Several of you have been following my very difficult journey with my 92 year old NPD mother, who I have been trying to maintain some type of relationship all my life (Im 68), but have had to take several breaks from her , more recently in the past year..she has always been very emotionally abusive . Since her fall on Jan 22, she was in hospital until she moved to subacute rehab on Jan 26. All lab tests checked out , no UTI , Dr felt there was no obvious signs of stroke or head trauma, but due to extreme confusion and unclassified type of dementia ( she was only oriented x1 in hospital on tests) my HCPOA was activated. Her behavior is vacillating quite a bit...but I am using this opportunity to try to build a more positive relationship with her i whatever time she has left. I am feeling very depressed and guilty that she may have been experiencing more profound changes right before her fall and I was not there. She cancelled Dr appointment on Jan 16 and I am haunted by the thought that whatever was happening could have been picked up then ..up until her fall, I was still checking in by phone and she sounded like her normal , but nasty self. In fact, as the EMTS were wheeling her out, she blamed me for upsetting her and causing the fall. I feel responsible now for not insisting she go for her 6 month check up on Jan 16. She is now very childlike....interspersersed with extreme anger toward me that I am " running her life" and keeping her from going back to her independent apartment. She is demonstating delusions and sundowning , which is being managed through medication. But also periods of clarity ...It is breaking my heart how quickly this has happened , and wondering what I could have done differently..to prevent where she is at now. There is a care conference on Thursday, and I want to make sure she is getting correct meds PRN and not just chemically managed. The rehab center is one of the top in the midwest and staff have been very caring and compassionate. Plan is for her to go to Assisted Living where she has been living and where several of her friends from Independent Living days also now reside. Of course, that may be off the table and she may need to go to Memory Care . I hope and pray not..that will kill her... Intellectually , I know I am not to blame, but my heart is softening toward her and I feel love and compassion toward her for the first time in many years. I have been there daily just letting her know I love her and that I understand that she is scared and not sure what is happening..but I love her enough to make sure she is safe and will not fall again. Hence the guilts and regret. She has even apologized to me several times over this past week for fighting and being so nasty toward me.,and I have also told her I am sorry too. and that we only have today and to not look back to sadder days. I am hurting so badly....waiting for therapy to help me cope ..Looking for advice from others who may have gone through, or are dealing with this. Much harder than the abuse ....that I could set boundaries for ...to protect myself. This raw emotion hurts so much more.
You did above and beyond what any reasonable survivor of abuse should ever do and part of that meant not speaking or seeing her for extended periods of time. You did nothing wrong.
It is not your fault this happened and is happening to her.
Maybe her losing her mind to dementia will transform her into a better person before she dies. It has happened. If it does great but please don't feel guilty and forget who she was and what she did to you.
I wish your heart softening towards mom did not include tearing apart your own heart in the process.
I understand how badly you want a relationship with your abusive mother - I can relate. What I have learned though, is when my mother becomes "sweet" I am very careful not to read a lot into it and not to get sucked in. In my mom's case it is manipulation, period. That's painful.
Be careful and take care of you!
Stop it.
It's time to look at things as they are, not as you think they would have been if X,Y, and Z hadn't happened. Woulda, coulda, shouldas solve no problems, because they're all in the past, so again, stop it.
I also advise you not to think that memory care would "kill" your mother. Frankly, that's absurd. No one is in memory care who shouldn't be, and everyone in memory care thinks they don't belong there until they realize they have activities, friendships, and the focus is on the quality of life, not the medical stuff. Then they're a lot happier.
I'm no psychologist, but you seem to be a ball of issues that therapy would benefit from, and stressing out about a mother you can't change is the worst thing you can do.
You've got a lot of your own life left to live. Why waste it angsting over your mom to this extent?
Oh, it hurts. It’s like someone stuck a knife into you and then gave it a good, hard twist.
I am so sorry that you are going through this. Sending a bazillion hugs your way.