I understand your frustration with your Mom totally. Mine was the same. She always had an opinion about everyone and everything else, but she refused to see the truth about her own life.
I was lucky that I could quit my job. Again luckily, I had a very supportive hubbie in the pic whose income carried us through. And also luckily, my Dad had seen to my Mom's financial security even after they split. So I didn't need to pay any of her bills.
Whether you live in her house or not, you'll be the bad guy because you'll be making decisions she won't like. It just goes with the territory. All I can say is that I made the best choices for her that I possibly could and I hope she understood that. While everyone mourned over her passing, I think I mourned more for the last few months of her life, knowing that it would never get any better. Her passing was actually a relief because the suffering ended.
I hate to sound all gloom and doom, I do have some special memories from those days that I cherish and that my siblings did not get to share in. And that time with her made me see the beauty of the "circle of life". I think of all the families whose time with their elders is cut short and realize they miss a very important part of it. In the end, both of my parents, through their ending process, taught me how to face death when my time comes. My kids were watching and I pray they learned something too.
Life is full of ironies, isn't it? That your aunt suffered so and your mom seems to have escaped that is mind twisting. Dad's cancer wasn't due to second hand smoke. The primary source was never identified but it got into his blood and then bones and everything went south from there. One of the doctor's theories was, ironically, that he had breast cancer. Dad, being a manly man, however, would never admit it.
It is a difficult place we are in as one whose has parents. It sounds so selfish to hope that one's parent will have a swift exit from this world and thereby let us off the hook. But the truth is, it is how we feel. I mean, here we are, busy with our own lives, totally involved with jobs and family and all of a sudden there's this person who needs us totally. And it is the person we depended on to be there for us since the beginning. You find yourself fighting the role reversal and the intrusion on the adult life you have built for yourself.
First and foremost, forgive yourself for not wanting this to happen to you. We all feel it sooner or later, along with all the other insecurity and indecision that goes with caring for an ailing parent. Secondly, find support in those who surround you. Odds are, many of them have been down the same road in one way or another. And thirdly, I wish you peace, my friend. In the end, it is what matters most.
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I was lucky that I could quit my job. Again luckily, I had a very supportive hubbie in the pic whose income carried us through. And also luckily, my Dad had seen to my Mom's financial security even after they split. So I didn't need to pay any of her bills.
Whether you live in her house or not, you'll be the bad guy because you'll be making decisions she won't like. It just goes with the territory. All I can say is that I made the best choices for her that I possibly could and I hope she understood that. While everyone mourned over her passing, I think I mourned more for the last few months of her life, knowing that it would never get any better. Her passing was actually a relief because the suffering ended.
I hate to sound all gloom and doom, I do have some special memories from those days that I cherish and that my siblings did not get to share in. And that time with her made me see the beauty of the "circle of life". I think of all the families whose time with their elders is cut short and realize they miss a very important part of it. In the end, both of my parents, through their ending process, taught me how to face death when my time comes. My kids were watching and I pray they learned something too.
Life is full of ironies, isn't it? That your aunt suffered so and your mom seems to have escaped that is mind twisting. Dad's cancer wasn't due to second hand smoke. The primary source was never identified but it got into his blood and then bones and everything went south from there. One of the doctor's theories was, ironically, that he had breast cancer. Dad, being a manly man, however, would never admit it.
It is a difficult place we are in as one whose has parents. It sounds so selfish to hope that one's parent will have a swift exit from this world and thereby let us off the hook. But the truth is, it is how we feel. I mean, here we are, busy with our own lives, totally involved with jobs and family and all of a sudden there's this person who needs us totally. And it is the person we depended on to be there for us since the beginning. You find yourself fighting the role reversal and the intrusion on the adult life you have built for yourself.
First and foremost, forgive yourself for not wanting this to happen to you. We all feel it sooner or later, along with all the other insecurity and indecision that goes with caring for an ailing parent. Secondly, find support in those who surround you. Odds are, many of them have been down the same road in one way or another. And thirdly, I wish you peace, my friend. In the end, it is what matters most.