Hello everybody,
I’ve been reading your posts and feeling for the first time that perhaps I’m alone in this and that what has been happening with my mum is common.
Here’s our story.
My mum will be 91 next month. She was widowed when she was in her fifties and when she was sixty, she sold her business and her home and moved to France. She has lived here for 30 years, has had a good life and been happy.
I’m her daughter, 56, divorced and have two children at university. Normally, I live in Scotland.
About seven years ago, I recognised that my mum was finding the winters in France hard going by herself and started inviting her to stay with me in Edinburgh for the coldest months.
She would arrive in November and stay until April. As the years passed I began to notice small changes in her ability to cope with life’s more pressing issues – keeping on top of her bills and so on – and would help when help was needed. I put this down to advancing age.
In the summer of 2019, I had to fly her back to the UK as in quick succession she wrote off her car and then found she couldn’t cope at all when a heatwave hit. She has lived with me ever since.
As it was clear that she could no longer live alone and in January 2020, I brought her with me to France with the aim of getting her house sold and for her to use the money to buy a sheltered flat near me in Edinburgh.
I found her house in a state. I’d had no idea how much she’d neglected maintenance and I realised that for her to sell it at all, I would have to bring it up to scratch. Fortunately, I have skills.
That was February 2020. I’d only intended to us to stay for a maximum of three months. Then the pandemic hit and it was clear that if I were to try and travel with a fragile 89-year-old it was likely to be a death sentence for her. So, we stayed put, I set about repairing the house and we went through the various lockdowns.
My mum was clearly becoming much more difficult, contrary, rude and ungrateful, but I put it down to the stress of lockdown, even though we were in a safe area and with our own woods and garden to walk in. However, by the summer it was clear that there was a lot more going on than just a grumpy old lady.
From the spring of this year, the deterioration has accelerated. She has forgotten her French. She has become increasingly forgetful and uncharacteristically spiteful and mean. I have never known her say anything like the horrendously hurtful stuff that is now her daily output. She responds to any frustration with furious anger. On a couple of occasions, she has tried to hit me.
I recently discovered that she has been phoning friends and family telling them awful stories centred on me. None of what she says is in any way true, but they follow a theme that I’m after her money, that I abuse her, that I neglect her and that I am a monster. She also tells people variously that I’m a mess/failure because I’m here looking after her. Oh the irony!
The reality is that I have given up the past two years to care for her. I have repaired her house and got it sold for 30k over the valuation (we will move in January). I cook, clean, wash, drive, shop, garden, wash her, rescue her when she gets stuck in the bath and change her bedclothes. I do her banking and pay her bills. I have sorted out the various catastrophes that had arisen from her getting her finances and other affairs in a muddle. I translate, I monitor her health and act on her medical needs. I talk to her, listen to her stories and her worries. I take her out for jaunts, take her for walks, take her to meet friends.
In the meantime, I’ve been unable to get back to the UK myself because it is unsafe to leave her alone, she can’t travel and there is nobody else to look after her. I have a brother. He has always been a pig and unsurprisingly he refuses to help look after her in any way.
I haven’t been able to see my children, to go back to work or have even a day off. Financially, it has cost me ten and tens of thousands to be here and care for her. And dare I say that nobody who knows me would ever consider me a mess or a failure.
Two weeks ago, a friend of mine from the UK was finally able to come and stay. Hurrah! My friend knows my mum very well but hadn’t seen her in two years. She has told me that she is shocked by the changes in my mum’s behaviour and that my fears are grounded and my mother’s complaints are utterly baseless and delusional. I know that, of course, but it is a relief to hear it from someone else.
It’s not pleasant to live through being painted as a super-villain by your own mother and frankly it’s hard to know how I find the time to be so wicked on so many levels and yet still neglectful, but it seems I’m a woman of many talents.
I know it’s the illness and not her. I see how she struggles to make sense of what is happening around her as she tries to fit what she can remember around what she cannot. It is desperately, desperately sad.
The other evening, I had just sat down to join her by the TV when it suddenly began to rain. I told her I was going to bring the washing in and ran out to the garden. When I came back, she asked me who had been on the phone. Nobody, I said. The phone hasn’t rung. I went down to take the washing in because it was raining.
Why do you always tell these lies, she said. Why can’t you just tell me who was on the phone?
So, I asked her if the phone – which was right next to her - had rung? No, it hadn’t, she said. I asked her if the garden outside looked wet? Yes, it did, she agreed.
So perhaps I’d just been getting the washing in after all?
She got very angry and started shouting. Why do you lie to me and confuse me all the time? You’re such a liar … and so on.
Almost every day is like this now. I’m sure it is familiar territory for many of you.
I am certain that the huge changes in my mum’s personality, the memory losses and the tantrums all point in one direction – that she has dementia. It is time to get a diagnosis. It’s not going to be easy as she has no insight into what is happening to her and a hefty degree of paranoia.
I’ve already begun the process of getting social services involved. France has a really good support structure for elderly people and their carers. It will mean that I will be able to get some respite.
This is a journey that I have dreaded. It won’t get easier and we all know how it ends. When I think about it, I feel that my mum – the person who I love – has already slipped away. I feel that as grief. She feels it as anger and confusion. It’s a *******, isn’t it?
Kathy
I’ve been reading your posts and feeling for the first time that perhaps I’m alone in this and that what has been happening with my mum is common.
Here’s our story.
My mum will be 91 next month. She was widowed when she was in her fifties and when she was sixty, she sold her business and her home and moved to France. She has lived here for 30 years, has had a good life and been happy.
I’m her daughter, 56, divorced and have two children at university. Normally, I live in Scotland.
About seven years ago, I recognised that my mum was finding the winters in France hard going by herself and started inviting her to stay with me in Edinburgh for the coldest months.
She would arrive in November and stay until April. As the years passed I began to notice small changes in her ability to cope with life’s more pressing issues – keeping on top of her bills and so on – and would help when help was needed. I put this down to advancing age.
In the summer of 2019, I had to fly her back to the UK as in quick succession she wrote off her car and then found she couldn’t cope at all when a heatwave hit. She has lived with me ever since.
As it was clear that she could no longer live alone and in January 2020, I brought her with me to France with the aim of getting her house sold and for her to use the money to buy a sheltered flat near me in Edinburgh.
I found her house in a state. I’d had no idea how much she’d neglected maintenance and I realised that for her to sell it at all, I would have to bring it up to scratch. Fortunately, I have skills.
That was February 2020. I’d only intended to us to stay for a maximum of three months. Then the pandemic hit and it was clear that if I were to try and travel with a fragile 89-year-old it was likely to be a death sentence for her. So, we stayed put, I set about repairing the house and we went through the various lockdowns.
My mum was clearly becoming much more difficult, contrary, rude and ungrateful, but I put it down to the stress of lockdown, even though we were in a safe area and with our own woods and garden to walk in. However, by the summer it was clear that there was a lot more going on than just a grumpy old lady.
From the spring of this year, the deterioration has accelerated. She has forgotten her French. She has become increasingly forgetful and uncharacteristically spiteful and mean. I have never known her say anything like the horrendously hurtful stuff that is now her daily output. She responds to any frustration with furious anger. On a couple of occasions, she has tried to hit me.
I recently discovered that she has been phoning friends and family telling them awful stories centred on me. None of what she says is in any way true, but they follow a theme that I’m after her money, that I abuse her, that I neglect her and that I am a monster. She also tells people variously that I’m a mess/failure because I’m here looking after her. Oh the irony!
The reality is that I have given up the past two years to care for her. I have repaired her house and got it sold for 30k over the valuation (we will move in January). I cook, clean, wash, drive, shop, garden, wash her, rescue her when she gets stuck in the bath and change her bedclothes. I do her banking and pay her bills. I have sorted out the various catastrophes that had arisen from her getting her finances and other affairs in a muddle. I translate, I monitor her health and act on her medical needs. I talk to her, listen to her stories and her worries. I take her out for jaunts, take her for walks, take her to meet friends.
In the meantime, I’ve been unable to get back to the UK myself because it is unsafe to leave her alone, she can’t travel and there is nobody else to look after her. I have a brother. He has always been a pig and unsurprisingly he refuses to help look after her in any way.
I haven’t been able to see my children, to go back to work or have even a day off. Financially, it has cost me ten and tens of thousands to be here and care for her. And dare I say that nobody who knows me would ever consider me a mess or a failure.
Two weeks ago, a friend of mine from the UK was finally able to come and stay. Hurrah! My friend knows my mum very well but hadn’t seen her in two years. She has told me that she is shocked by the changes in my mum’s behaviour and that my fears are grounded and my mother’s complaints are utterly baseless and delusional. I know that, of course, but it is a relief to hear it from someone else.
It’s not pleasant to live through being painted as a super-villain by your own mother and frankly it’s hard to know how I find the time to be so wicked on so many levels and yet still neglectful, but it seems I’m a woman of many talents.
I know it’s the illness and not her. I see how she struggles to make sense of what is happening around her as she tries to fit what she can remember around what she cannot. It is desperately, desperately sad.
The other evening, I had just sat down to join her by the TV when it suddenly began to rain. I told her I was going to bring the washing in and ran out to the garden. When I came back, she asked me who had been on the phone. Nobody, I said. The phone hasn’t rung. I went down to take the washing in because it was raining.
Why do you always tell these lies, she said. Why can’t you just tell me who was on the phone?
So, I asked her if the phone – which was right next to her - had rung? No, it hadn’t, she said. I asked her if the garden outside looked wet? Yes, it did, she agreed.
So perhaps I’d just been getting the washing in after all?
She got very angry and started shouting. Why do you lie to me and confuse me all the time? You’re such a liar … and so on.
Almost every day is like this now. I’m sure it is familiar territory for many of you.
I am certain that the huge changes in my mum’s personality, the memory losses and the tantrums all point in one direction – that she has dementia. It is time to get a diagnosis. It’s not going to be easy as she has no insight into what is happening to her and a hefty degree of paranoia.
I’ve already begun the process of getting social services involved. France has a really good support structure for elderly people and their carers. It will mean that I will be able to get some respite.
This is a journey that I have dreaded. It won’t get easier and we all know how it ends. When I think about it, I feel that my mum – the person who I love – has already slipped away. I feel that as grief. She feels it as anger and confusion. It’s a *******, isn’t it?
Kathy