they never said they were leaving....

I am a Senior's care giver. Recently my brother and his wife moved away and bought a house on the island without telling me or my 83 year old mother that they house hunting or even thinking of moving away. Now they are acting like that was a perfectly normal thing to do and they are outraged that I feel upset or that I would dare to suggest that they have done me wrong by not letting me or Mom know that they were even thinking of moving away. It's not like they were doing much to help me in my role as a care-giver, yet I still feel betrayed the fact that they literally said "We bought a house on the island and we are moving next month," And that was the first I heard of their intention to move. Last night we had a bitter fight and I am clearly the bad guy in their minds, how dare I take offence at them living their lives. Meanwhile, Mom has been in hospital three times in the last two months, for 3-5 days each time and they have yet to attend, despite being "only a phone call away" and "only 50 miles (80km) away."

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Sorry for them

May 27, 2022 at 7:30pm

when karma deals them their harsh judgement

8 6Rating: +2

Hmmnnnn…

May 27, 2022 at 8:44pm

We’re only hearing your side of the story here. Obviously, since it’s your post. But can you answer a few basic questions? Such as, do you live with your mother? Do you have a job outside of the home that pays you actual money? Does your mother support you or are you a normal self-supporting adult? These might seem like weird things to ask, but the answers are important. I’ve recently been dealing with a similar situation and the person who thinks we’re so terrible for moving away is really only angry because it means we’re not going to be as readily available to clean up the messes she and our mother have created with their co-dependent relationship. She says she’s “taking care” of our mother but she does almost nothing for her at all. She’s been living with and being supported by our mother for most of her life, and has been dependent on my husband and me for money every time she’s charged up our mother’s credit card too much. So in reality she’s the one being taken care of. Our mother isn’t senile and she’s refused over and over again to make any changes at all. So we moved away because it was what was best for us. I’m not going to apologize for doing it either. They’ve made their bed and I finally got too tired of fighting a losing battle. So Op, does any of this strike a chord for you?

I have two parents...

May 27, 2022 at 10:01pm

... who dont live together. They are in their 70s, but have been having major hospitalizations every few years, one or the other, since their 60s. I don't know if ppl who dont have this understand what it means in terms of what I can and cannot do.

Like, could I go away for a month, or move out of my mom's house? She doesn't need assisted living, but, like, she is on all sorts of medications, and several times I have had to take her to the hospital. Once she just passed out, after her cardiologist adjusted her medication, and if I had not been there, she would have either died, or been in a bad way, presuming the medication would have worn off and she would have come to. So I can't really move out.

Dad lives on his own in a house that has been converted into 4 illegal suites, paying rent to somene. He has started having balance problems, just sits inside for multiple days napping and watching NetFlix and YouTube. He has no insight into how having balance problems is a really big deal. One fall in the wrong way can be very serious.

And then I have an Aunt who also lives alone, who has balance issues and a few other issues. None of them recognize that living alone is dangerous in a sense. Also, their social skills are all too poor such that even tho we have a detached home w/ 4 bedrooms, they cant all live together. Between my dad and my aunt, they piss away at least $3000 a month to landlords because they never learned to actually live with other people.

I also have no other family who cares in the sense I do, they are all liberal "we're all individuals" types who treat their own family like co-workers. You wouldn't move in with your sick co-worker, would you?

I think your brother needs to smarten up, as my Granny would say. But he won't, he has enough to afford to live on the Island, so he doesn't have to.

9 6Rating: +3

They feel guilty

May 27, 2022 at 10:05pm

But they don’t want to help anyway. No point calling out this kind of bad behaviour. It’s bad what they did but always think about the why. Why did they choose to act this way? Just guilt probably with leaving you to care for Mum even thou they weren’t gonna help anyway. Make sure you are ok and try to get help elsewhere, just talking to someone supportive can help.

9 6Rating: +3

@Sorry for them

May 28, 2022 at 3:50am

Will you please google Karma, westerners define like they would something out of the Old Testament fire and brimstone, nonsense because westerners are kind of nasty compared to Hindus or Buddhists. I'm neither, and I don't believe in Karma, but I'm tired of it being used incorrectly.

4 6Rating: -2

It's amazing how self absorbed some people can be.

May 28, 2022 at 11:02am

I have a friend in the exact same position as you. She has 3 siblings, and all of them live within a twenty kilometer radius of their mother. But she is the only child to offer practical, daily support that her 88 year old mother requires. The other 3 have better things to do, apparently. They'll show up with tulips on Mother's Day and a Poinsettia at Christmas, stay for an hour and then bolt. Don't burn out! Try to seek out help if you can from the community. See if there are supports you can access. You deserve to have support, even if it doesn't come from so-called "family."

12 1Rating: +11

@Hmmnnnn…

May 28, 2022 at 5:26pm

All of what you say is a long way of saying "I don't care because reasons."

The issue is that your mother, as she ages, regardless of your sister's presence of absence, will need someone to live with her, or it increases the chance of something like a bad fall, or bad eating habits, etc. etc.

I have volunteered in the Church World for a long time: the adults who fare best live with a spouse, or are VERY active in community and often have a fairly strong personality type. One woman I am thinking of is in her mid 90s, still drives, visits friends who have deceased spouses, volunteers are church, etc. etc. Other women, in their 60s, because they are retired and basically do not even talk to people "except at church coffee hour at their doctor" follow a fairly typical pattern. Men, well, not as many men come to church, and I suspect this is because they are like my dad, after they stop working, the social functioning, which is often sort of marginal in males, declines even further. Of course there are exceptions, but it sounds like your mom is not one of them.

Blaming a co-dependent relationship for your abandoning your mother is not kind. It's quite natural for primates to live in kin-groups for their whole lives, and money is not natural, so asking "do you earn money" is just a red herring so you can pathologize your mother and sister, and go "well, it is a lost cause."

You are of course under no legal obligation to care for your mother, just like she could have left you at an orphanage after you were born.

You know that not 100% of people work, right? Trying to pathologize having a family member who does not work, as though this is some sort of bizarre morality play, again, it's unnecessary. You do not have to give reasons for doing what you do, and it is prob. best you don't, because the reasons you have given make me think you are a very not nice person, in spite of being an "adult with a job."

My experience is that not nice people focus on their careers and capacity to earn money as a sign of their "moral value." I met ppl like this in Church too. I also dealt w/ developmentally disabled adults. Pretty much universally, they were nicer ppl than the money-chasers.

4 2Rating: +2

Reasonable offspring

May 28, 2022 at 8:30pm

The reason we have offspring is to insure that someone will look after us when we are old. It doesn't always work out that way, but it's a remote hope. Just look after yourself because it sounds like your sibling really doesn't really care about the situation. And if you don't take care of yourself, you might not be much use for your mother.

3 3Rating: 0

I Understand your feelings

May 28, 2022 at 9:40pm

It completely sucks when one child takes on all of the responsibilities in caring for an aging parent, and the siblings don’t help out AT ALL. I i your situation because I am in the same boat. My parents require thousands of dollars for health related issues. None of my siblings offered any money to help out, not even $100, all the while they have money to hit the bars with their friends and go travelling. They refuse even a meeting to discuss who will cover future financial needs of my parents. I’m frustrated, dismayed, disappointed. I guess the most important thing is to keep my parents from suffering, and I’m single handedly doing that. But I hate my siblings for their selfish and self centred ways of existing.

7 1Rating: +6

@Sorry for them ... Will you please google Karma

May 28, 2022 at 9:51pm

It can be defined in different ways as interpreted by various faith patterns ie. 'what goes around comes around' or to some religions with a concept of a wrathful Creator it can be a fear based scheme control mechanism of a fictionalized supposed wrathful entity and to others a simple fact of inter-galactic physics ie. 'Cream rises and sh*t sinks' or in street culture its sometimes said: 'Your karma ran over my dogma so my dogma lifted its leg and pissed on your karma's tire' :-)

5 1Rating: +4

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