My mom has 3 brothers. None of them have ever offered to do ANYTHING for my mom, nor have they ever offered any financial assistance of any kind. Perhaps that’s normal, perhaps siblings don’t bear any real responsibility toward eachother, but, never the less, it annoys me.
One of my mom’s brothers and his wife are going to be visiting us in a couple of weeks. They’re staying at a hotel. I am not excited. I am not excited to have to participate in my family culture. It’s mostly grandstanding on current events, talking about how terrible life is, being weirdly nostalgic about their childhoods and my grandparents–much of which was not emotionally healthy in my opinion.
I just found out from (a different) one of my mom’s brothers that these two brothers (my uncles and my aunt) that they all do drugs together. Great. That’s just great.
The 3rd brother is the one who stole all of my grandparents money from their estate. Lovely.
So–I’m sure I will get to hear all about that too.
I suppose it could be worse. They’re only visiting for one afternoon, and they’re staying at a hotel. Possibly because they couldn’t use drugs comfortably in my home? Dunno. Whatever.
As far as I’m concerned, none of them are emotionally or financially responsible, and I am looking forward to having nothing to do with them after my mom passes away.
I totally understand the feeling that you have about family. Me and my husband went through a similar situation with his family and even some of our close friends and neighbors. No one truly understands what a caregiver goes through unless they are doing themselves especially the uncaring family, neighbors, and friends.
Hey Tara, I can relate — albeit different circumstances. My parents co-purchased my mom’s present home in 1950 with my dad’s sister and her husband: each couple owned 100% of their respective halves of the home, the top half being my family’s. In the ’80s, my aunt and uncle who owned downstairs began spending winters permanently in Florida. By the early 2000s, they weren’t even coming home to visit their bottom house half in summers anymore. They had 2 children, my cousins — one moved to Florida permanently in the late ’70s, the other lives nearby but never comes to visit his family property. So through later years, my parents and I got stuck as “caretakers” for not only our house half but the common property, and anytime common area repair communications needed to be made, it was a big deal because my dad would have to call my uncle in Florida or my older cousin in a nearby town, etc.
Murphy’s Law, my uncle dies in Florida just a couple of months after my dad died here in Boston — and nobody’s come back to rent out, inhabit, or check on my aunt and uncle’s bottom half of the house in the last 3 years or so. (That’s why the “brick stairs repair” is such a pain in the butt, of course my older cousin is visiting the rest of the family down in Florida now, so it’s pretty much my mom and I making quote calls.) All I ever hear my Monday-morning-quarterback family chiming in is, “How does your mom live there still?? How do you both do it?? She should move into something more manageable, or you in with her!” How giving relatives are with advice, when it’s not their situation to handle or their advice to implement on their own..
My mom’s 80. Her attic and cellar possessions, along with her large second-floor house’s, would be a major excavation project to sort through, transfer or touch. Put mom WHERE? Sell her half of the house, now, and try to get a condo for her for which we probably couldn’t even cover the whole costs in these times? My mom’s mortgage has been paid on the house for over 25 years — we’re not gonna put her under the whim of a new mortgage, or of a landlord’s apartment rental, at this point in her life! Healthwise, mentally, physically and emotionally, I’m not about to move all my life and belongings from a fourth-floor place down eight flights of stairs where I live, back into my mom’s second-story, just statistically to outlive her and I myself end up being the person stuck alone in the house trying to care for and move out of it again in my 50s someday.. Pardon the acronym, but I tell “advice-givers” now: “T.I.T.” “Think – It – Through.” People love to tell you how to do things, but then conveniently tiptoe away since they don’t need to be the ones to “live” and carry out the suggestions..
Since dad died, I’ve really learned who are my mom’s and my true friends and family…and who’s not. My cousins show no interest or respect for chipping and checking in with me on their half of our house which overall sheltered, raised, and protected us through a generation. My mom and dad didn’t raise me to be a spoiled brat, so around the obstacles I have I try to be there for my mom as much as I can on many levels, and I will never stop doing that for her. So I know what you mean: someday, when my mom has moved on, and after I sell the entire house with my co-owning family, if I never have to deal with or see them again it will really not be too soon! G.
I have been the caregiver for my mom or at least the one nearest her when she needed care since 1997 after she suffered a head injury in an accident. After she recovered she had her faculties but was very gullible, easily influenced, paranoid of ME, and she also lost her job.
My young daughter had lived with her and we had to move when my mother became involved with a man years younger than herself whoi I feel was after her finacial resources. I wound up having a nervous breakdown after two years of living with her after the head injury and had to get my child and myself away. In the last several years my mother told people I was [trying to put her ‘away’, which was not true, was involved with a gorup of church people who wanted to take my daughter away from me becuase they believed I was a bad influence( being a single mom), was involved with a financial planner who convinced her to take all her oney out of savings and put it with him(she susequently lost over 70% of her assets in the recent 08 stock crash), she told all our frineds and family I was being mean to her, she got cancer in 03, which I was available to help her with until she died in dec. I moved back in with her last summer and cared for her24/7 taking her to dr.s m giving her meds, taking her to the hospital for transfusions….I went to the ER myself two months after I moved back in because I thought i was having a heart attack. (it was an anxiety episode).
All of her friends except one 82 yr old woman, dropped her- these were primarily her church acquaintances who had harrassed my daughter and I after I took my daughter out of their church-my sister who only lived 100 miles away came to see her four times for 3 day visits and one overnight visit in seven months, before the week mom died, would not help with mom’s care or coemn to give me a few das rest. We had caregivers, but in the end we had glassware, linens and other items missing, and one of them apparently called the state elder abuse inspector on me the week after I fired her.
Mom died in Dec. I broke my arm and had to have surgery on it three weeks later, I am in the process still of trying to pack up my apt to move to my mother’s home, but its slow and i have no help. My dau is in school fulltime and works fultime since my mother lost all her money on the stock market.
Mom had always said she would help my daughter go to school and that she would make sure she left us money to have a new start in life with after my caring for her. Now this is gone.
My sister is co executor of the will with mem bt has left 100% of the duties to me. It has been overwhelming and i am exhausted going from one incredibly difficult situaiton to another. You would think I have no family.
to make it more hurtful, three years ago my mother took my name off as co benefiiary she had and left my sister on as sole beneificiary. My sister makes 50,000 a yrm has a career, a home etcetc and has done nothing to help my mom. She has had no out of pocket expenses in the least ever in doing anything for mom nor has she helped me to care for mom.
I have asked my sister to help me pack up my apt and to help me clean out mom’s home and she says she doesn’t have time. She is busy, That is all I have ever heard fron her- she is too busy. My dau and I have taken the brunt of everything mom has gone thru and it continues evn after her death. I have real resentment that i have gone thru the hell I have and it has acutally made my sister’s life easier and more carefree.
I have never felt so alone or so dead tired, or depressed. Unappreciated isn’t even the word here. I feel like a rug everyone in my family has simply walked on for years.But someone has had to do these things.
Just wanted to spout off.
thanks