Spoiling my relationship with my sister

[DancingStar]

My waify uNPD mother was widowed in July and has since gone to live with my sister and her family. My mother is 86. She's always been needy and behaved more like a child than an adult, expecting others to look after her.    My sister has had a stairlift fitted and given my her a very large room to use as her bedroom/sitting room.     My mother  hates living with my sister; I appreciate it is difficult going to live in someone elses house but the other alternative is that she goes back to her own home (a 3 to 4 hour trip from where my sister & myself live) which is in a very rural location and  because she is now quite frail she would need to have carers go in daily.     My sister & I think (know) that we would be bombarded with phone calls asking for help -  she can't do things like use an atm machine,   I think my step dad even used to set the washing machine for her.   My sister works full time as well as caring for her husband who has a debilitating illnes and  I had a major operation this time last year and am still receiving treatment so it would be difficult to visit on demand or even on a weekly basis. My mother knows this but seems to be able to brush it aside.   She also doesn't like other people very much so I can foresee an avalanche of complaints about any carers she would have.  I think she'd be grinning like the cat the got the cream if I said to her that I would move back to her house with her to look after her.
I used to enjoy visiting my sister.  I'd go to her house one evening a week and we'd sit for a few hours in her kitchen chatting about our shared interests, listeing to music and drinking tea (oh yes, I live the high life, lol).   It was the thing I missed most during lockdown.    Now I go because I am visiting my mother.  She has an expectation that I will go during the day several times a week to "entertain" her because she says she is bored and lonely.   She wants me to take her out on shopping trips that last for hours.   I come back feeling ill with fatigue and although she acknowledges that it's made me tired she still wants to go and is sitting there with shoes on ready when I arrive.   I get greeted with "I've been waiting for you all morning".     By the time my sister comes home from work I'm exhaused and stay just long enough to say "Hi" to her and then just want to go off home and sleep.  Last night I was too tired to eat dinner when I got home.   
It has completely spoiled the relationship that I used to have with my sister.   We never just sit chatting and putting the world to right, like we used to, our sole duty seems to be to entertain my mother and try to please her.   When I am out with my mother she constantly bitches about what my nephews and nieces have done/haven't done/said.    I try to grey rock but it's very difficult.  One niece, currently away at uni, she seems to have really  taken against, calling her a spoilt princess and running her down at every opportunity - even very silly things like my niece had a bottle of expensive perfume and that seemed to irritate the hell out of my mother.  The fact that it might have been a present or that my niece has worked part-time and during every holiday  so might like to treat herself to expensive perfume doesn't seem to have crossed her mind.   I don't usually answer or comment.   My mother says "Don't tell D (my sister)  what I've said., she'll get angry" (like a child would say "don't tell dad etc".  It feels like she's trying to draw me into a conspiracy where I'm on her side, with my sister is on the other, iyswim.   
I feel dreadful saying this but my sister is one of my best friends and although it's my mum I'm talking about, I  think that if she wasn't my mum (e.g. she was someone I worked with or a woman who lived in my street) I'd be thinking "she's a rather spiteful, childish person and I don't really want to mix with her unless I have to". 
Maybe I'm just venting, but I'm so sad and angry at the same time that something that I treasured is being spoilt.

[Andeza]

Hey there, I went back and read your other posts to get more backstory. So what I gather is that your mother is big on the chaos. Huge!

I want to reframe these shopping trips. She's not lonely or bored. She's sitting there with her shoes on waiting to douse you with all the complaints she had built up since she moved in. Over and over again. PwPDs are really, frankly, unable to relate their own emotions. So any tiny bit of irritation she feels just sits there and stews and she can't get rid of it until she heaps it on you and buys herself a few minutes of relief. But because she's going right back into that same environment, the feelings just come back all the time, and she can't get rid of them.

I want to make it clear here that these trips out aren't really helping her. This is not appeasing the angry waif for any duration beyond five minutes at a time. And then you carry the stress around for days while she's just building up more. If I may be frank, I think the shopping trips need to stop. She might pitch a fit, but we don't give toddlers what they pitch fits for. And that is essentially how you babe to look at her. Remember, you're not doing this TO her,  you're doing it FOR you.

In order to get back your relationship with your sister, the only avenue I see is inviting your sister to your place, tell her that your mom needs to stay home. Just sister time. And then try not to mention your mother at all.

Good luck, keep posting.

[lkdrymom]

How often do you go and take her out? Any more than once a week is too much. I took my father shopping every other week and he lived alone.  Is there any way you could meet with your sister away from the home and your mom?  Couldn't sister stop by YOUR house on her way home from work and spend an hour with you?  You have to get into the mind set that MOM does not make your choices, you do.

[DancingStar]

Thank you for your replies.

My sister doesn't go out when she gets home from work.   I think she doesn't like leaving her husband on his own (there is someone there during the day to take care of him).   It's  been the way for years - to get my sister to even meet in a cafe for a cuppa on a Saturday afternoon is a Herculean task and now, of course, my mother would have to come along as well.   

What I'm finding so difficult:

I feel guilty that my sister has taken on this very difficult and demanding woman and that I am so reluctant (unable, even) to support her with this.   

I honestly think if I went everyday and spent 8 am until midnight with my mother  she wouldn't be happy.  I guess it's the obligation thing. but I feel sad for her - she's 86 years old, has been recently widowed and been moved from her home into someone else's.     I understand that someone in that position would be sad, grieving etc but it's the discontent, the mean comments about other's in the house, the expectation that everyone else will do everything to make it ok and that she doesn't have to do anything, the bad temper and impatience. 

I'm angry that a grown woman can have behaved like a child all her life.  I'm angry that I was parentified daughter, that I never chose that and I am still stuck in it. 

Writing all those things down makes me feel like a grade A bitch.   

[lkdrymom]

You are not.  But your mom is for expecting so much out of you and your sister. Unfortunately your sister is adding to the problem.  Stop the all day visits with mom.  Just show up like you would back when you just visiting your sister. Try to have those visits again. If your mom intrudes there is not much you can do except not let her dominate the conversation.  If your sister is unwilling to meet you half way I am afraid you will not regain what you have lost with her.