Almost 2 years ago my mother had 2 heart attacks and both times she ended up in comas. The last heart attack she was without oxygen for a long enough time that when she woke up from the coma she incurred an anoxic brain injury. Now she can’t take care of herself at all. From the hospital the second time she was placed in a care facility. I would go and visit her to check on her and I was trying to team up with most of my 10 siblings to get her endeavors in order because she no longer could. Nobody wanted to help but most of them lived with her. During my visits to the care facility, my mother would be super drugged up to the point she couldn’t remember who came to visit her. She fell on her butt a few times trying to get out of bed. During the times where she was coherent enough to explain things to me, she said they took forever to change her or get her to the bathroom so she tried to do it herself and that’s how she fell. I was greatly concerned I even shared my concerns with my siblings. Okay so, she was in the nursing facility for about 7months. Her mother in law came to visit her one day and saw she wasn’t looking so well, so the facility sent her to the hospital. I am the oldest out of 11 of my mother’s children. I have the most stable and secure living. I have two teens and I have been married for 15 years, together with my husband a total of 17 years. We have not always had the best marriage but we manage to last as long as we have. I didn’t grow up with my mother. I grew up in foster care. Me and 5 of my other siblings. Without me going into full details, I had a really rough childhood. I reunited with my mother when I was 18 years old and everything I was told it would be it wasn’t. Over the years prior to her being sick there has been so many other issues between childhood trauma with my mother and my siblings. I knew when she had her first heart attack that someone was going to have to step up to the plate and be responsible for her. At the time she had two teens who hadn’t yet turned 18 years old and they didn’t have the best life growing up with her to be equipped to go out into the world on their own. She lived off section 8 with no consistent job, no bank account with savings and her medical insurance through the welfare system. So, she gets moved to a temporary rehabilitation center after the last trip to the hospital. She didn’t want to go back to the facility that was covered under her insurance. Time wound down and the social worker at the facility asked me if I had a place for her because her insurance didn’t approve of her staying any longer. During the time of her first heart attack, I had been talking with my husband about her possibly coming to stay with us. He agreed with stipulations. My two siblings could not come. My husband is not fond of my family at all because over the years he has seen how I’ve been treated. It’s been a year since she’s been with us. I turned my living room into her bedroom. I take care of all of her business, take her to doctor’s appointments, I am her care giver and POA. I do everything for her, my 2 teens help me as well. I don’t ask my husband to do anything. My husband does not want her here at all. To the point he’s threatening to leave. He said he wants his family but he doesn’t want her here and he’s tried but he can’t shake how he feels. In my mind, I feel like he might as well leave because if he makes me choose I will hate him and our marriage will never be the same. I talked to him about her coming numerous of times. If he didn’t want her to come he should have told me and not have said yes and a year later put me in this position to have to choose. I don’t hold my past against her. I think about when I get older, if I got sick, I would hope someone wouldn’t hold my mistakes against me and have a heart to care for me if I needed. I have forgiven her and choose to honor her because that’s what the Bible tells me. I don’t want to lose my family for caring for my mom.
You aren't responsible for your Mother's happiness. It totally stinks that she's having bad health problems. Find as good a facility for her as you can. Be a vigilant advocate for her. But preserve your marriage.
About people taking care of you when you get old, don't have any expectations. Make your own plans for your elder years. Don't expect your children to take care of you when you get to old age.
You confused the biblical principle of honoring your mother. I think what you are looking for is approval. You are showing her that you are willing to throw out your immediate family you created with your husband and children in the trash to have a relationship with her. If she was in her right mind and health, you would be a second or third thought. A real parent would not allow you to wreck your own life to take care of theirs.
My advice; honor your marriage and the children you created with your husband.
Your husband sees how your family leeches off others and look to others to carry their weight when they run out of options which is other folks who are willing to cover the slack or government subsidies. Proper education and job training courses is where to start.
Save your marriage before it is nothing left to salvage. Start placement for your mother like yesterday.
So to say that you owe her is not true.
You do owe your own children, however. They should be engaging in after school stuff with friends, not cleaning grandmas depends. And you should be working to ensure not only their future, but yours.
Being that her last children were minors themselves, she sounds like she’s at most about 60. She could go on for years while you lose income not working and your kids lose the last bit of their childhood while potentially your husband leaves you.
Do you really want to choose living in some small apartment with her and split custody with your own children? Because that doesn’t sound like the most stable arrangement for anyone including mom.
You seem to have found it easier to ‘forgive’ your mother for her appalling behavior, in spite of how she ruined eleven children’s lives. Forgive your husband for over-estimating the behavior that he could put up with. Forgive your husband for changing his views.
You decided that “someone was going to have to step up to the plate and be responsible for her”. That ‘someone’ should be the State system, just like it was the State system that stepped up for her 11 children. Don’t ruin your own life, your marriage and your own children, just because you can’t walk away from your regrets about your mother's bad behavior.
Live for the future of the people who love and need you NOW, not to make up for the past mistakes of others.
"Most adults are still living for the approval of their parents. Trying to get the love they didn't get as children. Living life for someone else leads to one path: regret. The most important skill to develop as an adult is the ability to disappoint."
@the.holistic.psychologist
Honor your children and your husband now. And leave mother to one of the other 10 children she had, or to a better Skilled Nursing facility than the one she was at. Honor the woman who gave birth to you by showing her respect and making sure she's safe, either in home or in managed care. Nowhere is it written that YOU must do hands on care and I think you know that. You just want your DH to be on board with a situation he finds untenable.
My issue is…prior to me bringing my mother to our home…I discussed this with my husband several times. Informing him on how big the task would be and letting him know it may get bigger than what I have an idea of. I did express to him if he said NO, I would be okay with it. He said yes, she could come, with the stipulation that my two minor siblings would have to find someone else to live with. My brother turned 18 years old and ended getting a job and living with his gf. My 17 year old sister lives with one of our siblings.
like I expressed to my husband; If he doesn’t want her here. No, I wouldn’t be happy with it. But I at least need time to get her endeavors in order to find her a better care facility. He wants her out NOW. That is what bothers me. Because almost every single day I have to relive the trauma from my childhood through my husbands rants when I have had counseling, chose to forgive my mother and move forward. We are in marriage counseling. So we can happily make it through another 15 years, if possible. Yes, we have marital issues.
In my mind…which is why I am here…if he knew he did not want her to come here. He should have said no from the beginning. We had been having this same discussion since her first heart attack and during the 7 months she was in the care facility. He never changed his mind. Until a year later a few months ago. Now I’m placed in a position where I don’t know what else to do. That is what makes me say, If I have to choose between my mother and my husband I will hate him. Because to send her back to the only facility that her current insurance accepts. If she dies, and ends up in worse health. I will strongly feel some way about that. Since my mother has lived with us, her health has improved. She has not had a heart attack, had to go to the emergency room and I have rehabilitated her to the point of at least using the commode on her own.
I don't completely believe his feelings are coming strictly from him not wanting her here. I believe his feelings are also coming from the place in his heart where he wants a better relationship with his mother. That’s something he chooses to not speak to our therapists about. It has to be when he is ready. But he has said over and over, it makes him feel some type of way that my mother is here after everything she’s down and not done and I’m choosing to take care of her when he can’t even get a phone call or answered phone call from his mother.
We have made plans to move into a bigger home. For more privacy and we both agreed on it and he’s said numerous of times that it would make him feel better about it. But he still chooses to rant almost every day or every other day about her being here and he wants her gone.
I do not slave my children to help me care for my mother. I always put their studies and recreational activities before asking them for help.
When I do ask them for help…it is either because I am in the middle of cooking meals for my family, working on my business fulfilling orders, or because I’m tired and just need the extra help. I also pay them for their services. At the same time, I can’t choose my family. This is their grandmother. My daughter is very close to my mother, her grandmother. There are times I have to pull her off the couch in the room of my mother and get her in her own bed because she wants to sleep with her grandmother.
At the end of the day…I already made my choice and that was my husband. I married him. There is so much more to this story and how she ended up in our home because our home was not my first choice. But people made decisions without doing their research. Put me in a position to take over and the social worker from the temporary facility said she heeded somewhere
It's my opinion that "therapists" who are licensed and trained therapists but are firstly ruled by their religious beliefs and opinions do NOT make the best therapists. The cards are stacked against you if you go into religious based therapy.
Now, however, if you run your own life that way, with religion coming FIRST and FOREMOST and for the most part the ONLY question? Then I wouldn't bother with the therapy. If you believe you are religiously bound to care for your mother you have your answer fight there. There is utterly no point then to asking either us or any therapist what they think. It simply loses relevancy.
As I said, this is YOUR DECISION. No Forum can or should advise you how to act. No one should date go against what your own personal moral code and decision is. I back your decision for yourself 1,000%. I trust you to weigh properly your OBLIGATION to leave your parents and cleave unto your (The phrase "cleave unto thy husband" is from the Bible, Genesis 2:24. It says "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh".
Pretty much, anyone can find something in the bible to direct you to do one thing or another, and then read a bit further and find something to tell you to do the opposite. It is the nature of life. Confusion, that is.
Make your own decision best you can, and that's that. Asking a bunch of strangers will simple add to your confusion. As an atheist I don't measure my limitations by the advice of any book or person; I have learned to recognize and honor my own limitations.
If your husband wrote into us instead of you writing into to us. Asking us what he should do, most on here would tell him, if he can't get his wife to put mom in a facility then he should leave. We would tell him he has to think of his own mental health and more importantly the mental health of his children and the tension in your home is not healthy for them
I understand why you are doing what you are doing, but that doesn't make it the right decision. Your mom all ready ruined your childhood, don't let her ruin your children's child hood.
I strongly advise you today right now, give your husband a huge hug, tell him , thank you for putting up with mom the last 2 years, then get on the phone and get your mom placed.
You say you are doing this because of the Bible, I suspect there is more to it. As children we need are mothers love, you never had that, and your still understandably still looking for that.
So after you hug your husband, make your calls, also if you are not please get some counseling. You have had so much damage done to you.
Please keep in touch, and let us know how things are going.
My very best wishes to you.
like I expressed to my husband; If he doesn’t want her here. No, I wouldn’t be happy with it. But I at least need time to get her endeavors in order to find her a better care facility. He wants her out NOW. That is what bothers me. Because almost every single day I have to relive the trauma from my childhood through my husbands rants when I have had counseling, chose to forgive my mother and move forward. We are in marriage counseling. So we can happily make it through another 15 years, if possible. Yes, we have marital issues.
In my mind…which is why I am here…if he knew he did not want her to come here. He should have said no from the beginning. We had been having this same discussion since her first heart attack and during the 7 months she was in the care facility. He never changed his mind. Until a year later a few months ago. Now I’m placed in a position where I don’t know what else to do. That is what makes me say, If I have to choose between my mother and my husband I will hate him. Because to send her back to the only facility that her current insurance accepts. If she dies, and ends up in worse health. I will strongly feel some way about that. Since my mother has lived with us, her health has improved. She has not had a heart attack, had to go to the emergency room and I have rehabilitated her to the point of at least using the commode on her own.
I don't completely believe his feelings are coming strictly from him not wanting her here. I believe his feelings are also coming from the place in his heart where he wants a better relationship with his mother. That’s something he chooses to not speak to our therapists about. It has to be when he is ready. But he has said over and over, it makes him feel some type of way that my mother is here after everything she’s down and not done and I’m choosing to take care of her when he can’t even get a phone call or answered phone call from his mother.
We have made plans to move into a bigger home. For more privacy and we both agreed on it and he’s said numerous of times that it would make him feel better about it. But he still chooses to rant almost every day or every other day about her being here and he wants her gone.
I do not slave my children to help me care for my mother. I always put their studies and recreational activities before asking them for help.
When I do ask them for help…it is either because I am in the middle of cooking meals for my family, working on my business fulfilling orders, or because I’m tired and just need the extra help. I also pay them for their services. At the same time, I can’t choose my family. This is their grandmother. My daughter is very close to my mother, her grandmother. There are times I have to pull her off the couch in the room of my mother and get her in her own bed because she wants to sleep with her grandmother.
At the end of the day…K already made my choice and that was my husband. I married him. There is so much more to this story and how she ended up in our home because our home was not my first choice. But people made decisions without doing their research. Put me in a position to take over and the social worker from the temporary facility said she heeded somewhere to go immediately or they would place her back in the same care facility.
Turning a living room into a bedroom so you can care for this person......
Having your children help you care for their grandmother........(a woman that really is not a "mother" to you)
You say when you get older..if you got sick you would hope someone would not hold your mistakes against you and have the heart to care for you...
Do you want YOUR children, or one of your kids to give up their marriage, their family to care for you even if it means animosity that their spouse will have for the situation?
Caring for someone does not mean that you personally have to give up your life to care for them.
Caring for someone means that you see to it that they get the care that they need.
Can mom afford caregivers? Even a few hours can make a difference.
Have you searched organizations that can provide help? Your local Senior Service Center, Area Agency on Aging, is she due any Social Security benefits from her marriage? Was her husband a Veteran? if so she may be entitled to Aid and Attendance.
You can not do this alone as you well know, and it is not fair to make grandma your kids responsibility.
You say you chose to honor her because that is what the bible says.. How about this. (just switch gender roles)
Matthew 19:5 "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.
and this
Genesis 2:24 "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh."
If Mom has no money, then find a nice facility that takes Medicaid. You can be her advocate. You can be there for her without doing the physical caring. If she ends up in the hospital, tell the SW you can no longer care for her. Then have her transferred from the hospital to LTC. Rehab even easier because they may have LTC attached to them. Its just transitioning her to the LTC side.
"they took forever to change her or get her to the bathroom"
Your Mom probably now suffers from Dementia. She probably has no conception of time. Forever for her may only be a few minutes. Aides have other residents they care for.
You will burn out. Your time should be for you DH and your children. Do you really want to miss their milestones. First date, first prom, getting rewards. You owe your children you don't owe your mother.
like I expressed to my husband; If he doesn’t want her here. No, I wouldn’t be happy with it. But I at least need time to get her endeavors in order to find her a better care facility. He wants her out NOW. That is what bothers me. Because almost every single day I have to relive the trauma from my childhood through my husbands rants when I have had counseling, chose to forgive my mother and move forward. We are in marriage counseling. So we can happily make it through another 15 years, if possible. Yes, we have marital issues.
In my mind…which is why I am here…if he knew he did not want her to come here. He should have said no from the beginning. We had been having this same discussion since her first heart attack and during the 7 months she was in the care facility. He never changed his mind. Until a year later a few months ago. Now I’m placed in a position where I don’t know what else to do. That is what makes me say, If I have to choose between my mother and my husband I will hate him. Because to send her back to the only facility that her current insurance accepts. If she dies, and ends up in worse health. I will strongly feel some way about that. Since my mother has lived with us, her health has improved. She has not had a heart attack, had to go to the emergency room and I have rehabilitated her to the point of at least using the commode on her own.
I don't completely believe his feelings are coming strictly from him not wanting her here. I believe his feelings are also coming from the place in his heart where he wants a better relationship with his mother. That’s something he chooses to not speak to our therapists about. It has to be when he is ready. But he has said over and over, it makes him feel some type of way that my mother is here after everything she’s down and not done and I’m choosing to take care of her when he can’t even get a phone call or answered phone call from his mother.
We have made plans to move into a bigger home. For more privacy and we both agreed on it and he’s said numerous of times that it would make him feel better about it. But he still chooses to rant almost every day or every other day about her being here and he wants her gone.
I do not slave my children to help me care for my mother. I always put their studies and recreational activities before asking them for help.
When I do ask them for help…it is either because I am in the middle of cooking meals for my family, working on my business fulfilling orders, or because I’m tired and just need the extra help. I also pay them for their services. At the same time, I can’t choose my family. This is their grandmother. My daughter is very close to my mother, her grandmother. There are times I have to pull her off the couch in the room of my mother and get her in her own bed because she wants to sleep with her grandmother.
At the end of the day…K already made my choice and that was my husband. I married him. There is so much more to this story and how she ended up in our home because our home was not my first choice. But people made decisions without doing their research. Put me in a position to take over and the social worker from the temporary facility said she heeded somewhere to go immediately or they would place her back in the same care facility.
Here's what you can look forward to as you age with no husband:
No one to protect you, nourish your dreams, no one to hold you when you're despairing over a death, a job loss, a car accident that totaled your vehicle. No one to cheer you up when you're sad, vacation with, or accompany to family events such as the graduation of your beautiful children that you raised together. (Not that all marriages end up being perfect, but that's another problem.)
"I think about when I get older, if I got sick, I would hope someone wouldn’t hold my mistakes against me and have a heart to care for me if I needed."
That will be a husband, not your mom.
Take the husband over the mom any day!
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