Please see my profile for details. My grandmother is 101, totally dependent upon my parents for her care, and they all live at home. Both she and my mother have had significant health problems over the past five years, and I have watched my mother become weaker and more feeble, while my grandmother hangs onto life with the tenacity of someone who will never let go. Mom is her only child.
I have grown children, a son in high school, a wonderful husband and a job that overwhelms me, but I don’t see any alternatives yet. COVID has taken a huge toll on my mental health, and I want to retire early and start a new job doing something that I actually like. I feel absolutely trapped in a holding pattern, and guilty. My parents are becoming more enfeebled, and it’s just a matter of time before they will need more caretaking. I feel resentful of my grandmother, but also of my parents who will not set boundaries with her, to their detriment. I also feel the crushing weight of expectation bearing down on me. I deal with depression and chronic pain, and this isn’t helping.
Understand that the ONLY thing you can change is YOUR behavior. No your parents' and certainly not Grandma's.
Your brother seems to drawn a boundary, yes?
If your parents are so short-sighted as to neglect their health because they cater to grandma and don't consider her needs rather than her desires, that's on them.
You can only save you.
What would you say, think about this situation if it was happening to a close friend? I remember talking with my best friend on the phone, and her father was shouting in the background-he was really loud. "Hey, what's the matter, why is he screaming like that?" "Oh, he does that all the time" "Uh-you know that's not normal" "Yeah...." About two weeks after that she had to place her father in memory care. Don't know if my input made a difference, but-she was so glad she did it.
I just wish society didn't place such a premium on caregivers being heros-without any kind of support for us. "Yay, look at her taking care of ______, she's amazing! Oh-sorry dear, no respite care for you, obviously you can do it all, and aren't you wonderful!!!" Yep.....time for the pros and your family members.
and again and again, it's usually women who end up helping...
...and the women's lives suffer...their career, family, friends, peace of mind, life dreams/goals...
"women are more exploitable."
dear onlydaughter,
i hope you can hire people, or find other good solutions.
your brother must help too, not dumping all decisions/problems/stress on you.
hug!!!
Be very careful that you don't become your parents with caregiving for them because you feel bad.
You know that they will not willingly go to a facility, if they would they would put grandma in one.
Your boundaries are what will protect you from a similar fate.
I will reply here about their financial situation. We live in the US. I live within one mile of my parents/grandmother. Their property has two houses, one is my parents, the other my grandmother’s. They own jointly, with survivorship. Meaning that if they had to spend down assets to qualify my grandmother for Medicaid, my parents home would also be included in the equation because it’s all on the same property.
My mother has taken on sole caretaking responsibility for my grandmother for the past 20 years. My father is more able bodied, and now does more of the household work. Parents are both retired social workers. They are determined to give my grandmother her wish to live in her own house until she dies. There’s an unspoken expectation that they want the same.
My father handles their finances, but he doesn’t share that with me. I don’t even know what their plans are for the will. He is stubborn in his own way about not asking for help.
My brother lives 5 hours away by car. He visits often but he’s not hands on with caregiving. He can’t “handle” the reality of adult incontinence, diapers, and that sort of thing.
We both commiserate that our grandmother is killing our mother- or the burden of her care is; my grandmother has anxiety temper tantrums whenever she’s separated from my mother for more than a day or two. I live much closer, and my parents provided a lot of support to me and my children through my divorce from an abusive marriage. It’s a complicated mess of guilt and obligation, and unspoken expectations.
I see your recognition that you MUST not allow yourself to sink into this dysfunctional and dangerous abyss of elder caregiving.
But then there are your parents. Can THEY (especially your mother) accept that they are NOT responsible for grandmother's every caregiving need? Because if you can't get to accept that (which is likely), are YOU willing to walk away to save yourself?
What is the financial situation here? What is your grandmother's financial situation? Your parents?
Even if your parents agree to help for your grandmother (of course she really needs a facility), where is payment going to come from? It should come from your grandmother.
And one more question...what are your parents' expectation of help from you? Do they expect anything from out-of-town brother?
To afford a nursing home, which she would abjectly refuse to submit to, I believe that my parents and her house would both have to be sold, since that’s what SS requires for eligibility. They live jointly on the same property in two houses. My grandmother occupies the largest, 3 bedroom house while my parents have lived in a tiny, cramped 750 square foot cottage on the same lot that they have improved. This arrangement has stood for over 20 years. My grandmother insisted on having the big house all to herself, and she refused to move if she didn’t get it. None of us expected her to live past 100. She absolutely expects my parents to take care of her and wait on her hand and foot, and has no insight on how her selfishness has caused her daughter to suffer.
She (grandmother) has survived in the last 4 years colon cancer surgery, a broken hip & hip replacement- at age 99!!, a blood clot that paralyzed her arm and nearly killed her, and pneumonia. Meanwhile, my mom neglects her own health. Both of my parents are laser focused on her care.
I feel guilty for wishing that she will finally succumb to one of her many ailments and give my parents a little peace. There’s an expectation that my brother should visit, but my grandmother’s neediness, stubbornness, and lack of self awareness is repellent for both of us.
* First, you need to FEEL you deserve to have a life - a full life - with some responsibilities to others although not at the cost of causing you mental, psychological and physical illness.
* It is a plus that you acknowledge how you feel (resentful of your grandmother).
* When we feel stuck, we are the only person who can un-stick us - you can and must acknowledge how you feel (as you do here) and plough through doing what needs to be done.
- Sit down and write a list of what you want and need in your own life.
- Write about the hard decisions YOU need to make. Feel through the guilt and 'crushing weight of expectation" - realize the only expectation is the one you take on / take in 'from others' or yourself and reframe it. i.e., xxx believes I should xxx. That is their feeling and expectation. It is not mine.
* Do a mantra "I deserve to full life (as as full as I can create).
* You must set boundaries by feeling worthy to do so - enlist your husband to support you. Friends, professional social workers, senior services.
* Know the choices you make now IN YOUR BEST INTEREST and for your parents will be hard emotionally. Expect this process to confront your feelings - and then move through.
* You will not resent your grandmother if you do not allow her to affect you as you have been doing. You need support, help, and get off the fence and make the hard decisions. You CAN do it. You MUST do it - for you, your husband / relationship, and for your son. They need you TOO.
Gena
Working Daughter's Bill of Rights
@ Caregiver Bill of Rights - Working Daughter
No, everyone is not stuck in the endless cycle of non-life. There is such a thing as care giving from a distance. People have a right to live their own lives and can walk away from caregiving if they really want to. Too many of us have allowed the neediness our elderly parents, grandparents, and spouses to dictate how we live our lives. We've also allowed the backlash and fear of judgment from others keep us chained to a caregiving situation when we don't have to be.
Enough is enough. It took me a very long time to learn that caregiving must be done on the caregiver's terms and not on the terms of the care recipient. It took even longer for me to establish boundaries. I am my mother's caregiver. I am no longer her nanny-slave, family scapegoat, emotional whipping post, or fight partner.
She knows that I will have no guilt about putting her in a nursing home if she becomes too difficult.
Our relationship has improved greatly once I learned these things.
My boundaries are set, I'm not a care taker for old people (or anyone) the end. I don't care if someone gave me 10M. It's an awful soul-sucking job that should be done by professionals and no one else.
The older someone is the more selfish they become, that's just the way it goes. I fight resenting my grandmother as well. If you want to live a long life, plan for it. However she wasted her life taking care of a bunch of people too. She is not a bad person by any means, but she's nearly killed my Dad and is killing my Mom. I want them to live over her and I'm just tired of seeing what's happening. The cycle stops with me, I hope my sister doesn't pick it up.
My suggestion is to set boundaries for yourself so that you're not pulled into the same cycle.
If your parents won't change there's nothing you can do until they have to go into care, at that time so will your grandmother. I've told my Mom that. She didn't like it, but it is what it is.
Take care of yourself. Sometimes family needs to figure things out on their own and you can't force other people to learn lessons.
Don't worry about your Grandmother and what your parents allow or not.
Grandma will pass when it's her time.
Tare a little time at least once a week for Me Time.
Go get a massage,
Go out to eat,
Go get a Manicure,
Take a mini vacation.
Lif3 goes on.
Stop worrying about things you can not raters.
Step back and Smell the Roses.
Learn to Dance in the Rain.
Prayers.
It's like some posters have said, it's a dysfunctional cycle.
My family won’t “get” the little house when grandma passes. We have our own home in the same town. I do take your point about not winding up in the same situation if we should need to liquidate for Medicaid ourselves one day.
We would like to sell our house and move, and several factors are making us wait, this situation with my family being the biggest one.
It actually comes to mind that the small house would be an excellent rental property for my parents, for extra income and potentially even if they could make housekeeping/ some handyman work part of the rent, even some basic caregiving services if we could find the right person/people who would be willing to do that.
You can't change THAT dysfunctional dynamic, nor should you try to; it's too late. Don't bother trying to figure out how to get her into a SNF, either, that is something that should have happened years ago but didn't. What you CAN do is decide right now what YOU are going to do and not do for your parents once grandma dies. That's of utmost importance. Are you going to move into their home or into (God forbid 'the cottage') to continue this family dynamic into the future? Or are you going to let them know that you are not available to be their hands-on caregiver at all? That you can help them with finances or help them get into managed care of some kind and be their lifelong advocate, but that you are not cut out to be the person who comes into their home to do adult brief changes, showers, feedings, etc. If you set down these boundaries NOW, there will be no surprises LATER and that will force your parents to make plans for their old age independently.
That's what I did with my folks. As an only child, I grew up in a very dysfunctional household where my grandmother lived with us. It ruined my childhood and it ruined my mother's mental health. She and I developed a very strained relationship as a result and I made the decision at a very young age that I'd never, ever take them into my home to live with me. I stuck to my guns and I'm very happy I did b/c my mother is now 95 years old next month with advanced dementia and hanging onto life just like your grandmother is. I'd be dead right now if I'd have taken her into my home. My marriage would be over and so would my life. The best thing I ever did was to place my folks in Assisted Living back in 2014 where they have been well cared for ever since (dad passed in 2015). When mom's $$$ runs out, I'll apply for Medicaid to have her cared for in Skilled Nursing.
It's not wrong to plan YOUR future now. You see where this situation has gotten your folks. You have learned where you do NOT want to be down the road yourself. Learn from their mistakes. It's fine to love your parents but choose not to do any hands-on care for them and grow to resent them in the process b/c you've given up your life by doing so. Your life AND your family's lives too, don't forget. It's them you have to think about as well. Make your plan and then stick to it. Your folks will own quite a bit of property once grandma passes which can be sold to finance their stay in managed care if/when it becomes necessary, or sold off to some degree to finance in-home care by CNAs and caregivers that aren't YOU.
Wishing you the best of luck carving out your own future.
I don't know you, but I know nobody deserves that. You do not deserve it either. You are not the one who made your parents nanny-slaves to your grandmother. They chose that. You did not make that choice for them.
They allowed grandmother's neediness to become tyranny and refused to establish any kind of boundaries with her and now they suffer.
That's not on you. That's on them.
Also, you're not the cause of your parents increasing feebleness. Nor are you supposed to be the cure for it.
All three (mom, dad, and grandmother) need hired homecare help, yet they refuse. That's not your fault.
They chose a boundary-free life of servitude to your grandmother's neediness. You didn't.
You are allowed to choose your life too. If you want to retire early and move away with your family, I say more power to you.
Tell your parents you will help them arrange homecare services for all three of them. Offer to bring them to look at care facilities for your grandmother too.
Then your job is done. If they want remain living as nanny-slaves to your grandmother, leave them to their own devices and get on with your life.
The National Suicide Hotline number is 800-273-TALK (8255)
I'm so sorry you are going through such a terrible situation. Please call the number above and let someone help you. Hugs.
On the other hand, you have no obligation to care for anyone. Time spent resentful is life wasted.
Find that new career that you desire now instead of waiting. With every passing day, we are all headed toward our own finish line. In light of your health challenges, don’t miss out on the opportunities of which you are dreaming.
If you come for Christmas with the family, you don't have to make Grandma the center of conversation. The whole purpose of these really is to bring everyone together so that everyone can talk about their own lives, not just her.
If she acts up/gets cranky then that's your cue to leave. And I don't blame you one bit for feeling the way you do about the Queen. She's like acting like Elizabeth in there with your parents, and everyone's waiting for her to expire, and she's trying to pretend that it'll be anything but like a burden off everyone's backs. She is, to everyone, and it doesn't appear that she's being one bit less of a fundamental narcissist in doing it. Only such a person would have put their child and the person they married in such a position.
I don't blame you for being mad, but try to see it as a family occasion and just that. Y'all will have more time after she goes.
I'm responding to your comment lower on the thread about your parents wanting to leave property inheritance to their kids and grandkids.
There's really only two choices. If you want to go back to living your life and stopping keeping all the things you want to do on ice until everyone dies, potential inheritance has to be forgotten about. Or you stay and try to wait it out.
It's not worth it. My good friend thought very much as you do. He was the live-in caregiver to his mother for over ten years. He had to quit his job three years in as her caregiver. I knew this family for a long time. His mother was a nasty, cruel, narcissistic and needy bully on her best day. Add some dementia to that and I'm sure you can get a picture.
Anyway, my friend became a nanny-slave. His entire life was just mom's hysterics, fight-picking, and misery. A non-stop state of permanent crisis and drama with a side-show of incontinence and hoarding. Moving to any kind of senior community was out of the question with her. She adamantly refused any kind of homecare services too. I even offered to work for her to help my friend a little bit. The whole family was on board with the idea but mother wasn't. She only wanted her son and her family obeyed her. So my friend's life as a nanny-slave began.
My friend and his out-of-town siblings who did absolutely nothing to help with the caregiving, wanted to preserve inheritance for themselves and their kids (my friend didn't have kids). Their mother had a nice place and other assets. They didn't want to see it all get handed over to a nursing home and rightly so. Nursing homes and care facilities do take it all.
My friend dropped dead of a heart attack when he was 55 years old. The slavery he lived in caused him to just give up on life. He became active in the addictions of smoking and drinking again that he worked so hard to put out and keep out of his life. Prior to becoming a slave he had lost over 115 pounds. Not with weight-loss surgery but on his own and kept it off for 13 years. He put it all back on and then some.
The only glimmer of hope this once beautiful man, my friend, had left to him was that his elderly mother wouldn't live forever.
He died four years ago. The miserable old baggage is still here, clinging to life harder than a blood-sucking tick on the back of a dog. Living in a nursing home on Medicaid. Her kids placed her about a month after he died.
All the assets were spent down for her care and my friend is gone.
It's not worth your life to potentially preserve some assets for inheritance. Your life is more valuable.
Brass tacks: I will never take care of grandma, if something were to happen to my mom. My father used to be more resistant to her dependency and neediness when I was a child, but he’s been fully sucked into the martyr caregiving role. If his health fails, all 3 of them will need full time nursing care. I visit, but I don’t do hands on stuff like diapers. I’ll bring meals from time to time, and help with household stuff if they let me. It’s a big control issue, and they’re all very proud and don’t want to lose autonomy. I get hysterical calls when grandma falls, and they can’t pick her up off the floor, and they don’t want to call 911. That’s happened more times than I can count.
My mom is bullied by my grandmother, and she refuses to put her into a home. I’d do it in a heartbeat, I don’t care how much she complained or manipulated us. There’s just no way I’m doing that for decades. I don’t think my mom wants that for me. I believe my father has different expectations about family obligations, but we’re going to have to sort this out.
As for my brother and my kids and nieces/nephews, I expect they’re going to have to adjust their expectations if nursing care winds up hoovering up all of the assets. My folks have been more than generous with them all, myself included, all along.
I'm glad to hear you're not giving it all up and shortening your life to be a nanny-slave to your elderly family. Your kids will thank you for not letting yourself be vulnerable to the manipulation of guilt-trips and for not being a martyr.
You're setting a good example of love for your kids by not allowing yourself to be made a martyr like your parents. This shows them that you think they're important. That you want them to live their own lives and pursue their own dreams because you will never expect them to give it all up for caregiving. God bless you.
Nothingleft,
Thank-you for your kind words and for understanding. I wish you knew my friend. He was the most beautiful person I ever knew. His family looked down on him because he was gay. In their culture that is totally unacceptable. I miss and grieve losing him more than any member of my own family who has passed. That's how good he was.
Know that you aren't alone. I see so many people here going through similar and I am also going through the same realizing my Elderly loved one is going to need more care than I can deal with. Sadly, he has a personality that has always been bossy, fault finding and condescending to name a few and I get the worst of it in comparison to other Family members. Being around him is a a challenge and has a toxic effect for me that along with other life situations I am dealing with; sent me u expectedly to the ER via ambulance early this month. I am thankful to the Medical team for taking care of me to get out of the danger zone that same night. I have no one who will take my place at Home so I can not be sick.
The best helpful advice I can share is to please take care of your health first and get help with the depression and chronic pain. I have depression and chronic pain too but I don't take antidepressants anymore since the only thing they did was make me lethargic , zombie-like and gain a lot of weight. You can start a new career just make the plan. The positive side is that you have a good Husband to talk to and support you. Good Luck.
Drop your elderly "loved one" off at a hospital ER, tell them you need a Social Admit and that you are unable to continue being his caregiver and that you refuse to continue.
Then walk away. Caregiving is not worth your life either.
You have a choice about whether you will be manipulated or not.
You have a choice about whether you will be taken advantage of.
You must decide to set boundaries with whomever is trying to manipulate or take advantage of you. YOU choose what you will do!
BOUNDARIES!!
Hospice care can be very useful. My wife has PSP and is physically disabled and is afflicted with dementia at an increasing rate. My parents are in their 90's-one in a nursing home, the other becoming more and more frail and forgetful, still living at home 2 miles from me. We have varying degrees of neediness from our adult children, and raised our autistic grandson for 9 years until he became a danger to my wife. So, boundaries are very important for my situation.
Set them and hold to them now and forever.
Inheritances are a GIFT, to be given if the giver so desires and is able to do so. They are not a part of your life and should not be thought about until and if they are in your hand. I do not expect it from my parents, and my kids better not expect it either.
This may sound harsh, but we all have to survive. We cannot help our less fortunate family members if we are sick, worn out, resentful and on and on.
Be clear with your family members about what you will and will not do. If siblings are not helping but raise hell with you about how you are helping, give them the choice to put up or STFU. Guilt has no part of any of this unless you did something awful that you should feel guilty about.
Be strong.