I have had my parents since 2021, Mom had 2 strokes in 2022, 1 in 2020. She has COPD, diabetes without complications, CKD stage 4, and dementia.
Since she has been with me she has decided that she doesn't want to do anything, since March she has lost 8.2 % of her body mass, she refuses to eat or drink anything, she wants to sleep all day. Due to not drinking she has had 3 UTI's in less than 3 months.
The doctors finally decided they can do no more for mom, she has now been home on hospice for 2 weeks. She wants to sleep all the time. I have found no help through the web or even professionals to give me answers to my questions on what I can do to get mom re-motivated.
It is killing me inside not knowing what I can do to help the situation, I cannot even handle being downstairs with mom because it so depressing.
My mom is dying and there is nothing that I can do.
How can I begin to accept that she doesn't want to live any longer? It seems like it doesn't even matter that mom has kids, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. I feel like she is being selfish not thinking of anyone except for herself.
NOTE: Started in 1999, when we lost my 19-year-old sister was in a car accident, and got much worse when my nephew (my sisters only child) died from suicide when he came up to see grams and gramps.
I also feel that my step father caused lots of this, becasue my moms life stopped when they got together. My mom stopped having a life, her life only consisted of sitting at the table with coffee and cigarettes, going to doctor appointments, and maybe out to shop and dinner once in a while.
Mom forgot how to take care of herself, She became very co-dependent and now she is dying at 78 because she has no will to live. This I do not understand. I am sick by the whole thing.
Does anybody have some advice for me or some tips and ideas to help me maybe get mom motivated a again?
For me, it was incredibly hard to watch my mother deteriorate with Parkinson’s disease. It’s brutal towards the end.
I knew that my mom was ready to check out long before she died. She told me many times that she was ready to go. She made peace with the idea of death because she knew that her suffering would end. That is what helped me to understand how she felt.
My mom wasn’t in any pain at the time of her death due to being on medication that the hospice nurses gave her. I am so thankful that she wasn’t fearful of death and that she died peacefully.
Hospice care is all about comfort. It isn’t about changing someone’s mind about dying. Your mom no longer has a desire to live because the best years of her life have vanished.
If you can, try to place yourself in her position. Maybe you would feel as she does now.
She isn’t trying to hurt you. She isn’t being selfish. She simply wants to stop living. Her feelings don’t have anything to do with anyone else.
Let her know that you respect how she feels. When my mom expressed that she wanted to die, I told her that I understood and that if I were in her shoes, I would feel the same way. By telling her that, she had no feelings of abandoning us.
Wishing you peace as you begin to grieve the loss of your dear mother.
Her visiting nurse or caregivers can also answer questions about her sleeping and weight loss. That is part of the process that she is letting go. She should not have any distress with it.
Your mother's brain is damaged by dementia and also by multiple strokes. She's not doing any of this intentionally -- she's not in control of the breakdown of her body and to think otherwise is delusional. Physical decline is not a state of mind, for heaven's sake, and she may well think she's perfectly healthy as my mother did. That was the one blessing of dementia -- Mom was blissfully unaware of her various ailments and thought she was 16 years old and in the peak of health when she died. She truly didn't suffer at the end, but we did, and that's OK. Her children were able to shoulder that grief.
As others have stated here, you're dealing with your own grief at the impending loss of your mom. That IS real and IS a state of mind. The first step to dealing with it is recognizing it. The second is to stop punishing her for what she cannot help. That's heartbreaking and I know in time you'll regret not being downstairs with her in her last days and hours, so please make the effort to get outside of your own head and be more giving to her while you still can. Simultaneously, talk to the social worker with hospice to get some counseling, because you need it.
I also recommend the book "Healing After Loss," by Martha Hickman. You read just one page a day for a year, and you should start it even before losing your mom so you'll understand your feelings. In many ways you've already lost the mom you knew. I know I lost my mother a good seven years before her physical death, because the dementia robbed her of her personality and sense of humor.
Good luck to you. I hope you take to heart the advice everyone has given you, because they're spot-on.
She is not being selfish.
Respect her decision, make her as comfortable as possible and accept her decision.
If need be, get some therapy to work through this trying time for you.
I wish you the best!
I suggest you ask hospice for some counseling for yourself in an effort to accept this loss.
God bless and good luck.
Why would you want your mom to continue on living with all she has wrong with her? Would you want to live like that? I wouldn't.
Perhaps it's you that's being selfish by wanting your mom to keep living when she has no desire to, as she is sick physically and mentally.
I'm glad you now have hospice on board. Please talk to their social worker and clergy person so you can better grasp what is going on with your mom and yourself. And please just let her die on her terms and in peace.
God bless you.
Then let's toss out blaming stepfather and other people's deaths. They are part of mom's journey, and we all have things like this during our lives. At some point we have had enough, but it's not anyone's fault. It's part of the natural trajectory that we enter when we're born.
Your mom may have needed professional help that she didn't get when various sad events happened in her life. That isn't your fault, nor is her choice of husband or the addiction to tobacco or any of her other coping skills. You cannot motivate someone who doesn't want to be motivated. You must accept it.
I'm so sorry you're having to deal with this. You need to find help for yourself so that you don't fall into the trap of dealing with this awful tragedy the way mom dealt with the tragedies in her life. I hope you can do that.
One summer, as he was in the hospital, he told his parents he was dying. You can imagine what a punch in the gut this was to his parents and they told him, no he wasn’t dying and that he had to fight as hard as he could. They obviously didn’t want their baby to die.
He wanted to go home and die peacefully, but when his parents said the above, he decided to stay in the hospital and fight because that is what his parents wanted.
His mother had just left the room to go get some coffee and his dad was in the room with him when he decided he needed to go to the bathroom. As the nurse was helping him walk across the floor to the bathroom, he collapsed and died. Nothing anyone could do, as he was already instantly dead.
After that, his parents absolutely beat themselves up about how they couldn’t see or accept he was dying, how they forced the issue, how he complied even though he was tired and ready. They denied him the death he wanted. And it ended badly for him. How they basically MADE HIM WALK when he died. That was the thing they kept beating themselves up about. They made their dying child walk to his death because they wouldn’t allow him to die on his terms.
Please let your mother die on her terms.
As an RN I saw over and over again patients who could not speak to their own families about their exhaustioon with life whether they were ill or not. Simply their wish to have it over. My own Dad told me he longed for the "long nap". And he had LOVED his good life~! Patients told me that they were forced to talk about this with strangers (me) because family couldn't/wouldn't hear them. It was one of the great tragedies I saw play out over and over again as an RN.
PLEASE help your Mom now. This must be about HER now. Your mourning and pain are yet to come, and nothing but time and help where you seek in in counseling can help you.
I beg of you. Do this for your Mother. Accept this. Tell her how much you love her. Tell her you will never be ready to see her go but you will carry her with you every day in all you do, and will love her so long as you yourself can draw breath.
Again, I BEG you to do this FOR YOUR MOM.
He was 89 and had a long list of ailments. It was very difficult, but we supported his decision to forgo dialysis in the face of acute kidney failure (on top of end stage CHF). He died peacefully under hospice care.
It’s really what we would ultimately want for our loved ones and ourselves, to pass in our sleep.
She's not being selfish, she's doing what so many others before her have done. Withdraw and quietly will themselves.
Hospice means death with dignity. You needn't be trying to actively engage your mom in anything she doesn't want to do.
When me daddy entered Hospice, he slept most of the time. He was transitioning to the next life and he wanted peaace, quiet and release from pain.
It IS hard, and it IS hard when someone as young as 78 has these feelings. But you need to respect her.
Spend the time you have with her being calm, quiet, or chatty--whatever SHE wants. It's not a relection of her love for you that she's not 'fighting'.
I agree with southernwave. You should be receiving some counseling now for YOU.
There is no such thing as diabetes without complications. Diabetes is VERY insidious and causes damage to all body systems.
Your step father did not cause her kidney disease, her diabetes and her dementia. You know this.
She has dementia and end strange kidney disease. You know this. Please get a hospice and palliative care consult.
You might want to see a grief counselor to help with your denial. I’m sorry you are going through this. Its hard.