should be allowed to continue living in her own home until she's ready to move.
You and your husband also deserve to be happy.
Just make some changes...
You should have groceries delivered to your mom.
I don't know if you have a Walmart but I paid $99 fir the whole year of Delivery to my Dad.
They will Delivery as many times as you want as ling as it's at least $35.
You should let her know that unless it's an emergency, You can only drop by once a week.
Let her know that you will find a Handy man for her that she will be paying for.
If she has more than 1 Dr Apt a month which would be a lot, she can take an Uber or line up a Taxi.
She could even hire an Adult Sitter, Caregiver, College Student, ect to come over a few hours once a week that could include driving her to her Dr's apt.
You and your husband just need to come up with a plan of what ya'll would be comfortable with and come up with a schedule of how much time and when you're willing to contribute and go with it.
If your mom doesn't like it, then she can opt fir Plan B which is Moving In with you.
Hugs 🤗
She needs to hire someone to do her bidding. You guys do not need to be at her beck and call.
I would not put ANY pressure on her to move in with you! It is NOT easy having your parents live with you. Although she's currently being difficult, she would still be difficult if she lived with you. And you could not go home and get a break from her, etc.
My prayers are with you ..
I see nothing wrong with limiting what you will do for her as long as she lives in her own house. Arranging that hubby will stop in for coffee on Wednesday and help with her bills is fine. Spending his day entertaining her with her long list is not. Most agencies that offer Homemaker and Personal Care services also have a Chore person to help her with those things. Let her know that you will be available on Saturday morning for a couple hours to bring her groceries (she needs to supply the list on Thursday when you call her after work. Arrange her medical appointment with her. I did this with Mom and we were usually able to see both her PCP and Cardiologist on the same day. I filed FMLA papers with my employer to be able to take the time off needed. If she has an "emergency" call the EMT for her.
Honestly it sounds like she is lonely, especially since her husband passed and she's looking to you to fill the void. She would really benefit from Assisted Living where there are other lonely people and activities. There is someone there to look at her ankle and change the lightbulb.
I want to add that I see a huge red flag about your mother's cognitive skills with regard to her aches and pains.
15 years ago, would she have known to call her doctor if her ankle was hot and swollen? Probably. What is going on here is that she has off-loaded her reasoning onto you.
This happened with my mom, subtly at first. She could suddenly no longer make appointments. She couldn't determine if a symptom was important or not. She couldn't call a cab to get somewhere ("what if they get lost", she said?)
It was all a covert cover up for the fact that, to put it kindly, she could no longer reason her way out of a paper bag. Once we got her to a geriatrics doc, he referred her, after two visits, to a geriatric psychiatrist for her issues with anxiety. After ONE visit, the geripsych called me and insisted that we get my mother a thorough cognitive assessment. It showed that she'd had an undetected stroke and that she was functioning, in terms of reasoning skills, at the level of a 5 year old.
This was NOT apparent to her regular doctor, her children or her friends. She was faking at a very high level, and we propped her up for a year before I got called out of work 3 days running and I realized something was terribly wrong and told her I was no longer participating in what I now call "this charade of independence".
AgingCare.com website has some wonderful articles about caregiving. You can find several of them under “Care Topics” on the blue ribbon at the top of the forum webpage.
I strongly suggest that you read:
https://www.agingcare.com/articles/elder-care-plan-set-yourself-up-for-success-as-a-caregiver-195531.htm
“Elder Care Plan 101: Set Yourself Up for Success as a Caregiver”
“A plan of care is a tool that long-term care providers use to record a patient’s needs and preferences and delegate caregiving responsibilities to ensure these needs are met with timely, high-quality responses. Family caregivers can benefit from using a similar approach to organize their daily tasks and even create a formal account of all services provided in exchange for payment.’
https://www.agingcare.com/articles/identifying-caregiver-burden-206799.htm
‘How to Identify and Minimize Caregiver Burden”
“Caregiver burden is unique to informal or family caregivers. This term is used to describe the cumulative physical, emotional, social and financial impact of providing care.”
The “Caregiver Burden Self-Assessment” allows “family caregivers who are concerned about their own welfare…to use this quick quiz to receive a reliable and objective calculation of the level of strain they are experiencing (while taking care of their loved one). Complete this assessment based on your Mom’s level of care NOW and I think that you will find that she would be a even BIGGER BURDEN if she moved in with you.
https://www.agingcare.com/documents/caregiver_burden_assessment.pdf
Another good article is: https://www.agingcare.com/articles/strategies-for-getting-and-staying-organized-while-caregiving-164830.htm
In “Life As a Caregiver: How to Make Tough Care Decisions” by Carol Bradley Bursack; she states “The bottom line is that caregiving isn’t for the faint of heart. We must admit our humanity and our perceived imperfections and do the best that we can.” You are going to find that you have many, many hard decisions to make in the future whether your Mom lives with you or not. Please read some of the postings by those who have cared for their parents in their homes. Yes, some of them have had wonderful experiences living with their parents, BUT many of them have not. You need to quit dreaming and face the hard facts of reality to determine what type of care is best for your Mom. DO NOT let sentiment or guilt or “I have to because she is my Mom” feelings get in the way. Look at the FACTS and only the facts.
I like the idea of a “trial period” where your Mom lives with you for a month or so. That should give you a sample of what life is going to be like once your Mom moves in with you fulltime.
Good luck with whatever decision you make. And as questions or concerns come up, please feel free to post them on the forum. There is a wealth of knowledge and experience available by people who have taken care of parents or in-laws or other family members.
I wonder if your husband is going to be any happier when he becomes your Mom’s caregiver while you go to work each day. Unless you hire someone from outside the home to take care of your Mom while you are at work, your dear husband (DH) will—by default—be the one who has to spend his day talking with your Mom, watching TV with your Mom, fixing meals for your Mom or eat food that your Mom fixes (which he already hates to eat), etc. And if Mom moves into your house, and she refuses to sell her house, your DH will still be your “mom's fix-it handyman/taxi/errand boy/accountant/exterminator/security force” because someone will need to keep up the empty house until it is sold.
Your last paragraph is quite “telling”. “I care for mom on the weekends, and I GET STUCK IN THE SAME SITUATION. WE DO ALL HER THINGS, NONE OF OUR OWN, and on Monday, I feel like I missed the weekend. WE’RE TIRED! If she just lived with us, it would simplify our lives.”
NO, your lives would NOT become simpler, they would become more complicated, because you have now added your Mom to your “immediate family” and you can NEVER get away from her unless you leave YOUR house. If you are already TIRED from taking care of your Mom now, how do you think you will feel when once your Mom moves in?
AgingCare.com website has some wonderful articles about caregiving. You can find several of them under “Care Topics” on the blue ribbon at the top of the forum webpage. I will list some articles that I think that you should read whether your Mom lives in her house or your house in my next posting.
Yes, your hubby may be there every morning, but I’d guess that this is
something - a routine and time period that she can still hold together. The comment she made regarding her checkbook is probably the very tip of the iceberg.
It’s amazing how much they can hid and bluff their way through when they still have the home court advantage.
Rather than having a trial run with your mother coming to stay in your home - can you take a week and go stay with her in her home? Once there - take the opportunity to slyly do some in-depth snooping.
Trying to make a long story short - after listening to my mother complain about her TV - too small to see, sound isn’t clear, volume doesn’t go loud enough etc for a couple of years... my hubby and I decided to surprise her with a brand new, larger, stereo equipped flatscreen. You’d of thought we had brought a rattlesnake into her home!
As my hubby worked to set up the tv - I watched her sitting in silence, her getting more and more pizzed off with each passing moment - stink eyeing the new remote - “What the hell is her problem?” thought I. So, after hubby took it back down again and rehook up her old TV and her perking up immediately - I figured it out. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to work a new TV - to navigate a new remote. Well, that and my mom just liked to b!tch about things... her TV being one.
Anyhoo - just maybe your mother sees moving into your home and having to leave her familiar comfort zone - as a great big, giant flatscreen TV?
Right now you're insulating her sooooo much from her bad decisions. What if she had to be in the hospital by herself, trying to tell the doctors what is wrong? Her cognitive difficulties would be on full display, and they might be able to counsel you about what type of care she needs going forward.
You have a job, and a life. Why would you want to put them in peril or even give those up entirely to maintain a fiction that your mom is able to live 'independently'? She's not living independently. She is in an assisted living with a staff of two!
You and your husband matter just as much as your mom! You and your husband's lives and wishes matter just as much as your mom's!
You paint a nice Norman Rockwell/The Walton’s picture of what you think life would be like - having your mother move in with you. Unfortunately, it rarely works out that way. Give it some thought.
“How many of us are doctors or nurses? And even if you are - are you also a nutritionist? A geriatric psychologist? A physical therapist? An occupational therapist? A speech therapist? Do you have the physical strength to lift a 100+ pound person day after day - to dress them, change their Depends, shower them, pick them up off the floor? Is your home equipped with ramps, stair lifts, grab bars? Is theirs? Do you have unlimited time to take them to the doctors, the store, on recreational activities? Are you available to talk to them throughout the entire day? The patience to answer the same question over and over and over again throughout that same day? To plan and make special and separate meals that might require pureeing? To then feed them? Can you go with little to no sleep for days and nights at a time? Enough money stashed away for your retirement since this is 24/7 and you’re not able to hold a job? Is your own spouse and/or your children understand why you have no time or energy for them? The list goes on...
Maybe your elder only needs some of this. Or maybe you are equipped to do a lot of this. Maybe you made a promise. But - day after day after day? Perhaps, stretching on into year after year?”
It is time for you to tell Mom that neither you nor your husband can continue to do all you are doing. I would, frankly take a month to keep a diary of EXACTLY what each of you are doing. You pretty much gave us a valuable one right here. After that month sit with Mom and both of you and the diary and tell her why this cannot continue.
I would not have Mom come to live with you without a trial basis. Such as "We will close up the house, paying weekly visits to get mail, check on everything; for one month we will all live together and see how that works. Then we will meet together and see if we wish it to continue".
To tell the truth I would not want to live with my much loved daughter and her husband. I would live, quite readily in a Senior Assisted Living faciltiy first. The family on the porch all enjoying one another is good for the movies; not real life.
I wish you so much good luck. You have so lovingly tried to do so much.
Get some ideas here, then you and your hubby start by sitting together and coming up with a plan.
If Mom says no to experimenting with a plan moving forward then simply tell her you cannot continue in this way, and that a call to you about the ankle, or pretty much all other things, will have to go through doctor office, not your office. Would she give you POA to do the bills? What a relief that would be off her. My bro asked me to do that the last year of his life, and while it was a nightmare for me getting it all together with all entities, after a year it went so smoothly. Then, unfortunately, he died.
Good luck going forward.
My mom refused to move out and downsize. Everyone that I talk to that knew her, was thinking that she just wanted to stay where her husband lived with her - and died. It might be a 'guilt' trip on her part - she might feel that if she leaves her home she is 'betraying' her late husband. The other part is that she doesn't want to relinquish control of her life to you. Remember - she is still the 'Mommy' in her mind. Sounds crazy I know, but then again, we deal with minds that aren't quite driving straight in their lane.
My mom also came up with all the 'excuses' . . . paying bills, managing her stock account . .blah blah blah . Excuses that didn't make sense when it came to the big picture. Who's helping her keep track of her 'hundreds and thousands' now? (reffering to 'Lenny').
POA? Trust? or any directives in place? Can't force her if she's 'competent'. Keep on this site. You'll find many different perspectives. You're not alone in your dilemma.
When it comes to your mom, IMHO, stand back, observe and help from a distance. Don't enable her. You may have to wait for the next ER visit - See an EL attorney and see what can be done to help her and make her reason with her life. IT may not work - but you can try.
She's not going to get better, and she may become even more obstinate as time goes forward, much to HER OWN demise. And that's a reality that the family has to face.
Keep your sanity as much as you can, and hold your marriage together the best you can. Don't let your mom destroy you.
I too went through much of what your dealing with now.
I have been caring for my mom for twenty years, eight years alone, the rest 12 years with the help of live in family members and I am busy most of the time with my mom. She is cooperative and pleasant, easy to please. I handle all the household everything so she is not asking me to do things. I chose to take care of her and definitely have no regrets, but everyone's circumstances and relationships are different. You obviously love and care for your mother very much. and it is wonderful you have a nice sunny bedroom for her. It sounds lovely. You might want to do a trial period for a few months, if you still want your mom in your home. Your mom is fortunate to have you. Good luck.
I think your choice is assisted living/independent living (I cannot tell her exact status) or live with you.
So, “only child” - be careful about your decisions, else you will find yourself stuck in my situation. It would be easier for you to hire a part-time caretaker or prep your Mom to go into an assisted living, where she can have activities and other people to interact with and “have her own life” versus taking over yours. If you think your husband resents her now, just wait until she lives with you 24/7. Please heed the advice you are hearing here from others who made the “wrong” decision. Good luck.
Your marriage and your own family need to be your priority. Sometimes an emergency is the only way to get them out of their homes and into appropriate care.
It will not simplify your lives. Your lives will become centered around her even more than they are already.
And why do you think her living with you is going to be easier?
You will be on call CONSTANTLY. You will have no privacy. She will want your attention all the time.
It sounds like your mom's cognitive skills have declined. Are you aware of that? Are all the legal niceties like POAs and advanced directives in order?
I would be much more inclined to have her go to a nice Assisted of Independent Living Facility if you want your life back. (That may need to wait until COVID is under control in your neck of the woods). Right now, you and your husband are her only source of entertainment.
Tell your husband he has your blessing to cut his visits back to twice a week. Mom keeps a list of things she needs done. He tells her what he CAN do. The rest gets hired out.
Mom gets 1/2 of one weekend day from you. It's called having boundaries.
"No mom, we can't do that. You'll have to hire someone".