Out of Sight and Going out of my Mind
by Giselle
(Saratoga, CA)
My Mom has late stage 6 Alzheimer's and out of her grown children only two of her daughters are taking on the care of her. For several years we had her living in her own home which she loved dearly.
As the disease progressed we both seriously struggled with providing the level of care she needed and grew very concerned that she would not be able to live alone very much longer. At that point in time we were there at her home everyday and it wasn't until she was ready for bed and okay that we headed home to our families.
We are both married with husbands and children yet to raise at home so as you can see this has been hard but we were doing the best we could at the time. My older sister who never has gotten along with anyone we are pretty certain contacted the county to turn us both in for "elder neglect" and a nice gentleman showed up to the house to do a safety check on my Mom and she responded to all of his questions and he saw that the house was neat and clean as always and that she wasn't left totally alone.
Naturally, our sister has denied that she did this but she suddenly disappeared right at that time and for the next month she was not around or calling to bug us about Mom. It really hurt to think that she could not only do this to us but more importantly what she could have done to my Mom and they had decided to take her away. We
are both still in shock that our own sister could be so creepy but she clearly wants my Mom out of her own house and put away some where.
Her actions did bring about one good change and that is we hired a family friend who now stays at night with Mom so she is never alone 24/7. I don't know how much longer we can continue to do this for her as she is getting worse each passing day and suddenly hates her house and is calling it a ":dump".
She is very confused and is starting in not recognizing who we even are let alone the few people who might come to visit. She won't go out anymore and if I have to go to the store she refuses to come inside with me. I have to run a marathon to get the items and as soon as I get into my vehicle she is yelling at me as to what took so long. She is easily agitated these days and I know we are in for a tough road ahead but I love my Mom and feel this is the very least we can do for her until it gets to the point where we can't do it all anymore.
Any suggestions on how deal with the underlying anger my sister and I both feel towards our sister for turning us in like we are both some sort of criminals? I'm really disgusted that she could stoop to that level to try and make things harder on my sister and me. Any thoughts on how to cope with this issue?