Feedback on letter to my siblings re helping out with elderly mom
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Anonymous
Did you find her less capable of living independently and more reliant on others (namely you) than is normal for her. Do you anticipate her needing more help soon. |
Anonymous
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Stop with the "you need to". Start a sentences with "I".
"I am spending $$$ each month and it is becoming a burden. I'm calling to ask for your help" "I am doing blah blah blah and it isn't sustainable. Could you please help me by doing x, y, z?" All that other stuff is going to annoy them, probably put them on the defensive, and they'll be less likely to help. It comes off as a guilt trip. |
Anonymous
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Just a note of encouragement. My mom was in the situation of doing everything for my grandmother who had alzheimer's. Her two brothers were doing very little and it was very, very stressful to my mom (I still think it took years off her life...). She told her brothers that they needed to all meet in person to discuss what needed to happen to care for my grandmother (in a very "let's figure this out together" way).
I must say they *completely* rose to the occasion and came up with ideas that my mom never would have proposed. For example, they knew she needed to be somewhere with a memory care unit and my mom had only researched places near her. Instead my uncle suggested a place near him as he felt he was better with small amounts of time more frequently vs. having to travel whereas my mom was better to travel and spend several days/ weeks at a time but then be able to step away and go home as it was so emotional and all-consuming for her. My uncle ended up stopping by to see his mom every single day to have coffee on his way to work. And whenever my mom got away on a trip, etc., my other uncle would make sure he was available for longer support. These solutions never would have come up if my mom had just demanded that they do x, y or z. And it really ended up strengthening their relationships. Good luck - family dynamics can be hard but I hope you can have a good outcome like my mom did (and she was very nervous to propose the original conversation). |
Anonymous
| Your mother is 85 years old and doesn't have any family living near her. No one even lives in her state. OP, I think you are being short sighted. Most likely, soon, your mother is going to need more help than can be accomplished on the phone. She will need someone with her physically. Are you going to move to FL? Move her into your home? Physically she may not be able to travel if she is very ill. It may make you feel better now and feel more manageable if your brothers help, but it's not going to be enough when she needs physical help a few days a week and then all the time. |
Anonymous
+ 1 My mother is 92, and her needs have increased dramatically since her mid-80's. The same goes for nearly all of her remaining friends in her age group. All of them have made choices to live near family before a crisis struck so that help would be near at hand as their needs grew. In my church community, there are several elderly folks in their mid-80s who have had no family living in state, and it has become a huge and unsustainable burden on their adult children to take major chunks of time off of work or to leave their families for long stretches when medical emergencies arose (both acute and chronic). In those cases, the elderly parents were very resistant to moving to assisted living or moving to a different state to be near family, until advancing medical needs truly left no choice, and then it was a hardship for the adult children to be trying to pack up and dispense with a household of memorabilia while also caring for the elderly parent in need. Even just thinking in terms of driving a car: some people can still drive responsibly into their early 90s, but many or most cannot. What will your mom do when she can no longer safely drive herself to get food, etc.? Also in terms of food preparation, food choices, chewing, swallowing: my mom has completely declined in all of these regards, and she is not a reliable reporter of what she has eaten if you ask her. The days run together and she thinks she has had meals when she hasn't. This was not a problem in her mid-80s. It is a huge fact of life now in her early 90s. Personal care is another issue that has grown larger in the past year or so. She has a harder time wiping herself. She has a harder time getting to the bathroom in time. She cannot bathe herself any longer. She would wear the same outfit for a week at a time if I were not there to help her choose different clothes. She truly doesn't realize that she has put on the same blouse five days in a row or that she is reusing the same socks. Even just things like pressing the wrong buttons on the remote control and being unable to get a picture on her TV: it takes me a moment to fix it for her but I cannot talk her through it on the phone. She is even starting to have a harder time dialing phone numbers. She wears a wrist band with a call button but doesn't think to or choose to use it when she falls and cannot get up and will instead just lie on the floor for the rest of the night. My mother called me at 5 a.m. a few weeks ago to say that her heart didn't feel quite right. I came right over and sure enough, she was having a medical emergency and we got her right to the hospital. But my grandmother used to complain of "pains on her chest" for decades with no detectable issue. Being a phone call away from an elderly parent is not sufficient when they get into this age range. It makes a huge difference to have a family member close at hand. (My mother and I live a mile apart but she is staying with me for several weeks while recovering from her heart issue, and then we will have to re-evaluate if she is able to return to semi-independent living nearby or if she will continue to stay with me.) For the past several years, a few times a year, my siblings and I take stock through detailed emails of what our mother's current needs are and if they can continue to be met with her living at home with increasing support (some from family and some from outside caregivers) or if we need to consider a live-in support structure. A lot can be covered by email when you've already established the premise that everyone is on Team Mama and everyone has a stake in her well-being and will help out to the extent that they are able. But in your case, just to put a big email out there to launch the conversation is not going to be the best strategy for getting the family pulling together as an invested team. As others have said, start the conversation by phone or at the next family gathering and then you can continue with periodic taking-stock emails after that. But while taking stock of current needs, it makes much more sense to be proactive and realize that the years of independent living are quickly drawing to a close. Involve your mother in this family conversation as well (either all together or in a series of separate conversations with her). Make clear to her that none of you can guarantee that you can be with her at her home base for extended periods of time if/when her needs change. Put a plan in place that will make sense for the long term, and implement as much of it as you can now, before emergencies arise. |
Anonymous
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OP, you're clearly a wonderful daughter, and your mom is lucky to have you. I would not send this letter though. You need to specifically ask for what you need and strip the letter of all judgment. Better yet, pick up the phone instead.
Your whole letter puts them on the defensive and gives them a ton of reasons to react with push back instead of hearing you. I get it, and I don't disagree with you - you've got a lot going on and feel unfairly burdened by this. You feel strongly that it's the childrens' duty to take care of their parents and you're willing to go that extra mile for your mom, which is awesome. But you're lecturing them with this - they know how you feel at this point and they don't agree with you (clearly, or else they would have stepped up). Your letter contains a lot of "shoulds" as in you passing judgment on your brothers for not meeting your personal expectation on how they should be acting. People have different opinions on how they should act in these cases, and unfortunately, no one gets to dictate to others what they "should" do. It also includes a list of reasons why you think your life is harder than theirs - I get that what you want is for them to go "oh yeah, she has young kids and a special needs kid, so she's busier than us and we should step up," but that's not what the reaction will be. If I were your brothers and I got this, I could imagine a host of reasons why I might not agree that I "should" be doing anything additional - maybe your brothers are the type who are saving for their own old age and feel like your mom made bad life decisions with her money and now they're stuck covering for her. Maybe they have anger about some childhood issues. Maybe they have anger at you. Whatever it is, they don't agree with you that they should be paying thousands of dollars and spending a ton of time. And no amount of you telling them they "should" do this is going to change their minds. And also, be careful about assuming that they will agree that your life is harder and so they need to step up. People don't take kindly to that. It's not a contest, and you honestly don't know what they've got going on in their lives. As a full-time working mom, I privately got annoyed with my 23-year-old sister who complains all the time about how tired she is. I'm like - you don't know what tired is. But I don't expect her to understand my position or to help me a ton. She's tired. It's not contest. It doesn't matter why and you're not going to be able to convince them to see it your way. Just ask them for what you need. |
Anonymous
If you hadn't stepped in and flown her to your place, would your brothers have stepped in? What would your mom have done if you were in the hospital, on business travel, had a house full of sick kids and could not invite her to stay with you? How did she get to the airport? Did she drive herself or catch a cab or did you arrange to have her transported? |
Anonymous
| ^During the hurricane we had a nasty cough/cold going through our house so it was definitely not a great place for an elderly person to be. Luckily, that wasn't an issue. But this stuff does happen. |
Anonymous
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Less emotional, more direct. Send an email.
Hi brothers. Can we schedule a facetime to discuss/plan mom's current health situation and financial needs. Here's my initial thoughts: - we all pitch in $700/mo toward her living expenses. - we each pick a category to manage for her- doctor visits and health care needs, household contracts and expense management, other - we each pick one day a week where we call and check in on her. - we each plan an annual visit or arrange plane ticket to have her visit us. Let's facetime next week and devise a plan. Love, Sister |
Anonymous
| Call, don't send a letter. They might do something or not, honestly there is nothing you can do apart from ask them to get involved. If they choose not to, what would that mean for your relationship with your brothers? Do you have a relationship with them at all? |