Giving up to die. How can I begin to accept that she doesn't want to live any longer?

First of all, let's get rid of the idea that mom is selfish. She doesn't deserve that at the end of her life when her body is failing her and she's lost her will to live.

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.

At the EOL, people tend to turn inwards. They see only what's right in front of them, feel only the pain that they have, see only the 'end' and actively wish for it.

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.

You are understandably grieving the mom you love. However it's not about you, it's about her and her wishes.
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.

Your Mom has had strokes. They do damage to the brain. And like said diabetes does a number on the body. Since I am 73, 78 still seems young to me. I would say Mom is willing herself to die. She is tired. It probably hard for her just to get up in the morning. My Mom died at 89 from Dementia. I did not want to lose her but also did not want her living the rest of her life with no quality of life. Your Mom is ready to go, allow it. Hold her hand and tell her thats its OK that she is ready. That you love her and u will miss her. This is not about u, its about Mom.

Caroline, you may need counseling now to accept that your Mother does not wish to go on. Please, for her sake, do her the honor of supporting her now in her journey to where we are all headed, the end of our lives.

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.

Respect your mother's wishes and allow her to die on HER terms! To call her "selfish" when she's totally exhausted from " strokes in 2022, 1 in 2020, she has COPD, Diabetes without Complications, CKD Stage 4, and Dementia" is to invalidate her situation and her feelings 100%. You're expecting to "motivate" a seriously ill elder to continue living a life of misery bc YOU are not ready to acknowledge her suffering.

I suggest you ask hospice for some counseling for yourself in an effort to accept this loss.

God bless and good luck.

Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry. Your mom is dying, and it sounds like she is entering the transition period possibly.

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.

I have a story…. We have family friends and their 32 year old son had kidney cancer, which he had fought for a few years with very aggressive measures (vena cava resection which is crazy honestly but worth it for such a young person).

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.

Even if you take away ALL her ailments except dementia (and any of them alone is enough to kill someone), you're talking about trying to motivate a person with DEMENTIA to stay alive. You literally can't do that with a dementia patient. Their brains don't work like that, and they don't respond to logic and reason, even if there isn't any there, like in this case.

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.

Your mother has no motivation to live, that is her choice, she is in control of her life, you are not.

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!