What if you don't like/love them?

rummy

Registered User
Jul 15, 2005
700
0
Oklahoma,USA
but what word would you use to describe that thing that motivates a person to sacrifice their own life, freedom and happiness to care for someone who probably does not know them any longer, never mind appreciate them. What is the motivation? Duty, guilt, common decency,belief in promises made?

Whether there is love involved or not...........you just do the right thing. If you do the right thing, you can never say you didn't try, you didn't care or you didn't give. Anyone can walk away. It takes special people to stay and be care givers under any circumstances because that is what being compassionate and big hearted is. We on this forum are not selfish, not self centered, not callus or uncaring. If we were, we would have no need to come here to talk to others in our boat. What motivates us is unique and personal to each of us but what is the same is the feeling that we will do our best, whatever that is, do what is right, whatever that is, and we will not have regrets because we at least tried to do our best for them.

That being said......doing your best does not include being a sacrificial lamb. Somethings doing what is best for them means letting go. It is a balance thing and that is something I am trying to learn to do myself.

Take care,
Debbie
 

magpie

Registered User
Jul 21, 2006
25
0
Bradford
This has given me so much to think about. I suppose I was asking 'what is love anyway? ... the biggest, hardest question ever, and one I think that can't have a definitive answer. But you all seem to agree that 'it' - or something very like it - exists as a motive to action, even if you don’t like it or what it does to you sometimes.

Possibly in all the bundle of stuff around romance 'love' and 'pleasure' got tied up, so we expect them to go together, and I don't think that's always the case. My sister, for example, has told me she won't go and visit my Mum because she's never liked her and she 'just doesn't enjoy it". My immediate thought was 'So what?' Like with Karen’s fledgeling bird, there’s just this irresistible pull to help... somehow.

Well, that’s what I have with my Mum. We were never good friends and now we’re never going to be so, yes, that’s a heartbreaker. It’ll always be too late to fix it now, but I can't do nothing.

The advice to care for her in a hands-off way is good I think, in my case anyway. We still get locked into the same destructive patterns of behaviour when we are together... yes I KNOW I shouldn’t get drawn in when she’s so confused. I KNOW I’m wrong to try to sort it out now that she’s ill but I DO! . She makes me mad and I make her condition worse. I’m not the best person to spend long periods of time with her.

But care for her somehow I must. I still have to work and worry and and do my best to make sure that she’s looked after and safe, as happy as she can be and visit her as often as I can while maintaining a safe distance for both our sakes.

I think about her all the time. Why? Search me? It’s got to be that pesky love stuff I suppose...if it was only fame fortune and fabulous riches on offer I’d turn my back with no regrets!

This isn’t all I’ve thought about what you’ve all said - it’s still working in me. Many many thanks for your care and attention. It means a lot.
 

bel

Registered User
Apr 26, 2006
757
0
coventry
What if you dont love them

Dear Magpie
I have only read your first bit of this post but will read the rest tommorrow
I understand where you are comming from My Mum was just as you say yours was and it hurts you are supposed to love them cos they are your parents even though they are not nice people
you are not in the wrong will post tommorrow
Love Bel x
 

Margarita

Registered User
Feb 17, 2006
10,824
0
london
Long walk in life journey

It’ll always be too late to fix it now, but I can't do nothing.

Never Say never

Not wanting to go to deep in to my childhood , but your upbringing is similar to mine with my mother , I would say my brother got it more then me but I saw it all , I had all those feeling that Nat explained in her post toward my mother & how you seem to travel back in time to that hurt child within , first year was hard just getting my mind around it . I thought I was having a breakdown because I could not understand why this woman I hated so much in what she done to me & my brother I still felt something for her .

I could still feel sorrow and pain in what was happening to her & still wanted to care for her , yes someone said I wanted the mum I never could have , I analyzed her past her upbringing that could of made her the way she was towards us and I feel only because I was a mother myself I could understand or should I say it gave me a deeper insight in to my mother past that made her the mother she was , it help me let it all go
repair the past and build bridges

Yes 4 hard long crazy years with mum we now have a friendship because I let forgiveness in. I forgave mum. I forgave mum to help only to help myself move on with my life to put the past behind where it belongs I did not want to end up bitter inside
So I help that child within me heal & channel all that hate wasted energy to flow in to love I learn to know the feeling of love from my children they gave it to me unconditionally so did my dad ( lucky for mum she got AD when she was 73 and dad had pass away me in my 40 s )

and had read over the years lots of self help books also I

had my own family unit so with the help of my children I let mum in :)

So its up to you its not easy ,you can get there but its got to come from within you . my brother sadly has still got a lot of repress anger & can get very rude to my mother ,but I undertand where his comeing from .
 
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cynron

Registered User
Sep 26, 2005
429
0
east sussex
Hurt Childhood

Magarita/

You have realy put the case of a hurt child very well and you have dealt with your feelings i admire you. keep up the good work.

love Cynron x x
 

Margarita

Registered User
Feb 17, 2006
10,824
0
london
thanks


This may sound silly , but mum really in to her horoscope I feel the stage mum mind is at a time when she was single & wanting a boyfriend , she wants to hear that she going to meet someone at day centre anyway & I am not going to lie & say she is or she get a fixation on it & do my head me

But the coincidence of it & what I said above is that in her horoscope mum is said (mum is a Libra)

Your gift for being tactful in even the most dreadful situation is widely admitted .But now you’re wondering if you‘ve met your match (ME)

Other aren’t just upset, they’re convinced they were deliberately taken advantage of (ME)
While that may be true Mercury causing confusion it was probably all a big misunderstanding ;)


At this point I hear my daughter say stop lying mum :eek: (because she know the issue I have with mum) so told her to read it herself it was in the evening standard, so I slowly relay it to mum as in our relationship, did she take it in I don’t know ,but it sure help me . :D

I got on ….
 

Margarita

Registered User
Feb 17, 2006
10,824
0
london
thanks


This may sound silly , but mum really in to her horoscope I feel the stage mum mind is at a time when she was single & wanting a boyfriend , she wants to hear that she going to meet someone at day centre I am not going to lie & say she is or she get a fixation on it & do my head me

But the coincidence of it & what I said above is that in her horoscope it said (mum is a Libra)

Your gift for being tactful in even the most dreadful situation is widely admitted .But now you’re wondering if you‘ve met your match (ME)

Other aren’t just upset, they’re convinced they were deliberately taken advantage of (ME)
While that may be true Mercury causing confusion it was probably all a big misunderstanding ;)


At this point I hear my daughter say stop lying mum :eek: (because she know the issue I have with mum) so told her to read it herself it was in the evening standard, so I slowly relay it to mum as in our relationship, did she take it in I don’t know ,but it sure help me . :D
 

jeannette

Registered User
Feb 27, 2006
55
0
Me, too, Magpie

The advice to care for her in a hands-off way is good I think, in my case anyway. We still get locked into the same destructive patterns of behaviour when we are together... yes I KNOW I shouldn’t get drawn in when she’s so confused. I KNOW I’m wrong to try to sort it out now that she’s ill but I DO! . She makes me mad and I make her condition worse. I’m not the best person to spend long periods of time with her.

But care for her somehow I must. I still have to work and worry and and do my best to make sure that she’s looked after and safe, as happy as she can be and visit her as often as I can while maintaining a safe distance for both our sakes.

I think about her all the time. Why? Search me? It’s got to be that pesky love stuff I suppose...if it was only fame fortune and fabulous riches on offer I’d turn my back with no regrets!



This is so very close to my own situation, Magpie. Increasingly I find I have to "organize" things, make sure my mother is well taken care of - and sadly keep the "actually being there" to a minimum, because at best it's just too awful these days, and at worst it can be destructive - or you come away feeling that it has been. And one of the few good things about AD is the short term memory, so it's only us who have our bad-tempered or worse words reverberating around our heads after we've left.

But love, yes, still for me anyway. One of the saddest things is that these days I know my mum often believes I don't love her any more. It's true I find it harder and harder to be with her, but oh, yes, I do still love her. An awful lot of love to be found in TP, thankfully.

Very best wishes.
Jeannette
 

Lila13

Registered User
Feb 24, 2006
1,342
0
My mother during her last months was sometimes like a teenager looking for a boyfriend. The whole neighbourhood knew she had a crush on her local policeman, any excuse would do to phone or visit him. She flirted sometimes quite embarrassingly with male nurses and patients, and most of her imaginary friends were fantasy men, probably because her real-life environment was mostly female (female nurses and social workers and carers and me). If only she'd had an idea that she might meet a suitable man in a day centre or a home, it might have been used as a way of motivating her.

Lila

Margarita said:
This may sound silly , but mum really in to her horoscope I feel the stage mum mind is at a time when she was single & wanting a boyfriend , she wants to hear that she going to meet someone at day centre I am not going to lie & say she is or she get a fixation on it & do my head me


:D
 

Margarita

Registered User
Feb 17, 2006
10,824
0
london
Sounds like you have found a good balance jeannette

Lilait might have been used as a way of motivating her.

yes I do that with my mother
Then she trun around & say she not going, because she does not want to meet a man, (can’t win) so I say ok don’t go then she ends up going anyway
 

suzanne

Registered User
Jul 25, 2006
189
0
wiltshire
help needed

hello all, this is my first time of using this forum so please excuse all errors and corrections are welcome. My mother has AD,She brought 4 of us up on her own and was insular and lonely herself,but a strong matriarchal type.we never argued or talked back,we trained in the careers she decided for us and at the tender age of 48 she still attempts to tell me how to dress etc. she has been deteriorating over the last 5 years, I was a senior nurse[surgical and orthopaedic] but have had to give up to be sole carer, I have siblings who pontificate but no real input.I am the least favourite[her words] of her children. Yesterday her sister came to visit, a much looked forward to visit and half way through the day she "lost " her sister,she had no recollection of her past the age of 2. is this a pattern ? are we all going to be dropped out of her existance one by one? we are in the process of being assessed for the drug arisept or execelon, is it worth the side effects?or do I just let her decline? as a nurse I would have advocated the drugs but as a relative it is so much harder to decide. The rest of the family are ambivalent, as long as I remain the carer its my call. Imentioned the words AD to her the other day in the hopes it would explain some of her problems but was told not to be ridiculous....a phrase drummed into me during my training was"do NOT enter into their psychosis" this is becoming so very hard to do
 

Margarita

Registered User
Feb 17, 2006
10,824
0
london
when you say
phrase drummed into me during my training was"do NOT enter into their psychosis



Do you mean
Painful past experiences rise to the surface as the patient’s perception of things is disturbed ?

before mum Was not on medication mum did have a few episode of that & I did enter it, back then I did not know mum had AD I was relieving it also & it can feel like I was having a break down, but lucky I had some insight in to mental illness when back then I thought mum was going mad & taking me down with her , so I learn to switch of. sounds like good Advice to me
was"do NOT enter into their psychosis


When mum was given the medication thing did improve

"lost " her sister,she had no recollection of her past the age of 2.

My mother got her medication before that stage hit her


So sorry can not comment on that I hope a moderator pop in & move your post & mine on your question as your would get more answers if you had made a tread on its own , but hope people do pop in a answer

what did your mum get one her Memory test ?

Welcome to TP
 
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Little Sis

Registered User
Jul 26, 2006
5
0
West Yorkshire
Sorry to butt in, Im very new to this but after reading all the previous post's, my take on this is....We do what we can and what is right for us, the individual. It may take a while but eventually we all realise what we can and can not do and to what limit we can go, what may be right for me may not be right for another........only we as individuals can decide where we draw the line and to what extent we can commit......we are all different, as are the AD sufferers....
 

Tender Face

Account Closed
Mar 14, 2006
5,379
0
NW England
Hi Suzanne, if anyone says 'we only do perfect here' - I'm off - what's all this about excusing errors???? :)

It's so hard sometimes, isn't it, to detach the 'professional' from the 'personal' in our lives - completely different ball game, as they say? Why is it 'your call'? Is that your privilege for being the one to give up their career? Does a 'nursing' background make you - in some people's eyes - the prime candidate for being a carer? Not expecting answers - just wanted you to know 'I hear what you're saying.....'

Little Sis, you are NOT butting in! Have you seen how one thread can start here and 'we' end up on a completely different path????!!! It's people 'butting in' which makes TP so magical for me..... I absolutely agree, we are all unique .. there can be no two people, surely, amongst all the members with identical circumstances ... but each person chipping in their 'tuppeny worth' helps us all perhaps look at and deal with our own unique situations from a different perspective..... thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Look forward to hearing more from you... (both!!)

Love, Karen (TF), x
 

jeannette

Registered User
Feb 27, 2006
55
0
Back to love...

Just back to the "love" thing - the only halfway redeeming feature about the fact that my mother's just broken her hip (won't go into it, because I've posted already) is that after all the damaging, destructive stuff, all the love is back in me. And for these moments, at least - and I don't kid myself about what is to come - I can be kind to her again, and I think at least today, she was feeling aware again of being loved.
Just wanted to share that.
Best to you all.
Jeannette
 

bel

Registered User
Apr 26, 2006
757
0
coventry
wHAT IF YOU DONT LOVE THEM

Dear Magpie
an awful lot of what you have said about your mum my mum was and it does hurt big time even if you could undestand why--they are like it it does not take away the pain we are taught to love our parents how many times have we heard she is still your mum my mum died 18 months ago not dementia
i had stayed away from her for approx 10 years before this she was destroying me --ok but i thought my own family need me so for my own protection ---it was not easy it was the only thing i could do for my family no one can tell you what you should do you will know i am sure but i am also sure no one on tp will judge you as i have found all the people who have someone with dementia are Good people as i know you are take care
Love Bel x