How do I deal with my angry sisters who are the caregivers to my dying Mom?
I am the "absent" caregiver - I live 600 miles away from my mom who is dying of cancer (liver, pancreas, colon, intestinal) and only has, at best, a few weeks left. My three siblings are her caregivers because they all live within 100 miles of mom and can split the time amongst themselves and their children. I am a single working mother solely responsible for my son's financial well-being, have my own business (so I can't just take paid vacation time), and I am struggling financially. My car needs major repair to top it off. Recently, My fiancée, son and I went to visit my mom for a few days. When I walked in, mom made me cry because she said, "Oh, oh. . . .it smells like Lynn is here." I have a very special distinct perfume and she smelled it as soon as I walked into the door. We had such a sweet visit, but about four hours into it, my mom asked me to leave because she was afraid my one sister was "about to lose it" and she also told me that she didn't want me calling her regularly from now on because every time she hangs up after I call, there is "drama and commotion". I apologized for the pain that caused her and I left her with a hankie covered in my perfume so she would always know I was with her. I was so afraid that my sisters would wash it as soon as mom fell asleep so she would not have it any longer.
I know there is A LOT of anger and resentment from all three of my siblings toward me - they are NOT quiet about it with other family members and it all comes around to me eventually, even through my other three adult children. I have tried to get my siblings to talk to me about what is happening so that I can explain my circumstances, but all they do is yell at me about how I am unloving, selfish, and hateful because I won't drop everything and move in with mom and take care of her for them.
You see, up until a few years ago, I was married (to an abusive husband), a stay at home mom who DID jump whenever mom needed help or whenever they demanded I run. I WOULD drive 600 miles to do whatever was needed - in fact I was going almost every other month to mom's. I also had better finances and was able to pay mom's bills when she forgot to pay them. We even went shopping a number of times for food because she was low on money and food. They are all used to me being able to just drop everything at their every demand. I cannot do that any more due to my circumstances.
I am going through my own mourning and struggle right now, and not just because of my mom's illness and impending death - I can't call my mom without running the risk of being hung up on, I can't talk to my mom whenever I want because whomever is there will cause trouble after we hang up and then mom doesn't want to talk next time I call. I am hurting so much inside because the only connection I have is by phone and they are taking that from me. I am the only spiritual one in the family and mom USUALLY likes to talk to me about God because I am the only one who understands her needs in this area.
I will confess, I have not been a perfect angel and have gotten very angry on several occasions and let some of them have it because of what they say and do. It has not helped - and in fact only served to make me appear more selfish and "unstable", according to one sibling.
Noone seems to see how I feel - my mom won't be here for my son's in a couple years, she won't be here for my wedding next year, or to see how successful my business is becoming. I won't be able to take her to Hungary or Italy like we dreamed. I am so torn and hurting inside and my siblings only seem to want to strike out and hurt me more.
Soon I know they will start asking about her funeral - at this point I have decided that I do not wish to go. My fiancée has said we should have a special memorial service here, at our home and at one of the places mom used to love to visit. He said that might be better emotionally. Even my son does not want to go - he said he got to say goodbye when we visited and that is enough. If I go to the funeral, even to try to be there for my adult daughters and my granddaughter, it is going to be a mess!!! I will get flipped off by at least one niece, I will get accosted by at least two sisters, and my other relatives will certainly not want me there. I wish I could do more - financially and physically for my mom, but the best I can do is be here for her spiritually. She says I love you each time I call, she says she misses me so very much and wishes I were there, but she also says she understands and to take care of my son for her. She even apologized for not meeting my fiancée sooner and for not being able to come to give me away next year.
Please feel free to ask any questions or play devil's advocate. I don't mind - I am just so lost and confused at this point. ANy ideas???
narcissistschild.blogspot/2014/05/the-identified-patient.html
for an introduction.
But in 2014, the Identified Patient has less a definition than in the pre-medical-insurance-reimbursement world. Yet if your read this article, you probably will recognize .... something. How does that "something" compare to Ferguson or the dear good young men coming back from the Middle East? There is no comparison because it its now a DIFFERENT CULTURE. How do you derive health and strength from the path you took vs. the path they took? You have already taken the step: Recognition that your own life and family are of utmost value and contemporary to your circumstance. That your mother would have done no different, and would have wished no different in her place. You may have to bear the banner of family dysfunction for the rest of your life, but you By God have a vision and that vision is what any parent should hope to ignite (and it was so very conventional that you bleed here on agingcare.com rather than let go of your sensibilities). You are not an outsider, to your Mother or to Us. You are the best of Us. Your Mom knew it, and we all see it. I've been lurking unable to write for 2 months but your email reignited my life. Thank you so much for sharing, it has meant a lot to me, given me a little dignity for the geographic changes I took, and the commitments I made. Your husband is lucky guy!
On July 23, we had the most wonderful conversation where we laughed and joked about all kinds of things together. And when she said goodbye I got this feeling in the pit of my stomach. I called the 24th and she had just been put on morphine - she was unable to speak. On Friday July 25th, I got a call from the non-cooperative sibling that they had left work and were on the way to mom's because my eldest sister had called and said mom did not have long - her breathing was very shallow. SHE had gotten the call over an hour earlier. I had not been called by anyone til that point. When I got off the phone, I called my mom's house and reached my eldest sister who said, "Oh, I wasn't going to call you - I figured you were supposed to call later today anyway, so I was just going to wait. Yes, mom's breathing is shallow (note the owrd "is"), I don't think it will be long now." I asked to have her hold the phone next to mom's ear for just a moment. . . .you will NOT believe what happened next. "Oh, um, listen, Lynn. . . . Mom's gone." I asked, "WHAT??! You just said her breathing IS shallow??" She said, Yeah, well mom died about an hour ago. I am just waiting for Hospice to arrive. They will make things official." I just stood there in my kitchen totally stunned - no one thought to call me when it all started to play out and no one called when she passed, and no one planned to call me either. She said so, and she was one of the sisters who allegedly felt we should move on and work together. . . .
For anyone wondering, NO, I did not go to the memorial, and I am glad that I did not. It was not the best place for me to be. My fiancé and I took a drive to Mom's favorite beach, looked for sea glass, ate dinner together and watched the sunset. This week we are going to take my son for our own memorial to Gramma. Do I have regrets? Only that we never got to go shopping at her favorite art store one more time, that we never got to walk the beach together one more time, my regrets are filled with "One more times. . . . " Diamond RIo has a country song, "One more day." That song sums up my only regrets. May god bless and keep you all in your journey through this painful time in your life. My prayers are with you all. . . . walking away now. . . . .Kindly, Lynn
You should try to call your Mother and do it so that no one will ever know who called or from what phone number or area code in the country. (Maybe your fiancee told you this already). Just dial *67 (asterisk 6, 7) and then your Mother's phone number (*67, followed by the area code and phone
number). It'll display as "unknown." If you call and the caregiver picks up, you just hang up. You keep calling until your Mother picks up. Of course, this won't work if your evil sisters simply control the phone to the extent that your Mother won't ever pick up. But it's my understanding they are not with your Mother 24/7. So why don't you give it a try. And good luck to you.
Well, its not looking good for the home team. But you have not thrown in the towel and neither will we...do you think you could share what their perspective might be if they were writing to AgingCare with a complaint about your persistent efforts to stay involved?
Mom lives in a rural farm area, still has dial up, limited cable tv, ancient phone lines, and problems with her phone whenever it storms. So, process of elimination: closest storm was over 700 miles away, not likely it was affecting her phone lines. No outages with her phone company and cell service was working well in the area because niece was texting and called from that area last night. Old phone lines: the phone usually hangs up on people when these are an issue. I wasn't getting hung up on, answering machine was acutally answering and I could leave a message. 7 times total. And Noone returned my calls. IF mom's phone is out or there are outages, normally you get a busy signal, if her computer is accidentally left on for long periods of time, same thing. If family members were on the line with her, she does NOT have call waiting so it would be a busy signal as well.
Called from fiancees cell which has the same area code as mine, hmmm. . . noone answered. Called from son's cell which has a different area code than mine but from the same state, noone answered. Fiancee checked outages between our state and mom's - none, landline or cellular. No power outages either.
After eliminating all possibilities, he suggested I call the sibling with the POA. I did and yes, I am sure my voice was probably still irritated and quivering because I was trying not to cry. But I tried to control myself best I could. This is what I got: "EVeryone else has been able to get through. Your phone is the only one that seems to have trouble. Huh. I guess I will have to look into that when I get back up there next week sometime. IF I have time. In the mean time, why don't you just call here. I will make sure mom gets your messages. I call every day and I don't have any trouble getting through."
NOW, this morning suddenly, the phone works fine. The paid caregiver is there today, Wed., and Thurs. . . So I am going to call every single day this week and run an experiment - which days will someone answer and which days will they NOT. Or, thinking positively, maybe they will answer every day. . . .
NEXT OPTION, if the weekend's problem happens again, I am going to get a google voice number with the same area codes as mom's area and call through that. Let's see if IT gets answered and how many times. If I NEED to, I will get a new one every single time I can't get through. Thank my fiancee for that idea. :-)
As far as writing a letter, the notes that I wrote for each did not help, the gifts did not help, talking to them has not helped. Talking to the caregiver has not helped. I am just going to have to find a way around them at every turn and think more deviously about my methods. I am not permitted to help with phone calls, paperwork or coordinating in any way - when I offer, I am always told I have "no right. After all you are not the POA." I cannot visit at all. THe biggest part of the problem so cooking for them or alleviating their caregiving role for a time is not an option. Cookies? I had special gifts hand prepared for each person and hand delivered with hand written thank you notes for each. Better than cookies in my eyes. WHen they were hand delivered they were disgusted and voiced their dissatisfaction at what was given. IDK what else to do - there's an old Irish saying,
"May those who love us, love us.
And for those who don't love us,
May God turn their hearts.
And if he can not turn their hearts,
May he turn their ankles,
So we may know them by their limping."
Maybe, it's a little unchristian but there are days when that sums up what I feel. I am done with them. If I won the Power Ball today and it was worth 900 million, gave them each 200 million, kept 50 for myself, they would apparently complain I did not give them all of it. I will just let my fiancee keep trying to find ways for me to work around them. Where there is a will there IS a way - and I am not going to let my last few days or weeks with my mom be taken from me by their "conjuring". (I do love that word, frenchmadeline).
Now I must tell you that nothing in the two posts I wrote for your attention was meant to hurt your feelings or to say or be unkind to you. My fault lies with your sisters. I mentioned the small indications of selfishness on your part only because they were out there, on the page so to speak, and by briefly dealing with this I hoped to indicate I was not just coming down on one side (yours) without giving your entire situation the thoughtfulness it deserves. I imagine I must now explain my choice of words, as when I used "belligerent" (a pet word I use too much but had forgotten much of its "warlike" meaning) to describe an act that I felt would be unnecessarily adding fuel to the fury of your sisters fire. I see them as NOT wanting you to come to your Mother's funeral just so this one act on your part could be held against you for all eternity. They will say: Lynn the selfish b----- (fill in with a word used these days in all sorts of ways, good and bad, and also a word that rhymes with "rich" if I may quote former First Lady Barbara Bush who back in the 80s, decided to bare her claws and go after Geraldine Ferraro in an effort to protect her husband, who Time magazine had called a wimp. Boy did that ever digress! My last word on that is if it takes one to know one, Mrs. Bush is very intelligent on the subject.) So here it what will be said against you forever: Lynn that selfish b____ would not even come to her own Mother's funeral." This will precede all of their hateful comments, and you do not need this or deserve it. So please don't supply them with the ammunition. It seems they need little help in this regard in any event. You have a good life ahead of you but unfortunately you will need to learn to make your way without the love and comfort that has been provided you by your Mother. You will feel her presence in your heart, but only after a time, and that along with the love of the new supportive man in your life and the closeness and need for you from your wonderful children should be the cocoon that will hold you safe for many years to come. As someone else in a post said, the ugliness brought to this moment in time, will pass. Allow it to, and honor your Mother and what the two of you had that was special by going to her funeral. I think you might even ask to speak at the service, and that would seem right too. Keep your composure throughout and God bless and keep you.
After reading (several times) both of your messages to me, and truly thinking seriously about everything you have said, I have little to say in reply because I do not wish to be argumentative. I will say, it appears as though you misunderstood an honest mistake (my missing your first post), and reacted to that misunderstanding.
Had I read your first message, I CAN promise you that your “hidden message” would have come across quite obviously to me as it was not as hidden as you suspect. Forgive and Forget. Thank you for that simple message. Please know that the issues in my family run much deeper than simple sibling rivalries, missed cheerleader practice pick-ups, etc., and the solution is much more difficult than one person abiding by an all-encompassing phrase such as “forgive and forget” . It is complex and stretches over 50 years (my age). I can never explain all the ins and outs in a few minutes online. You can fix the wheels of the wagon, but unless the rest of the wagon is also fixed, you are going to go nowhere.
One thing does concern me from your comments and I mentioned it before, your use of the word:
Belligerent
Definition:
1. warlike; given to waging war.
2. of warlike character; aggressively hostile.
My choice to stay away from the memorial, as I attempted to state before, is an effort to actually prevent exactly the definition stated about. I KNOW that I will have regrets if I go and if I do not go. I will make my choice based on what I feel will bring the LEAST amount of regret, pain, and suffering – for EVERYONE.
As far as our remarks to each other, I am choosing to walk away in an effort to ward off any further conflict between the two of us.
Have a blessed day. Lynn
;-)
Thank you, Miasmom1. . . .it's nice to hear "the other side", too. Helps me to adjust my feelings sometimes and to try to put my own resentment in check. Blessings to you and your siblings that you are all able to keep each other in mind. . . .
Found a personal way to also do what someone suggested (I can't remember who, sorry!!!). Have a secret pal helping me put together thank you gifts for each of mom's caregivers (siblings, neices, nephews, all of them). My friend knows Each one of them personally, too, and so is able to help me assemble each gift very individually. She cut me a really amazing deal and is doing all of them for less than my grocery money for the week!!! My friend lives closer than I do and will be delivering each gift secretly after dark with my personal card in each. Was her idea to kind of do it like I used to do mom's "treasure hunt" when I left. They will each awake in the morning to a bow wrapped package. Let's see how it goes!
so. it sounds to me that you have ALREADY made your contribution already to your mom's care and your siblings are maybe having a very rude wake up call, that they are now having to deal with your mom. I think about this often and i think maybe it is easier for me seeing my parents age daily rather than having a rude awakening as I think maybe my brother experiences when he visits. Hmmmmm. I think you should make your peace/say good bye to your mom in YOUR way, not THEIRS. Make today about Mom not siblings. deal with them later. you have made your contribution. IMHO. Good luck and I loved that your left your something scented with your perfume with you mom. What a beautiful gesture. Hang in there. xo
You get to own your relationship with your mother starting right this second. Sisters, aunts, whomever else can suck their big toe over in the corner. Sisters may never ever understand your situation because they don't want to. Understanding what you are going through means they no longer have a convenient target for all of their feelings. They need to deal with their own business separate from you just like YOU don't get to be bitter and ugly over the fact they never offered to help you out in a time of need (I assume....)
I don't know your sisters, but they seriously need to butt out of the relationship between you & your mom. If you want to talk to her on the phone they just by golly better let it happen and keep their mouths shut.
It would help if mom put her foot down with them, but that's probably not going to happen.
Expect it to get worse after your mom passes. People who are struggling to handle their mom's aging & decline will really have a whopper of a struggle dealing with her death. Death is traumatic and makes people behave in ways they would never have imagined they would.
So, just realize your sisters are probably just projecting their own fear, pain, and anxiety onto you, but it's still their problem to deal with, not yours. You can't control what other people say or do, just yourself.
You do what will let you sleep at night after your mom is gone and don't worry about other people, even if they are family.
As an update, I am now dealing with OTHER issues from my sisters that I do not understand and maybe some can shed light on this for me.
When I call my mom to talk, we talk about memories and upcoming events, (my wedding, son's graduation from school next year, his scholarships, her gardens, bird houses, stuff we always talk about) nothing more. We have always talked like that. I don't know what is in her will, what will happen to her belongings or house, or even what she has determined are her final wishes. My mom AND mom's attorney are fully aware that IF there is anything left to be split amongst the children after all the bills are paid, I would like to have anything that is supposed to come to me be split between my children. I say this all to state that I am not "after" anything from mom (unlike some who have already gone through her jewelry and tagged items while she is sleeping). Now, I thought my sisters' behaviour was just a whim on their part, so I kept an eye on it since my visit to see if it would change. It has changed - it's gotten worse. It's not a whim, and I cannot explain it. When I call, two of them stand and listen to my entire conversation with my mom. My mom has tried to turn the speaker phone off so she can put the phone to her ear, and they scold her and tell her no. When mom said, "I can hear better in my ear!" She was told, "Leave it on speaker". They tell her what to say even though she still is alert enough to say what she WANTS. I have learned it is BEST for mom and causes no arguments if I call when only ONE particular family member is there. That person hands her the phone and walks away. Any thoughts???
In addition, July 3rd, ONE of my siblings took a "deathbed photo of mom" (her own words in the email) and sent it to my children. THIS one has shocked even all the relatives (she actually told everyone she had done it) and they could not understand why she did this. I found out by getting apologie from people who had been told about what she had done. I asked and she admitted it. I am trying to justify it by saying that she only wanted them to see her before she goes, but they have all been to visit their gramma in the past two months and they all call regularly. There are A LOT of grandchildren who live farther away than MY kids, who have NOT been to visit and do not call their gramma ever, and none of them got the photo. The photo was only sent to MY children. . . .
Lynn
Try to be as even tempered as you can be and don't let them provoke you to anger.
It is a situation that would try a saint, but you can only do your best.
God bless you.