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I also think she feels guilty because when my father was being life-flighted for emergency surgery she refused to fly with him and he never woke up from surgery. She refuses to tell me why she wouldn't be with him in last few hours of life just says that she was scared.
I suspect that she may have refused to go with him out of a strong denial of how seriously ill he really was. She may have also used not being with him as a sort of a "magic talisman" to prevent him from dying (such as "God will not let my husband die if I am not with him to say 'Goodbye'").
She may need grief counseling to get over her guilt. If her guilt is severe she may even "give up" on getting better after her knee surgery and give up on living her life now that her husband is dead.
I suspect that she may have refused to go with him out of a strong denial of how seriously ill he really was. She may have also used not being with him as a sort of a "magic talisman" to prevent him from dying (such as "God will not let my husband die if I am not with him to say 'Goodbye'").
She may need grief counseling to get over her guilt. If her guilt is severe she may even "give up" on getting better after her knee surgery and give up on living her life now that her husband is dead.
Good luck.
She has always had a fear of flying, so don't know if that played a part or if she knew he was dying and didn't want to be by herself waiting on family to get there. I don't like flying either and would hate to be alone if my husband died but I would endure all that to make sure my face was the last one my husband saw before he died.
I am honestly very surprised that she is still alive at this point in time, she once told my father that when he left for work she died and when he came back home, she came back to life. That is screwed up logic IMO, I love my husband but good grief, I enjoy it when he goes to work, I darn sure don't die. I think about how sad it must be to be so emotionally dependent on others and to live with so much fear.
As far as why she isn't with the younger brother, she didn't want to be a burden to he and his wife. I have another brother but she has alienated him so he very rarely speaks to her.
But she thought it would be better to "be a burden" to you, your husband and your three teenagers??????
What is the long term plan? Did you discuss a long term plan with her, and with your brother(s) before she moved 1500 miles to live with you?
People who say that are the ones who have never been in your current situation. You can have a terrible childhood and go on to be a wonderful mother to your own children. You're probably such a good mother to your kids that you're making plans for long-term care insurance, so you never put your kids in the position that you're in now.
Anyhow, since your mother still owns her home, either she should go back to her home or she should sell her home and move into a 55+ community. If she can't afford it, there are low-income senior communities too.
You're not obligated to spend the next 20 years caring for your mother. Why do you think she chose to come to you so she wouldn't inconvenience your brothers? It's because she doesn't think that your feelings, your commitments or your own children are important, not compared to her needs.
Get her through the knee surgery if you need to, in order to feel like you've done your part. And then tell your brothers that you're ready for Mom to move back to her house, or to a senior community, and that it's time for all of you together to figure out how to make that happen, because you're not giving up 20 years of your life to care for her (especially when she doesn't need that much care right now). A senior community would probably be good for her because there would be activities and the opportunity to make friends, right outside her own front door.
Well, I was going to type all this out, but Hedgehog Mom did it beautifully for me!
But she thought it would be better to "be a burden" to you, your husband and your three teenagers??????
What is the long term plan? Did you discuss a long term plan with her, and with your brother(s) before she moved 1500 miles to live with you?
I didn't recognize just how self centered she was until she got here and definitely didn't recognize as a child/teenager just how self-centered she was, I moved out when I was 17 and I haven't lived in close proximity to her in over 15 years.
Long term plan was to get her healthy again because she hadn't been taking care of herself, then get her into senior housing, so that I would be close enough if needed but not living in the same house. My brothers both said "if we had known, we would have moved her in with us." Yet neither of one them stepped up to allow her to stay in her own home with a commitment to be there for her, if she needed them or offered their homes so she could have stayed in the area she had been in for over 50 years. I know this is hard for her but living with the person who caused me so much grief and turmoil as a child/teenager, is hard on me.
I think that being afraid to fly is sufficient reason not to get on a life flight. No need to press her further to explain herself. She needs your validation far more than you need an explanation. Just let her know, if it comes up in the future, that she made the right choice. Because she did. Your dad did not want her to terrify herself to get on that aircraft just to hold his hand. Clearly he was not alone when he passed, she was right there with him in spirit. And the life flight people certainly prefer NOT to have to deal with loved ones when they are doing their job.
Sometimes people need their loved ones to NOT be present so they can pass on. Maybe she did him a big favor.
I do feel your pain. My mom is deteriorating rapidly and resisting all efforts to help. I wouldn't move in with her for ANYTHING. When I had time to help, and begged her to accept help, she threw tantrums like a child. Now she wants attention when I don't have the time. She was a terrible mother, and while I feel empathy for her situation, I feel no guilt at all. She made this bed for herself in so many ways over a long period of time.
I didn't recognize just how self centered she was until she got here and definitely didn't recognize as a child/teenager just how self-centered she was, I moved out when I was 17 and I haven't lived in close proximity to her in over 15 years.
Long term plan was to get her healthy again because she hadn't been taking care of herself, then get her into senior housing, so that I would be close enough if needed but not living in the same house. My brothers both said "if we had known, we would have moved her in with us." Yet neither of one them stepped up to allow her to stay in her own home with a commitment to be there for her, if she needed them or offered their homes so she could have stayed in the area she had been in for over 50 years. I know this is hard for her but living with the person who caused me so much grief and turmoil as a child/teenager, is hard on me.
IMHO, it is not too late for her to move back to her home community. Does she still have a house there? What is happening with that?
Perhaps, give a goal (deadline) of a month or six weeks after she gets out of the hospital or two weeks after she gets out of rehab for her to move back to her community.
Tell your brothers that they have the opportunity now for Mom to move in with them or for them to be supportive of Mom when she returns to her house. Frankly, it must be devastating for her to move away from her doctors, her church, her neighborhood, her favorite stores after living there for almost her entire life (at least her adult life).
I didn't recognize just how self centered she was until she got here and definitely didn't recognize as a child/teenager just how self-centered she was, I moved out when I was 17 and I haven't lived in close proximity to her in over 15 years.
Long term plan was to get her healthy again because she hadn't been taking care of herself, then get her into senior housing, so that I would be close enough if needed but not living in the same house. My brothers both said "if we had known, we would have moved her in with us." Yet neither of one them stepped up to allow her to stay in her own home with a commitment to be there for her, if she needed them or offered their homes so she could have stayed in the area she had been in for over 50 years. I know this is hard for her but living with the person who caused me so much grief and turmoil as a child/teenager, is hard on me.
And it sounds to me as if your feelings are justified.
Your priorities need to be in this order:
1. Keep yourself healthy.
2. Keep your relationship with your husband healthy.
3. Keep your relationship with your kids healthy.
4. Keep your financial stability in place so that you can focus on the health of the above people and those relationships first and foremost. It's hard to focus on anything else if your basic finances are in turmoil.
After all that (and there may be other priorities that coincide with those) comes your relationship with your mom. And if your relationship with your mom negatively impacts any of the above, then she has two choices:
1. Alter her behavior so that those priority relationships are not negatively impacted.
2. Move into her own place where she can be in charge of the dynamics.
See, she is in YOUR home. YOU and your husband are in charge of the priorities, the relationships, the moral values, the dynamics of your home, not your mother. You are an adult, not a child. Your relationship with your mom needs to be adult to adult - not mother to child.
Would you allow any other adult you know move into your house and interact with you and your family in the way your mom is? I would hope not.
Look, I feel your pain. When I was in my thirties, I had to come to grips with the dysfunctional relationship between my overbearing, emotionally unstable, probably mentally ill mother and myself. Look, my mother loves me - I have no doubt about that, and she is a beautiful, intelligent woman with many talents and gifts, but she has never had the tools to maintain a healthy relationship with anyone. She had a terrible childhood and I empathize with her but that doesn't mean I continue to make excuses for bad behavior as an adult. She raised me in such an emotionally unstable, volatile situation that like you, I got the hell out of Dodge as fast as I could (moved out when I was 19). I didn't move back to their general area till I was in my mid thirties and WOW, the dysfunction hit me right between the eyes!
I was an adult now - with kids of my own, a life of my own, talents and goals of my own, and my mother refused to respect my autonomy. I had to take such a firm stand with her about boundaries that at one point though we lived 5 miles from each other, we went 18 months without talking (and she went 18 months without seeing her grandkids). This was very avoidable. I had told her not to call me at 5 am wanting to argue. She insisted on doing so. When I refused to argue, she hung up on me. Well, Homie don't play dat. I don't hang up on people and my friends and family know that. They all know that I am not going to yell at them or insult them and that I am not going to hang up on them - I mean, I may say, "OK, this conversation has crossed a personal boundary so I'm going to get off the phone now unless we change the subject or tone," but I won't just slam down the phone. My mom will in a New York second and I don't like that and won't put up with it. She knows that. She also knows that if she just can't control herself and MUST do that, then she needs to be the one to apologize. Until she does that, I simply won't be in touch with her because that type of immature behavior crosses a line that I find unacceptable.
Anyway, long story short, it sounds like you need to lay some very clear boundaries out (with your husband backing you 100 percent) and you need to stick to them, and your mom needs to respect them. If she doesn't or can't - she needs to move back into her own home where SHE is in charge. In your home, you're in charge.
Don't cater to her neediness. Not a minute. She's not elderly. She's not deathly ill. There's no reason to cater to all that. If that's what she's wanting, she needs to know she's come to the wrong place.
Good luck - please keep us posted! YOU CAN DO THIS.
I may sound really tough but I really do feel your pain. By the way, my mother has never fully conformed to my boundaries, so guess what - she knows that she will never be allowed to live with me. She and my dad know that they will have to make living plans for her that do not involve moving in with me. In fact, my husband and I made a deal with each other before getting married, and that was that neither of our mothers could ever move in with us! They are cut from the same bolt of cloth and neither of them has ever met a boundary that they respected!
People gots to play nice. Even old people. Even our parents.
I think that being afraid to fly is sufficient reason not to get on a life flight. No need to press her further to explain herself. She needs your validation far more than you need an explanation. Just let her know, if it comes up in the future, that she made the right choice. Because she did. Your dad did not want her to terrify herself to get on that aircraft just to hold his hand. Clearly he was not alone when he passed, she was right there with him in spirit. And the life flight people certainly prefer NOT to have to deal with loved ones when they are doing their job.
Sometimes people need their loved ones to NOT be present so they can pass on. Maybe she did him a big favor.
I do feel your pain. My mom is deteriorating rapidly and resisting all efforts to help. I wouldn't move in with her for ANYTHING. When I had time to help, and begged her to accept help, she threw tantrums like a child. Now she wants attention when I don't have the time. She was a terrible mother, and while I feel empathy for her situation, I feel no guilt at all. She made this bed for herself in so many ways over a long period of time.
Thanks for your kind words. I don't ask her anymore because truthfully I don't understand her or the majority of her thought processes.
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