This is long and I apologize. I moved away about 3.5 hrs, 20 years ago to get away from the rat race, including family dynamics. My mom played us girls against each other and continues today. She was so mean and abusive to my middle sister but much more to me my whole childhood. She lives next door to the youngest and they had agreed she would be the primary caregiver and then inherit the house. When I visit my son for 2 days then spend the afternoon with my mom take her out etc. on my way out. They're all highly offended by this but if I stay longer she starts in on me. I come when they call me if needed which I have every time. Once I said I was coming while she was in the hospital for constipation and I heard her say in the background, "I don't want her". One time I stayed with her when she fell. I came home with BP off the charts. I've had an "infarct with injury" since then and I don't want to go anymore. It's become a very toxic situation between me and my sister after we had finally become friends again.
This last time she was constipated and my sister demanded I come to the hospital immediately. I was out of town and it was at night. I said I couldn't but if anything got worse I would be right there. So I start getting a series of extremely hateful texts from sister for that. So I thought it over and said I would come once a month for a week to tend to her which was met with bitter hate and more accusations of not caring.
Last night I got a text at 10:30 pm asking if I had "copies" of mom's will. ???? Nope didn't do it.
I still always honor mom's special days but I don't want to spend much time with her. Just because she's old now doesn't erase the damage and horrible memories I have she did to me my whole life. I call her every Sunday but it's hell to visit and I don't want to. What would you do if you were me?
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Print this out in large, friendly letters and paste it on your fridge, bathroom mirror and any place else you will see it every day.
Your mother is a disturbed person; she foments ill-will between and among you all.
Let her go. Let your guilt go.
It's actually grief that you are feeling, I think. Grief that you didn't have a loving mother.
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I might also ask to what good purpose you call your mother every Sunday; but one boundary at a time, perhaps.
Look. I don't know your mother from a tile in my roof. I might like her very much, if I were to meet her, and think extremely highly of her qualities and accomplishments and virtues. I've no idea, of course I haven't.
But to you? - a witch. A malicious, sadistic, toxic witch. Who has the blind nerve to feel aggrieved that you don't volunteer more often for more kicking around.
And she appears to be holding your little sister, for whom you do care, to ransom. Your little sister is being used as a catspaw.
Can we clarify that part a bit, please - that recent constipation episode (not that I underestimate the pain and distress that constipation can cause, it is not to be brushed off lightly and especially not in frail elderly ladies) - what was your presence in the hospital, late at night, supposed to contribute to your mother's care and wellbeing? Besides the empty gesture of "I care so much that I turn out late at night to stand beside your bed and wring my hands pointlessly" that is.
What did your sister - not your mother - think was to be gained?
You know that YOU are the one who generates the guilt that makes YOU uncomfortable, right? So involving anything that anyone else says or does just complicates the already complicated family dynamic.
I’d plan a drop-in-on-the-way-to-somewhere-else visit now and then, continue the brief calls, but also off and on, unstick yourself from structured times, and see if that works any better.
Unless you want to attempt to establish better relationships with the sisters, focus on staying in the here and now with your mother. You know that you can’t change who she was before or, if you’re sure she’s lucid and cognitively intact, you can’t change her now either.
So consider your visits a psychological visit to the dentist, keep them short, then brush her nasty stuff off, and most of all NO GUILT.
It doesn't mean you don't care about your mom by not going to visit.
It means you are smart enough to know that it's not a good situation
for any involved. I would stick with the phone conversations.