Advice please. So confused regarding the relationship with my mom.

You give no background as to what caused this estrangement to begin with? But she IS obviously reaching out to you by text, twice now, and it sounds like you DO want to see her. So why not go? Like my husband tells his adult kids who are always fighting with one another, "don't let the next time you talk to one another be at my funeral." Don't wait until your mother's funeral to see her. Unless she's done something unspeakable to you, why not see if making up is possible?

Good luck to you.

I can’t remember your old posts which say why you are estranged, but here goes:

You need to decide whether you want to be estranged or whether you would prefer to make up – a little bit, or totally. If you would prefer to be on reasonable terms, respond to your mother. She is making an effort. If you reject it, you may not get another one for a very long time.

You may prefer to ‘talk about issues’. She doesn’t, and you know it. It is genuinely hard to ‘talk about issues’ without bringing them back – especially if you are sure you were right and what you want is an apology. So decide what is most important to you – your relationship, or being right.

I’ve been through this recently. I was estranged from my daughter and the grandchildren for 8 years. I reached out to her with new information about a genetic medical problem I had handed down to her. I am very glad to be on good terms now, but we still haven’t talked about ‘what went wrong’. It’s too painful. Think carefully.

Do what will give you the most peace in the long run. None of us can know what that is, it’s in your heart and soul

During your estragement did you have time to think this all through. Has Mom always been demanding and manipulative? If so, then you now need to set boundries. So she gets mad when you don't tell her exactly when u will be back. Its not in her life all the way or out of it all the way. There can be a mid ground if you set YOURSELF boundries. You live far enough away not to be able to be at her beck and call. Your brother wanted POA so now he has it and all the responsibility that goes with it. Mom needs something, he does it or pays someone to donit out of Moms money.

If you cannot set boundaries, then stay estranged. If you think that taking Mom to her luncheon will start something you can't handle, that she will expect more, than don't do it. I am sure she can find a ride.

See the word is EXPECT. Just because someone expects something out of us does not mean we have to do it. Thats their expectation not our obligation. So when Mom says "when are you coming back" just say "I am not really sure Mom". If she gets mad she gets mad. Your life does not belong to her. When u married, DH became your #1.

Be the better person and be kind. (Assuming) she is old enough to have memory issues and she may be very stubborn. I'm kindly telling you: your situation is not unique.
You will regret the times with her you may have missed.
So take her, enjoy the day.
And when it's done, tell her you enjoyed the time with her.
Ttomorrow is not guaranteed.
This is coming from a good place.
Best of luck!!!

It really depends on estrangement.
Some could be overcome, some take long time and space.
If you really feel you want to talk or you both agree it will be good to talk, suggest some other venue and do not offer a ride. There is uber, taxis.

It’s possible that your mother is indeed playing a game to get at you. If it's a game, the roles will probably swap again.

However it’s also possible that she didn’t really want to go into the AL, just went along with what you were pushing. The “beautiful AL with an ocean view” where you “decorated her apartment fit for a princess” might have seemed more about you than about her. That’s consistent with ““don’t pat yourself on the back”, however much it annoyed you. Perhaps brother is an evil tightwad, or perhaps he listened better. Anyway, given a chance, she walked out.

The issue is still whether you want to stay estranged from your mother, whatever her faults. It sounds as though she doesn't regret her choice, and you still resent it.

The first obvious point is that we are only hearing one side of this story. OP says bitterly “What it boils down to is you can’t do what you think is best for your parents. You have to do what they want”. Wow – is that a new thought? If they are legally competent, yes it does boil down to that.

Mom “mom wanted to stay home, watch tv, chain smoke, and wait for one of us to take her out”. Daughter “made it my full time job making sure she was taken care of like Queen Elizabeth”.

My own difficult daughter was heavily into ‘looking good’, and would probably also say that I have ‘plenty of money’ to do it. Her taste also probably runs to decorating “fit for a princess”, although I don’t think she goes quite so much on royalty. I’m probably not such a slag as M, and I don’t smoke, but I can relate to not being impressed with some of this. Perhaps it’s understandable that M turned, “after everything I had done”. And we don’t know what snarky comments OP made to M, just what M said to her.

The second obvious point is that OP says “I feel so torn…. I don't know what to do”. Overwhelming support to walk away because it’s all manipulative M’s fault doesn’t really help. Estrangement is not a lot of fun, and I can assure you that it doesn’t get better after several years.

Baby steps might help here. Even a quick ‘thank you’ for the birthday greetings might have been appropriate?

PS The classic book on psych games is “The Games People Play” by Eric Berne, which by co-incidence I just unpacked and read again. It’s not quite the same line as the pop song that was based on it and also called “The Games People Play”, but it remains an interesting read.

Family dynamics can become very complex. Mothers and daughters and fathers and sons…throw siblings in the mix and it’s a mess at times!

My husband always had a complicated relationship with his father. It became better after my husband moved out of the house to attend his university.

His dad was kind to me. I was very close to my mother in law. She was a lovely woman.

Then, when my mother in law became sick with non Hodgkin’s lymphoma we saw a change in him, sadly for the worst.

He simply couldn’t deal with my mother in law’s illness and had an affair while his wife was going through chemotherapy. It was awful.

He started treating the entire family horribly due to his inability to cope.

After my mother in law died he moved this woman into his home a couple of weeks after my mother in law died.

He wanted to marry her. She had no intention of marrying him. She wanted to leave her money from her first husband to her children. She didn’t want to do a prenup. She said that my father in law had enough money to pay for everything.

We had no objection to him finding love again but the timing stunk. He instructed all of us to never speak about my mother in law, so we weren’t able to grieve as a family.

The new woman didn’t allow us to have a chance to get to know her. She wanted to become a mother to us and a grandmother to our daughter. She was a stranger to us.

My oldest daughter was extremely close to my mother in law and missed her terribly. She was close to my father in law as well.

None of us knew anything about this new woman, other than she knew my father in law when she was young and went to the same university as my father in law.

I became pregnant with our youngest daughter. My father in law and his lady friend did come to the hospital to see her.

Then the woman insisted that my father in law had no contact with us or she would leave him.

She basically emotionally blackmailed my father in law when he was vulnerable. She knew that he didn’t want to be alone.

She saw us as a threat to her when we only wanted time to grieve our loss and have the chance to get to know this new woman. She was upset because we didn’t accept her immediately. She felt rejected.

My father in law told us that he didn’t want to be alone, so he threw his son, grandchildren and me away like yesterday’s garbage.

She talked him into moving several states away. My kids didn’t understand why their grandpa abandoned them. My youngest daughter doesn’t even remember her grandpa.

My husband felt like his dad went off the deep end and said that my dad was more of a dad to him than his own dad.

After his lady friend died at age 96 and he was 98, he moved back to Louisiana. He called my husband and said that he missed him and asked if he could visit him in his assisted living facility.

My husband wasn’t sure how he felt. Our daughters and I told him that we supported his decision no matter what he decided. Well, Covid hit and they weren’t allowing visitors. He told his dad that he loved him and that was that. My father in law died during Covid.

No one can predict what will happen in their future. Everyone handles difficult circumstances differently. Nevertheless, it’s sad, it’s frustrating and it’s challenging.

As Alva always says, “Not everything can be fixed!” There is a book that she often recommends. I wish I could remember the title and author.

Beatty, this is in reply to your last post about “the swoop into the house, see the situation was not OK, Mom couldn't self-care ...transfer to AL”. You say “Seen as a rescue? Or interfering? Depends on your viewpoint”.

My 'viewpoint' is that immediately after F’s death is the time to help, not the time to ‘swoop’. If the answer is a “transfer to AL”, M was actually capable of self-care with the limited help provided by AL. Other options were possible.

We have many posts from parents who want to control their children. This one comes across to me as a daughter who would like to control her mother. OP's intentions may be fine, but they are not appreciated at all, and this is very upsetting for OP. OP wants to talk about it - but perhaps mostly wants to push her point some more and get an apology. Surely M's feelings are clear by now?

There is a site for parents who have been rejected by children, rejectedparents.net Some of the parents have been rejected because they didn't live up to the status that their children expected - and the author of the book it's founded on had the same experience when her son 'married above him'. It’s not really the point here, but it might be interesting for OP to look at.