My mom is 102 years old. Her wish was that she would never end up in a nursing home and would never be incontinent, experience dementia and be so helpless. I love her so much but I want her to find peace. I am guilt-ridden and despise myself for wanting her to pass. I know she has to but when I hold her hand, I don't want her to go. Please help, I love her so much and this pain has been going on for over a year. What do I do?
I am presently going through the steps to get his name on the list
at an aged home that has a good reputation. I rang them and they said I shoud get a centrelink(australian government)asset assesment done. It will take the government 5weeks to deal with it. So it is a step by step,unknown process for me, and I just keep on trying to advance a step at a time with it.
Happy New Year vstefans
Hope 2017 is a wondeful year for you.
you
😀♥️
Thank you for your kind understanding reply to my post.
Dad shows very little interest in his great grandchildren, and is critical of people in general and pretty self absorbed.
I have worried about what will happen when his mind becomes
more confused and he can no longer live by himself.
Your insight and advice about needing to have a plan in place
and somewhere set up for him
to go is
And - one more thought - since this means HE has GREAT grandkids - do they brighten his life at all, does he care about them? (Wow - He was just 18 when you were born!)
my 86year old father should start and end. He would like to live with me
but I know I couldnt live with him because he would try to take over my whole life
and control me as that is the way he has always been.
I am 2years off 70years of age myself, and I. I just want some peace and joy in the last years of my life.
The thing is, he never had to look after his mother and father in their old age
as they died in their early seventies when he was in his 40's He had all his time
free to do what he wanted up to age 86years with his extra marital affairs and girlfriends, but now selfishly he has no qualms wanting to move in with me
so I can look after him in his old age. He never thinks that he never sacrificed
his days and life to do that for his parents.
Frankly I feel my life and days are equal in value to the number of days he has
enjoyed, unencumbered, in his life. I still pick up my grandchildren and stay with
them for 3hours an afternoon, 4days a week and have spent my life caring
for my family and their families. I dont think I owe Dad the time.
Because he has never had to sacrifice his life as a full time carer to anyone.
I will do all I can do on a visiting shopping schedule and Drs appointments etc.
but Im dammed if I will sacrifice 5 or 10years of my 70's being his constant carer and around the clock carer. We all have limited time left to live in our later years
but he doesn't care about me or ruining my life as long as he gets someone to make his slave, so that he doesn't have to deal with carers or make decisions about moving into assisted living. I will be taking responsibility for my old age
care arrangements right to the end, this is my responsibility not the responsibility
of my children. Old people who burden their children are just being childish and selfish.
Dad has refused the help of carers, refused to have a monitored medi alert
bracelet or cooperate in putting his name down to review assisted living residences. Says Im perfectly able to care for myself, but trys to move in with me to care for him in his old age.
This selfish duplicity makes me angry. My brother meanwhile, because he lives
in another city thinks he can just let me sacrifice years of my life while he
doesnt.
I have said, they can put me in prison but I will not live with him or have him live with me.
I glanced over my shoulder as we started back down the hall, and saw her suddenly thrashing about as if struggling to beckon us not to go, but I am ashamed to say, I did not tell my husband. I knew he must have been having painful memories of his own mother's demise, but I still wish we had gone back to her. This is a little off-topic, but it shows that anyone can have mixed feelings in such circumstances.
You've captured the essence of the answer to the question.
I also told my Husband that it was selfish of me to not want him to die.
I told him that I love him, that I will miss him but that I will be alright and that it was alright for him to go. I asked him to say HI to my parents. I told him that the Cubbies needed him in Heaven to help win the World Series.
All I can say is he must have made it cuz they won and we all know that it took a Miracle for that to happen.
Your Mom has lived a wonderful, full life. Rejoice in that.
You will carry the best of your Mom with you for the rest of your life and know that with each life you touch that life will have been effected by your Mom. So in some respects we all live on in our memories that come out as family stories, in kindness. She will be with you, some day you will turn a corner and catch a glimpse of something and it will jog a memory, smell an aroma from a bakery and it will remind you of her. These things are not coincidence, they are our loved ones letting us know they are near.
My own wife has been a stroke victim since early 2005...she is in a nursing home for many years now..I visit daily and hire paid ladies to sit with her at the dinner hour seven days a week...She is paralyzed and cannot speak...I do wish that she could sleep away as her quality of life is so limited. I do not feel guilty..
God bless you.
Grace + Peace,
Bob
n a
When my father passed I had been praying for his quick release from this world, but when it happened I cried out asking God how he could have taken him from us.
It is natural to have mixed emotions, but you should feel no guilt at all. Just continue to love her and put her first, and be the good loving daughter you are.
The guilt is normal, but it's YOUR guilt, mom probably wants to go. I cannot imagine living that long. I think you feel guilty for her pain, or for not being able to make her life better now. I doubt it's over hoping she can pass. The time we spend watching a loved one "die" whether it be hours, days, weeks, years, can be so sad. Our emotions get all confused.
You just keep on loving your mom. As someone who fervently believes in a beautiful, pain free afterlife, death is but a simple walking through a door. I feel my dad's spirit with me often. I hope you can find peace.
I want dad to know and be the young man he remembers himself being. I want him to have the purpose and life he wants. I want him to be able to drive and work because that's what he loved to do. I want to give him that gift. Something inside me just keeps thinking that maybe someday… Maybe. Even though I know it will never be. That said, I realized something else about myself through talking with the hospice counselor. I realized that knowing AD does not reverse and CHF does not reverse, and how miserable and limited he is now, I pray for dad to die because I love him. While I pray for him to live so that he can have that (unreachable) chance to be who he remembers, I also pray for him to live because I love myself and have been caring for him for so long I don't want to imagine what I will do with the empty hours. This is going to sound horrible and selfish, but in a way it feels good to have someone need me so much.
I don't know that it's a solution for you or anyone else, but when I catch myself wanting him to stay forever I stop and make myself think about the whole situation logically and that each week, each day, as miserable as it is for him, is the best day of the rest of his life. It is then that I can rest in wanting him to pass on quietly and peacefully.
Like many others, I have watched my dad go from independence to nearly immobile and no joy in a very short time. I have grieved, sometimes sobbing at each little loss as I knew "the dad I had known for a few days, weeks, or months" would never come back, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it.
The longer you caregive, the closer you get to your loved ones. Caregiving consumes us, our lives, so the thought of losing our loved one is excruciating. How do you reconcile all of this? I think it is by knowing that God's will will be done in their length of days even when what I see and feel contradict.
I had it easy compared to some. My mom was a shell of her former self, yet high-function in certain ways. (Complex neuro disorder, diagnosed via autopsy.) Had just enough of her marbles left to insist that she would shun all doctors, make no changes to her finances and POA, accept no outside/professional help, and stay in her increasingly-hoarded home until the bitter end.
Mom's cherished "independence" eroded my sanity. Was this woman a weird, irrational, crippled stranger? Or was she my mother? She was both. What was once family life became a cruel, alternate reality.
I finally took a deep breath and said, "There's only one way this can end." And I got some sh*t from people when I said it out loud. Sorry, The truth hurts. And the tsk-tskers weren't hurting as much as I was.
My mom finally found everlasting peace, let's say. I don't feel so great. But I'm working it out. And you will, too. There's no way around this ugly reality, when the parent you cared for and buried is so different from his or her old self.
This lifestage is an epic mind game. And everyone has their own timetable. Be kind to yourself.
https://www.agingcare.com/articles/Why-you-secretly-want-elderly-parent-to-die-139321.htm