Who Helps Me? - an Only Child of an 85 year Mother
by Rose
(Westchester, NY)
I am an only child. I am a 62 year old woman with 2 children. My son is 13 and my daughter is 17 and has Autism.
My mother is 85 and lives alone with 9 cats , there were 20 and 1 dog in a house 1 1/2 hours away from me. She has 1 friend, who does not drive and hates all her relatives, and truly hates me.
She chooses to live alone with her animals because she says people are too emotional for her. She refuses to sign a Power of Attorney or a Health Care Proxy. I have numerous Doctor's constantly calling me to say she has either missed her appointment or is so sick she needs to be in a nursing home.
She has uncontrolled diabetes because she forgets to take it or she takes it more than necessary.
She hires woman to clean out her cat's rooms and sometimes has these woman care for her, who know nothing about her illness and medications.
Now, after so much frustration on my part since December of 2012, I decided to have a limited guardianship appointed to her. I want a skilled nurse to visit her everyday and make sure she is okay and take her medications and to watch over her finances just to make sure she doesn't give out another signed blank check to one of the cat ladies, who was honest enough to give the check back to her.
My mother also gave a cat lady her discover credit card, which the woman never returned.
There are so many stories about my mother's mental decline. I also believe that all her life she had a mental illness, which now , is extremely pronounced.
She is Slandering me by telling whoever she can that i was a drug addict which I never was and other stories trying to disgrace me because she thinks i am taking her to court to have her put away in a nursing home.
If she were of sound mind, she could read the court papers that says nothing about that, only that I want her to be safe in her own home. The judge knows my request.
But, she refuses to
believe anything else, so she is making up stories about me. Actually, she forced me to give up my 3 month old baby when I was 19 because she was embarrassed and afraid of her own mother and therefore I have spent everyday since I was 19 having to cope with this tragedy of losing my baby.
So, I want to tell the court that she has and is verbally abusing me, causing me extreme emotional pain and now she is slandering me. Now, I will have to defend myself in court about not being a drug addict and all the stories she is making up.
Sure, I took drugs after she took my baby away, but, I was no junkie and i wasn't addicted to drugs. I took them when all my friends would and we would go out dancing. For me , it was to kill the pain of having to live my life without my daughter. This was from 1969-1975.
On top of it all, what does any of this have to do with now? I am a professional artist, a dance teacher, an advocate for my autistic daughter ,a mother to my son, a wife to my husband and i volunteer all the time in my neighborhood. I am considered to be a very good mother and an upstanding positive influence in my community.
My mother has never volunteered for anything, she has no other children, neglected me because of her mother and her cats and most certainly neglected my father who lived alone in an apt. in NYC while she lived in the country upstate. she was NOT INTERESTED IN MY LIFE, NEVER ANY TALK ABOUT COLLEGE and she hated my father and his family. She is no good.
So, I have been stuck having to drive back and forth to her house, Doctor's, 3 hours a day 2-3 times a week, leave my kids home alone , so that my mother stops being upset because she doesn't remember that I go and visit her and do all these things for her.
She just doesn't care about me or my family, only about herself and how to interrupt and disrupt my life, because she has no one else.