My mother and my husband have not gotten along for a very long time, but now, my mom cannot be left alone and 3 of us are in charge of watching her. I watch her 2 days a week, my brother another 2 days and her grandson 3 days. When she is at our house, my husband complains to me that he doesn't want her there and says mean things about her, hoping she will hear them. She sometimes does and wants to leave, but I try to make her think he is talking about something else, and not her.
I know she has made some mistakes in her life, one of them being that she will leave everything only to her grandson, (another reason my husband does not want to have her at home). He says if he is leaving everything to him, he should take care of her and not ask for any help. She also has supported her grandson for years. He does not work.
I understand my husband's anger, but she is still my mother and if she wants to spend some time with me, I have to let her.
I just don't think I can take the nagging anymore. My husband gets really mad at me for having her, so he argues with me and then doesn't talk to me for days. The situation is very tense.
To add to this, her grandson is mad at the whole family, doesn't talk to me, is always upset at his own father, my brother. He tries to find things we did wrong to call my brother and scream at him, because she forgot her glasses at my house or her clothes, or whatever insignificant thing. He also has a say in everything. My brother and I wanted to hire someone to watch her sometimes and he will not allow us to.
I don't think I can live like this very long. I feel that the stress is going to make me ill. I sometimes have a pain in my chest.
I am almost ready to rent an apartment and stay there the two days and nights that my mother has to be with me.
Seriously, put any inheritance out of your mind. I have to say it makes me want to spit when squabbles break out about that. Is that why your family wants to look after your mother? In exchange for a mention in her will? Of course not. Leave it out of the picture and the whole thing becomes much less stinky.
Where does your mother ordinarily reside? Is the grandson living in what was her permanent family home? How far from you is that?
If it's within reasonable regular travelling distance, perhaps you could go and stay in her/their home for your part of the caring schedule. If your husband kicks up a fuss about your doing that, then at that stage he would be being unreasonable and you would have to be firm about it. I realise that this idea would also involve considerable effort on your part to sort matters out with your nephew beforehand; but from the sound of it you're not his principal bête-noire and it shouldn't be impossible.
If the distance is too far, then could you perhaps offer to provide a week's respite care at - say - two- or three-monthly intervals to whoever looks after her full-time?
Of course, either of these would depend on your not having other commitments, beside your husband, that would prevent you from staying away from home. You might have a job, or children, or pets, or anything else you can't easily leave to take care of itself - but your husband does not fall into this category. Nothing terrible will happen to him if he has to make his own dinner every so often.
The chopping and changing in any case doesn't sound ideal for an Alzheimer's sufferer. Continuity in surroundings is, I think I'm right in saying?, very important in reassuring them and helping them to cope with their confusion. Extremely difficult to achieve when the carers are having trouble co-operating.
This whole thing is very hard on you. I'm not suggesting there's an easy answer, especially not when you've got so many conflicting parties being mad at each other. Can I just add, don't fall in to the classic female trap of trying to please everybody? Maybe sit down with a big piece of paper, mind-map your priorities and see if you can't figure out a way forward. Once you're clear in your own mind about what ranks as most important, next important, less important and so on, perhaps it will be easier to find the right compromises.
Very hard. I'm sorry you're facing all this trouble in addition to the worry you must feel about your mother just on its own. I wish you every success in finding an answer you're comfortable with.
His saying mean things about her so that she will hear him and want to leave is not right and sounds like he could use some therapy to deal with his anger. Has she been mean to him over the years?
I read your profile and see that your mom has dementia. As this worsens, she is going to find it difficult to handle moving around from one persons house to another for 2 or 3 nights. At some point in her decline, she is going to need 24/7 care which will become beyond what any of you can handle separately or together.
My mother in law has never liked me and for that fact would have not liked any man with any backbone who married her daughter. She doesn't like my brother in law either and he is a passive, needy person.
She has been mean to me, my children and to my wife. After ten years of putting up with this narcissistic, borderline witch, it reached a point where the drama was so bad when she would visit, that I decided for the well being of my family and me that her mother would no longer be allowed to stay in our house. I also told her that I really did not want her visiting her mother with the boys for they appeared to being used as a buffer between her and her mother. If she wanted to go visit the source of all of her own mental health problems fine, but I was tired of such a sicking person wrecking havoc in our family at home and on vacations which at that point she was no longer allowed to come along on because of her drama.
At first my wife agreed with this, but then she backed down by letting her mother stay with us to which I responded by taking the boys away from the house while her mother visited. That got her attention, but then she caved in again. Well, that time the boys and I did not leave which threw her mother for a loop and I was so glad to hear her say in the morning that she was not going to stay with us again.
A bit later on, my wife was visiting in her mother's house with the boys and witnessed her mother being abusive of our children like her mom had abused her and her twin sister. Well, I was not there to fight her battle which her therapist thought was great. My wife took our children and left that visit early. From that point on, she became more pro-active about her mother and set up some needed boundaries. Her mother has calmed down some with age and with knowing she is not going to see her grandchildren if she were to keep abusing them.
I've shared all of this to say that if your mother has been mean like that to your husband, I can understand why he does not want her at home. However, his making mean comments about her so that she can hear him and his nagging you about her are not correct. You need some sort of break from all of this drama. The grandson sounds like a lazy, angry man who is milking grandma for all of the money he can. What does he have to be so angry about for he's got it made and will get the inheritance? For years my wife put up with her mother's abuse and wanted the rest of the family to so that her mother would not leave her out of the will. Then she reached the point where she saw that doing so was not worth all of that money. I'm sorry that you are caught in the middle between an angry husband and your mom's angry grandson. I'm not a therapist, but seeing one might help you deal with this stress before it kills you.
How come the grandson has more say and control over your mother's care than you and your brother do? I think you two need to stand up to him. Anyway, she is your mother, not his.
I wish you the best in working through all of this dysfunction.
madeline