Hello. I'm in my early thirties, and partnered for 4 years. I have a successful career and want to start a family soon. However, I don't know how I can manage to plan as my family situation is complicated.
My mother (60's) is in poor health, but has dedicated her retirement to caretaking for my grandmother (90's with a pacemaker); my grandmother always insisted on never leaving her home (refuses outside care) and my mother has poorly managed her finances and health. She moved in with my grandmother early to provide care. Now, my mother is refusing to sell the house and get my grandmother into care, because this is her retirement. However, she CANNOT care for my grandmother without it causing her serious distress and further complicating her own health issues. This all falls back on me, an only child.
I live 2 hours away, but try to come up once a month to check in and take care of basic things around the house as well as give my mother some respite. This is severely draining, distressing and depressing for me to go through alone. My partner refuses to come with me and I don't blame him because it's so depressing. Is this the rest of my life? How can I help, but avoid taking responsibility. I'm terrified of caring for my needy mother later in life.
Are you willing to be the one to break this generational chain of dysfunction in dedicating one's life to eldercare?
Does your mother have POA/HCPOA for your grandmother? Does your grandmother make her own decisions (legally)?
Have you ever discussed the situation with your mother?
Are you willing to extricate yourself from this situation?
As far as your partner not being willing to help, I'm not sure how I feel about that. Perhaps he knows you and thinks you will never extricate yourself, and he's only going to stay with you until you eventually move in with your mother and grandmother?
I agree.
OP, you mentioned your mom’s concussions, lack of logic/concentration, difficulty with even grocery lists.
She’s mentally not OK. She needs help, a caregiver. I hope you can hire someone.
Sure, you can, just not all at one time. Many have tried and failed miserably, or paid dearly with the mental and physical health, and ruined their marriages, their financial security, lost their freedom and happiness, and lost who they were as a person.
Mine did extra chores for our household while I went to help my LO.
But as my LO's care needs kept increasing, I had to reassess. The needs increased past what I could give, past what family could do.
The gaping holes of unmet care need that family could not fill had to be filled by non-family. Necessity forced change. Started with a cleaning person, then added on personal care, shopping, transport. Now my LO LOVES her ladies that help!
Both Mother & Grandmother's challenge will be to accept non-family help. It takes a village afterall... Time for them to look for for trustworthy villagers to help them in their home. (Or move into a retirement village). Either way: non-family help.
A little more on topic: Do try to plan ahead of a crisis, but don't let fear of what might happen later poison how you live today. (<advice that is easier given than followed, I realize)
Yes, because people post on this forum to get help with issues and/or vent not nearly as much to share the things that are going well.
I would also add that I believe it does matter that all children of parents do what they can to assist their parents as they get older. It should be done out of love and what they can actually do without giving up their entire lives. There are probably people who live 5 minutes away from their parents who could visit and help out around the house on a regular basis but choose to go have fun with their friends while their other sibling who lives an hour away visits almost daily to do chores. Does that matter? I think it does.
People also come here when they have experience in caregiving for an elderly client, spouse, or parent to give practical advice to those who are just beginning with it.
Or to give the ones who are out in the weeds with it and maybe need a kind word or some encouragement.
Even then caregiving is hard in situation that sounds as demanding as yours.
You are in the prime of your life and you only have it once. It should not be ruined as others have made poor decision.
You should not have to delay starting a family because of this.
Just because you are an only child doesn’t mean that everything falls back on you.
Also, I have absolutely no idea why people think that caregivers who have siblings are always able to receive help from their siblings.
Trust me, it doesn’t always work this way. In fact, it is rare for siblings help each other.
There are tons of threads telling stories of caregivers having siblings that never help. These caregivers may as well be an only child.
Only children don’t have to deal with the headaches of having siblings that they don’t get along with.
My neighbor has a brother and they fought like crazy growing up. But as adults they worked together to make sure their mother got well taken care of. In this particular case the one brother did not visit their mother as often as they could have, according to the other brother, but there were no other issues and certainly no animosity.
In my case, in less than a year of taking care of my father in conjunction with my brother resulted in a permanently ruined relationship.
Don't let your mother's poor life choices decide what course your life is going to take.
She is the one who decided to make bad financial decisions and squander her retirement on your grandmother. They will work something out. They will have to.
Your mother chose to do this. You did not. So it is not for you to put out her fires or jump through hoops because your grandmother is stubborn like pretty much every other elder on earth and refuses to even discuss moving.
Well, when your mother can't do for her anymore and can't take care of the house, she'll consider moving.
When the choices become either move somewhere cheaper, or go into a nursing home, she'll get reasonable.
Your mother wants to be the caregiver. That's on her, not you.
Correction. Your Mother can keep on doing the same - or make different choices.
Both have consequences. To her.
"This all falls back on me - an only child".
I'd re-write that: I am an only child.
Being 2 hours away negates you being a sitter, personal shopper or hands-on care. Friendly phone calls for support is what you can do from 2 hours away. Maybe an occasional visit.
M and GM have no money or assets beside the house, and they cannot pay for care without selling the house. You cannot continue to provide the level of current care, let alone when it increases. The doctor needs to know, and you need to acknowledge it to yourself and your partner.
only child or not, area attorney can offer solutions - it’s up to LO to take next steps
yesterday after roughest day yet with mom with ALV, Gave my OC permission to do what’s best for them to live a full life - I have LTC / life insurance for myself / hubby so we have a plan.
They couldn’t manage without you. Don’t enable this sad and impossible situation. You deserve the family you want. You deserve a relationship free of the strife that mom and grandma have already created in your life.
Mom, with all her issues, isn’t providing the care that grandma needs. She can’t.
You now need to act and talk like the grownup. Tell them in no uncertain terms that you can’t keep this up. Then help them find a place for them to go and be helped by others.
They both need to do end-of-life planning with a lawyer. The house needs to be sold and the proceeds used to pay for grandma’s care. Mom needs to make a plan for the rest of her life. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT ALLOW YOUR MOM TO MOVE IN WITH YOU. Or even near you. That would make your relationship sour in about half a minute, and forget about having kids.
Good luck.
You need to speak to her about the what if....what if grandma gets hospitalized and is not allowed to return home because of safety issues.
This is more of an education for both of you. I feel, like others that you get to live your own life in your own way
Your mom has decided to care for your grandmother.
I cared for my mother in our home. Our shared similarities end there. Never in a million years did I expect my daughters to take on any of the responsibilities of caregiving.
My mom appreciated her granddaughters as her grandchildren and they appreciated her as their grandmother. There was never any other expectations of them from me or my mother.
Please explain to your mother that you cannot possibly be in two places at one time and help her out when needed because you have your own life to live.
She will have to figure this situation out on her own. Why don’t you tell your mom about this site and see if she would like to hear ideas or suggestions from the forum?
Best wishes to you and your family.
Me and my brother attempted caregiving but when it got to daily caregiving for several hours a day it quickly totally destroyed our relationship forever. Both our lifestyles and plans were negatively impacted.
If it were me I would discuss with both of them the terrific benefits of assisted living. I didn't think there were any at all but after my father went to assisted living I can tell you where he is is very similar to an apartment complex but with all of his needs cared for. It's sort of like living at home with butler service! He can do everything and more than what he could do when living at home. Yesterday he went to a department store for clothing and had dinner at a restaurant in town, just like he's has done for years.
No one lives forever so I believe it's important to be in touch regularly with your loved ones and do what you do out of love. If that means moving and caregiving that may be right for a time. Or not. I moved to be near my father and it was the right thing for me to do. Now that he's in assisted living I can do what I want knowing he's in the best place he can be. Much better than I could ever provide.
You are going to have to look at it this way--many people don't have children to fall back on. Had you not been born your Mom would have now to make her own way in life, using what state and federal benefits she can.
Staying, doing care, is enabling all of these bad decisions. We I you and your soon to be husband, planning a family, I would plan first a move far away from your mother and grandmother. Your mother is only in her 60s. My daughter's age. She has a good two decades left to her AT THE LEAST. Will you then, sacrifice your entire love, life and family upon the altar, as she has ruined hers? Is she not lesson enough before your very eyes.
Only you can make choices for yourself. I would move miles away were it me, after supplying all the numbers for supportive agencies I could find to your Mom.
I know how cruel this sounds. But you have one life. I am 81. It curdles my blood to think that any child of mine (as I said, daughter is 61) would give up the best years of her life for me. And to think of it for my grandson? Dreadful! And they both know that it is not expected of them, nor would it be accepted from them.
I wish you the best of luck. This decision is in the hands of you and your boyfriend. Only you can make it. It will not be without tears and grieving. Not everything can be fixed.
I don't know what the best case scenario is. But there have already been a couple of situations with my mom in the hospital and no one (not my uncle - or aunt) came to care for my grandmother. Instead an elderly neighbour came, and someone eventually called me to come take over.
I don't even drive! I don't know how to get my mom to start planning for their future, because she can barely manage a grocery list, or the dishes.
I'm becoming very hopeless about the situation tbh.
My MIL fell once. She was able to crawl over to the sofa and pull herself up, but she called us because she was obviously frightened.
I tried to take up her throw rug that she slipped on and she wouldn’t let me.
The next time she fell, DH went over there and since she didn’t want him to call the fire department, he tried to pick her up (200 pounds). Instead of helping him, she picked up her feet as if she was a child and all of that caused him to throw his back out.
You know what we do now? We call the fire department and send them over there. We don’t let her know we are doing that— they just show up and help.
My point is… you have to course correct when it doesn’t work anymore. DH cannot afford to lose work and harm himself because she is belligerent.
You don’t drive. You can’t be the one people call when a crisis happens.
Unfortunately what happens in a situation like this is you wait until some event forces a resolution to the care crisis.
Are you POA for your mom?
If so if something happens to her you can tell the Social Worker and or the Discharge Planner that she is not safe at home, she can not care for herself or her mother. If they contact you you must be adamant that you are in no position to care for either of them. You must stress that to discharge your mother to her home would be unsafe.
If something happens to your grandma I am presuming that your mother is her POA so there is not much you can say but you can voice your opinion and if mom insists that she can care for her mother there is not much you can do.
You need to establish boundaries and stick to them. And that can be very difficult.
You have to consciously think about what you plan to do, how to do it and implement it.
You are too young to put your life on the back burner.
Make a plan now.
What do you want to do?