My mom was the primary care taker for my brother and I for our childhoods and was a wonderful mom. She was loving and patient and is still my biggest cheerleader. She cooked, drove us to practices, and played with us and we knew her as adventurous and capable. This is a woman who traveled Europe solo in her early 20s and lived a full adult life for many years. She's educated and kind and had always been someone that I aspired to be like. Of course she had her faults as well, but they were things my parents tried to keep private. My mom was always bad with money but it would always be my dad to get the second job to pay things off if she spent too much. She didn't like cooking, so he would do most of it but she made up for it by doing the housework and the dishes. They tried to make things fair and equal.
Since I moved out my mom has steadily been giving up basic tasks for taking care of herself until now where she is almost completely reliant on other people to provide for her. She doesn't cook, clean, drive, and it's a miracle she has a job. I think it's more of a charity than anything. They had her working as a librarian but she 'can't' use the computer so they moved her into being a 'greeter'. She gets free meals with work and on the days she's off she gets sandwiches or take away because she 'can't cook'. She gave up her car when she moved to the city and now says she 'can't drive'. She also has a tiny dorm-style apartment that she doesn't need to clean.
When I was pregnant she came to stay and 'help' but I ended up making three meals a day, cleaning, and later doing diaper changes all while I was supposed to be on bedrest. She was more work than the baby and when we would try to make things easier by doing things like ordering pizza she still would ask how to heat up the leftovers and I'd have to get up and show her how the oven worked every single time. She 'couldn't' turn on the stove to make her own coffee in the mornings and I had to show her every morning for a month. I would ask her to help by running a load of laundry but she could never remember how it worked no matter how many times I showed her. Her 89 year old mother drives her around when she comes to visit.
There is absolutely nothing that makes her incapable of doing tasks that she did daily for over 50 years before other than a desire to have someone else do them for her because that's easier than doing it yourself. I've thought about dementia or depression but she seem to have any confusion or fogginess and she doesn't seem depressed. She's always motivated to do things like meet up with friends and is impeccable with taking care of her appearance. I've had a conversation with her about the fact that her not wanting to do something is not the inability to do something. It's selfish to say you 'can't' do something just because you don't want to do it. It doesn't mean that it doesn't get done, just that she's making someone else do the work.
I don't know what to do because she hasn't saved anything for retirement and I think that the church thinks they're helping someone who is truly in need by giving her an easy charity job and providing all her needs when in reality I think they're enabling her 'meh, someone else will do it for me' attitude. She's not so subtly dropped hints that she wants to come live with me and 'take care' of the kids but I know that it would be a nightmare trying to raise two young kids and my mom. She has a total lack of awareness of how much work she is and thinks that apologizing for not helping is equal to helping. She has made no plans for what to do when she actually is incapable of taking care of herself and I would feel to guilty to put her in a home or leave her on the streets. I've tried talking to her and she took it as a "You should try to push yourself out of your comfort zone." and not "Stop making other people do everything for you." I've also tried just refusing to help. In the last week of her stay I stopped making her coffee and told her if she wanted it badly enough she'd figure out how to work the stove; she didn't.
My husband tries really hard when she's here but she lies often and just creates stress on relationships. I get tired from having to do so much and he gets tired to come home after a long day of working and have to deal with her. She'll do things like leave the door open when she comes home, then lie and say it wasn't her so she 'doesn't get in trouble'. She has also lied about leaving choking hazards around the house that I found the toddler with. She lies in the same way a kid lies because she doesn't want us to get mad at her instead of just admitting blame and not doing it again. He had a really hard time having her here for a month; I can't imagine him being able to stomach having her here long term.
Does anyone have any advice or has anyone dealt with a situation similar to this that might be able to provide some insight?
TL;DR My mom has stopped taking care of herself and has no plan for the future. I'm worried I'll have to take care of her and am afraid of the stress it'll put on my life.
Submitted September 03, 2019 at 04:37AM by winsomewisdom https://ift.tt/2zMTJQu
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