TriedTooHard - You owe me a new keyboard! "I found a great place for mom!"
Spirit, unBPD Didi would often lament at the fate of others who wound up in nursing homes, shaking her head, getting upset or angry, being indignant on their behalf, because *you have children to take care of you when you're old.*
She even bemoaned *my* chosen childlessness by saying, "But who is going to take care of you when you're old!?"
I'd say, "The state..."
- and she'd get a *really* weird look on her face.
For a *very* long time, I didn't realize I was being *groomed* to be her and/or unNPD Ray's caregiver - I mean, these are the same two people who acted like the 3-hour drive to their hometown was actually a trip to Mars, wouldn't act in *any* sort of caregiving capacity for their elderly parents except to offer money and criticism to the ones that were stuck being "it" - and now they expected me to put my life on hold for THEM?
Not bloody likely!
Once they get it into their heads that you're going to be the Old Age Golden Parachute Plan - that's it. You'll never change their minds. Even if you moved halfway around the globe tomorrow, they *still* think you'll come back and either take them in to a new house or move into theirs, where the abuse will continue nonstop, 24/7.
My best suggestion to you is *deflect* - and keep repeating that you don't have kids. She hasn't seem to caught on to the fact that YOU don't have an Old Age Golden Parachute Plan. Make her no promises, even though they're *completely* unenforceable promises - as you said, you never know what the future will bring, and for me, it meant chucking either one or both of them in a nursing home at the first possible moment!
Didi tried getting me to be her 24/7 slave - it got her lower phone contact and Medium Chill instead. So she doubled-down on the unnecessary hospitalizations for her Makeitupitis - it got her even *lower* phone contact.
Then she started mentioning when the days when people would have a hospital bed in their living room, for dear old mom and dad - oh, screw that noise! I noped right out of that and lowered contact even *more* - but as a way of making conversation, mentioned we were painting the living room, and she said we didn't have to do that for HER.
I said, "We're not. We're doing it for us."
She them waifed, "Where are you going to put your furniture?"
I said, "Right back where it was, once the paint is dry."
The sick, sad, weak little waif slammed her heavy 1970's phone down in my ear.
It took me a full day to realize *she thought she was getting her hospital bed.*
She died in Hospice, in the company of strangers, a few weeks later, after repeatedly being ordered OUT of the ER, due to her terminal cancer and DNR.
Ray was a lot easier - after I dehoarded the place (because I have to sleep at night, too), I went back to VVVVVVVVVVVVVLC, avoided his calls, let the machine pick up, made myself as hard to get hold of as the summit of Everest, and wound up doing four separate rounds with social workers, trying to "motivate" me to be his caregiver, when I was the one who suggested a competency test in the first place!
He had a team of caregivers in place, after a heart attack he'll swear to you that he never had, fired them all, and locked out the world, thinking *I* should care for him.
He was wrong - and he overplayed his hand in spectacular fashion by falling on the bathroom floor the day the Visiting Nurse *just happened* to be coming by, figuring she'd drag me over there by my ear and read me the riot act.
Instead, I stayed here, gave the cops permission to break in, and since APS was on site, the social worker had him pulled from the house and taken to a hospital, where he was declared incompetent not much later, when he tried snowing a shrink to work his own agenda.
I let an eldercare attorney hammer out the financial deets, and the nursing home does the rest. I've been NC for over 3 glorious years.
If that's what you have in mind for your mom - don't let on. Make a plan to work with Team Professionals, behind the scenes (you don't want her to know you're in on that plan to get her into AL), and go into Stealth Mode - meaning, if you're her Health Care Proxy and you think she's starting to slip, *you* can order a competency test and *she won't know you did it.*
Once one is ordered, they'll keep retesting periodically, depending on how she did, and how bad her other medical issues are. She'll be on a *bubble* - and people will start becoming more and more aware of her many issues - including her difficult personality, which will probably start to run the show as she's able to do less and less, as her age increases.
I can't tell you how many times I said, "I can't make Ray listen to a damned thing. If I say it, it's WRONG, and he'll do the exact opposite, trying to prove he's fine when he's anything BUT."
If that's what you see for yourself - start extricating yourself NOW, start shoring up your boundaries (what you will/won't do), and *refuse* to get involved.
If asked to be her caregiver for only "one hour a week!" - REFUSE. That one hour will quickly become two, become four, become four hours, twice a week, become four hours, every few days, then four hours a *day* and before you even realize Caregiver Creep has set in, you'll be at hers, 8 hours a day - or more - and she'll call you the second you get home, to *complain about all the stuff you missed or didn't do.*
You don't want it to get to the point where you're taking her to the ER, over a minor medical issue, just to say, "I can't take her home. She needs more care than I give. You HAVE to place her in a nursing home!"
Yes - that's *legal* and *acceptable* (it's a safe place) - but you don't want to be so run down, burned out and dragged through the dirt that you feel it's the only option.
Thinking of these things now is your best option - you can come up with a plan that best suits you, and your mom may not like it, but *tough.*
If she can't plan her own future and thinks *you* will be responsible for her - well, she's probably going to find out the hard way that her Old Age Golden Parachute Plan had some kind of large bird fly into it, which tore a great, big, hole - and now it's crashing.
It doesn't have to take you down with it.
