I am blessed that I have not had this experience. As I read your post, it feels to me like you have given tremendous thought to your relationship with your mother. You have determined what you will and won't do.
And above all, you have made YOU the priority in caring for yourself. CONGRATULATIONS on this HUGE step...a very difficult task for the abused.
I completely support you standing your ground. Perhaps a face to face with your sisters (together if at all possible), to walk them through the personal journey to get to "here". Ask them for their support of you. And then accept their decision.
I applaud your decisions. You owe your mother nothing. YOU DESERVE to feel safe, healthy and happy.
My sister is now having her own health issues due to the stress. I told her I could no longer bear the burden of her anxieties. She talks a great game but is always late or has to change her plans and asks me to cover for her. I finally started telling her no. It was a way for me to show her that life happens and we were not equipped to cover as a family. He was either going to go without or we needed to change the arrangement. She would get angry because in her mind I could easily do it because I was retired and she was still working.
I told her it would be criminal to leave a young child unattended in a home for hours. This was really no different with his dementia and I would not allow the arrangement any longer. It didn't matter what dad wanted because he was not of right mind but we certainly were. I would have appreciated her acknowledgement of the situation and her support. Even without it I had to move forward. It was then flipped on me that it wasn't really about Dad's safety but more for my own selfishness because I wanted my three days back to myself. I won't lie that there was truth in both and I own it. I knew he wasn't safe and I knew I couldn't be awake 24/7 to watch him.
There was verbal abuse, neglect and alcoholism in our family. Functional dysfunction. There was a trust written back in 2008 and I took responsibility to carry things out in the end because I knew my siblings could/would never handle it. I left home right after HS. I always referred to it as the house of pain. Knowing I would have eventual responsibility for everything felt oppressive every time I entered the property. My parents wanted to stay in the house until their deaths. That would have been great if they lived a good life and died simple deaths. But no................. we had dementia and hoarding. Mom turned into Mrs. Havisham and dad turned into a ghost. Children of alcoholics become masters of not seeing what is really in front of them. We were not the Brady Bunch. You can't rework the past by swapping places and parenting your parent. For over 6 months I was suffering horrible reflux while trying to keep all the plates spinning and family and feelings together. From the moment I made the decision to move dad and let my sibling figure out their own relationships and feelings I haven't needed to nibble on a single antacid and have slept like a baby. I should have taken my counselors advice months ago. He told me if you keep feeding the pigeons you are just training them to let you take care of them. So looking forward to not worrying about anything but what is happening under my own roof.
I apologize for such longs posts but as you can see.............. I'm right in it this week and still have a lot of energy behind it.
It must be nice to even have the money to have the option to move parents into a home if applicable (homes are very expensive, aren't they?). Seriously this has got to be a very small portion of the population that even has that kind of money or inherited assets. I don't think I'd be able to, I don't know what I'd do, I also can't quit my job, I don't think about the future mostly, I hope people die peacefully and healthily in their sleep. because I am not rich enough to do anything but neither are most people probably, there is no good answers to things, life sucks in this country.
Trees don't grow on money
In NY and I assume elsewhere, Medicaid pays for nursing home care after the assets run dry. If there are no assets to begin with, there are usually county homes. They don't pay for assisted living or such.
I always say that I don't plan for a hurricane while I'm standing in the middle of one. Yes, wouldn't it be nice to be "rich".
We also take care of my husband's mother. Her assets have now dropped to the point where she is eligible for Medicaid as well as Veteran's benefits. Starting tomorrow we will be looking for a similar living arrangement for her. She has been in assisted living and that is spendy.
In my dad's case I had a few years in advance to start climbing the pile of stuff and sell off what was salvageable. We then downsized him to an apartment in a senior community while I liquidated the rest of the assets. After all this was done it was time to look at memory care. What I found was much less than had I put him in a corporate run memory care. It was pretty much what we were already paying for his rent and his meals in independent living. A friend is a Senior Care Advisor and helped me find this place that I most likely wouldn't have found on my own given I was in a time crunch for safety.
I'm sorry you had to manage this on your own, Simplemind. Another example of how having siblings doesn't mean that responsibilities will be shared. Reminds me of a TV show where one of the characters sighed and complained, "Why do *I* always have to be the adult?" I know it gets wearying because I have had some days like that too, although fortunately they're all now in the past.
Don't apologize for your long posts - this issue is something most of us here have faced or will be facing, so sharing these experiences is very helpful.
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