Mother is gravely ill - how do I manage? Your thoughts appreciated ...

[nightsong]

Hello everyone,

This board has given me much comfort over the years and I hope i have been able to give a little back, but I haven't been here for quite a while. I know you are loving and supportive people though, so I hope you don't mind me resurfacing just to post about my current crisis. Any thoughts you have will be much appreciated by me.

My N. mother is in hospital and has been there for some weeks. She is 89 and suffering from the effects of decades of smoking, mainly breathing problems and circulation issues. Her legs are swollen and infected and not responding very well to treatment. Clearly the prognosis is not very good but as far as I can tell she is not in immediate danger.

Her only visitor apart from me + DH is her sister, who is 87 and lives very close to the hospital. We live a three hour drive away. Our family relationships are, as ever, strained. My aunt is well involved in the whole toxic N. family scene and is now refusing to speak to me - all contact is through my cousin, with whom I'm on reasonable terms. Needless to say I don't know what I've done to upset my aunt.

I've been phoning my mother every other day for a chat. The last couple of times she's refused to talk as she is "Very busy". So I have no idea whether she's annoyed with me for some unspecified reason - if she thinks she's dying and isn't coping - or what.

We were due to visit my mother yesterday (Tuesday). Late on Monday she rang to say my aunt was coming on Tuesday, so could we come another day. Of course we'd arranged our week around the visit. I went into my usual child voiceless mode and said yes, OK, we'd come another day. DH was not amused.

Last night I got very freaked out by the whole situation. I keep remembering when my father died (they were divorced and I'm an only child). I dealt with all the stuff you have to do and she wouldn't even come and look after my two young home-schooled children for a few hours so that I could register the death and arrange the funeral. She wasn't there for me when my disabled son was born - or when any of my kids were born, come to that. She never has been involved in any helpful way with me or my family. It goes without saying that my childhood as an only child of two warring narcissists was hell. I really thought I was past this kind of "It's not fair" stuff but I feel full of rage and hatred at a time when I guess I should be feeling love and compassion.

I want to run away and not deal with it. I don't even think I'd feel guilty if she dies and I don't see her again, though maybe I'm kidding myself there. But my head is full of confusion and unnrestrained emotion - I keep crying and it feels more like unexpressed anger than the sadness it should be. I've had therapy, I thought I was past all this.

Any thoughts you have here will be very welcome.

[Sealynx]

I want to run away and not deal with it. I don't even think I'd feel guilty if she dies and I don't see her again, though maybe I'm kidding myself there. But my head is full of confusion and unnrestrained emotion - I keep crying and it feels more like unexpressed anger than the sadness it should be. I've had therapy, I thought I was past all this.


Hi Nightsong.   I think what makes an N's death especially hard is that we come to the point where we can no longer say, If she would just, or when she finally, or if I could just.... We are forced into a final acceptance of things ending the way they have always been, unhappy, strained and abusive. There is no apology, no reward for trying so very hard so very often, only the knowledge that one who could not love you and derived no benefit from your being there (except perhaps for a sense of control), is gone. What could you do? What can you do? Very little and she probably won't even appreciate that. There is a time to admit helplessness and embrace hopelessness. I think the death of an N is one.
Sending you loving energy to get through this.
Sea

[JustKathy]

I totally understand the emotional roller coaster that you're on. This time last year I was told that my mother had terminal lung cancer, with one month to live. As it turns out, she is probably faking it, but I did initially believe it, and did go through quite the gamut of emotions.

At first I felt complete relief that I would soon be free of her. Then I started to feel sorry for her. Despite everything, she was still my mother, and I didn't want her to suffer a painful death. Then everything changed. The family ugliness came out. She started sending guilt letters, manipulating everyone, revised the will to pit me against my siblings, and so on. After that I did a complete 180, and started wishing that she would just hurry up and die.

The only way I'll ever know if she really has cancer is if she actually does die. But I've reached the point where if she went tomorrow, I will have no guilt over my decision to remain NC and not visit her. I think we all want to hold onto the fantasy that our Ns will suddenly have a deathbed epiphany, and realize all the harm they've caused, and try to make everything right . . . apologize and tell us they love us. It doesn't happen. When my NM finally does die, I will certainly have a lot of mixed up emotions, but pity won't be one of them. I suffered for 50 years. If she suffers for a few months, she gets off easy.

[Gaining Strength]

I'm just popping in to say that I am thinking about you.  I cannot fathom what you are going through but I have enormous sympathy and compassion for you.  I hope that when I have thought about your situatio for a while that perhaps I will have some words of comfort to add.  Thinking of you.

[sKePTiKal]

I don't think I know you - but I do hear your need: loud & clear.

My advice is simple: do what you feel YOU need to do. For YOU - and even for your mom. Doesn't really matter whether she recognizes it at all... what matters is that you know what you do for her. The tears (and anger) will ease a bit... tho' maybe not totally.

This is a very complex emotional situation you're faced with, so don't forget to recognize your own limits... and to treat yourself extra-specially kindly.

Sending you energy and white light comfort...

[Logy]

Nightsong,

You  said you are in a situation where you "should" be feeling love and compassion.  Yet the history of your family tells me no one showed you love and compassion.  So you are a person who cares deeply, who wants to do the right thing for everyone, even if they didn't do the right thing for you.

Please feel the love of those who understand your situation.  You are not alone.  I personally am tired of being told what I "should" feel.  And do. 

You are angry.  You deserve to be angry!  NM disrupted your previously agreed schedule to accommodate someone else. Hell, yes, I would be ready to explode! She paid no attention to your needs with your children, with the death of your father. 

You were probably never allowed to express anger when you felt slighted.  Me neither.  So I am caught in the constant crying, depression.  But........occasionally I let loose.  I feel guilty afterwards but OMG it felt good when the anger came out.  And I feel like I have taken a little bit of my life back.

Please do not feel guilt for having these feelings.  You have done the best anyone could. 

[Hopalong]

Hi Nightsong...
Imo, there's no right thing or wrong thing...

Except one right thing: compassion. But in the right order...

First, for yourself. Seriously meditate (often, and especially now) very lovingly, and with compassion, on the little girl in you.

If one person's experience around this helps...I found I can visualize this by talking myself through it not vaguely but very step-by-step. Like a "how to". First, I orient in what I know. I know how to feel empathy and compassion for other people. When I open to it, it's like a warm beam (or sometimes, when I'm worn out, a tepid cord) going from my heart outward, in kindness. I feel a mix of love and pity (the classical, not condescending, sense of "pity") toward another whose suffering I see. Out it flows. Doesn't harm me. Doesn't fill or empty me, it's just doing what compassion does. (Bigger than my ego, like...weather, a form of energy, that's all. May cause an ache, or tears. Or like lightning, even heartbreak. But it's all weather, energy, doing the natural thing. Moves through. Changes.)

Okay, so. To have compassion for myself, it usually takes a bit more work...so I visualize the beam of that warm kindness. A kind energy and light, that cord. Almost see it as a "floodlight" (there I am, Junior Lighthouse, beaming away, out to the world...). Next step, I turn the light around, around, keep going, all the way around until it is aimed back at my own heart. And bathe in this kind light. 5 minutes is fine. Really a long time.

You got 5 minutes a day?

Then...I found I could turn it back around, and aim it at my Nmother as she was getting ready to go...

I think that practice, of intentionally meditating on loving yourself, might free some up for her. (And if it doesn't that only means it doesn't. That's okay too.) Whether you demonstrate it outwardly or with any particular action or not is not the point...there'll be weather, either way. It's okay.

If you're trying to think of what to say or do and you have decided to see her, and if you are wrestling to see if you can feel any compassion (or want to), another place to investigate that that can make a lot of sense near the end of life, sometimes more than any narrative or word-related or verbal thing...is touch.

You may find a way to touch her, for a moment or so, that allows the cord to unfurl. (And if you don't that's okay too. It may never happen or it might happen ten years after she's gone....as far as the universe is concerned, it's all the same.)

For me, it was just lightly rubbing circles on her back, when she could still sit up. I didn't go on and on with it. Just did it a little bit now and then, kind of a quiet brief thing. But I noticed it eased me, felt right. She didn't react much. No melting. Didn't matter whether I could see something, since I wasn't worried about whatever did--or did not--come back. It was a one-way beam. That was fine. I was doing it because it settled my own heart. It felt better than blocking my need to love.

Wasn't drastic, wrenching, anguished love any more. Just a beam. Weather. Cord.

I don't know if this is a way of managing what you and she are going through, the separate places you are in (and must be, on your own points on your own paths) ... but if you are drawn to the notion about compassion, I hope this example of how it happened for another child of a dying N, helps if it can.

That may not be a good path for you -- I can't know for another. But it's just what came up when I read your post.

This is a hard chapter. But strangely, healing things are possible, even now. In your own way, you'll find them.

with love,
Hops

[teartracks]

Hi nightsong,

There's so much I would like to say and tried to say in an abandoned post.  I just couldn't seem to put my thoughts down in a consise way.    My mom passed away two years ago.  I spent many hours before and after overwhelmed by the kind of feelings you describe.  It's something that you kinda have to be there to understand.   I kept walking on that razor thin line of wanting to stay by her (I loved her in spite of our terribly dysfunctional relationship) and wanting to run away.  I stayed.  It was hard.  The staying required that I just get through some of the hardest parts.  Because of her age 88 1/2, dementia had crept in and that seemed to enhance and intensify loveless behaviors I'd witnessed and experienced from her all my life.   Your mom's age no doubt adds another complicated layer to what was complicated enough already.  I feel your woundedness, (((((((nightsong)))))))...so so sorry.

Try not to lose yourself in the situation.  It's okay to take needed  breaks from the routine, especially since she is arranging and rearranging her life to suit herself seemingly with not much thought about you and your day to day needs and life in general.  I say count that as a blessing.  Release her to her own desires/whims (her age and medical needs considered) for as long as is reasonable.


tt  

[nightsong]

Thank you all so much. I don't have the energy to reply to each of you but you have all helped more than you can know. I will come back to this thread many times and reread your words of compassion, kindness and wisdom. Actually I am crying now becuase I have received just the kind of nurturing support that I was always denied as a child. Of course, that's what this place is all aout.

Thank you.

[BonesMS]

((((((((((((((((((((((NightSong))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Bones

[Ales2]

((((((((((Nightsong))))))))))

I really feel the pain of your post. This is a very difficult and emotionally charged time.  I echo everyone's post here - everything is very well stated.

You did not mention who your best resources are for support (friend, therapist, other family member) but maybe this is the time to circle those wagons and let them know you need them right now to get you through this. Maybe its verbal support, maybe its help at home when you are away, maybe its getting you outdoors for exercise and talking. Maybe its a funny movie -even when you dont feel like it.

I also do this little journal exercise thing which helps me stay focused - I write - Today, I feel _______about my NM and thats all I have time for today. It lets me vent while also encouraging myself to move on.  This might be something useful to over time. If you keep and date your entries you will also see how things change and evolve and grow over time.

Hang in there and don't give up - this experience might bring you a surprise gift, lesson or healing, so don't be afraid of those feelings ot the experience.

There are so many hearbreaking posts here sometimes - I wish there was something more I could say to east the pain of the years of suffering.

All the best to you, Alesia