I’m old now, and taking care of my elderly mom, and she hollers this at me about once a week, just like when I was a teen, which is why I left right out of college. These days, I tell her she wouldn’t last a week without me.
In the last two weeks, she’s called twice, because she went to the grocery store when I was working, and couldn’t figure out how to put the car in reverse to come home. She kept trying to shift the windshield wipers on the steering column. When I told her to use the shifter on the console, she didn’t know what it was until I told her it was next to the cupholder. She’s been driving the same vehicle for 6 years.
It looks like she may have to stop driving on her own, and she’ll tell me to leave again. I could go, I already pay for an expensive apartment in NYC for my family, I don’t HAVE to live with my mom, but who else is going to take care of her, my rich brother? Not a chance. She’s 88 years old, and nobody else will even acknowledge that she needs help, because then, y’know, you’d have to help. Better to pretend there’s no issue, then you can ignore it.
I’m not ignoring it. She may be a narcissist who has resented me my whole life (I was a 9.5 pound baby, born 7 months after they were married, get it?), but she’s my mom, and I feel obligated to help her in her old age. Someone has to, and I can’t just leave her alone. Something terrible will happen within a month. I worry horribly on the rare occasions that I visit my own family.
I’m old now, and taking care of my elderly mom, and she hollers this at me about once a week, just like when I was a teen, which is why I left right out of college. These days, I tell her she wouldn’t last a week without me.
In the last two weeks, she’s called twice, because she went to the grocery store when I was working, and couldn’t figure out how to put the car in reverse to come home. She kept trying to shift the windshield wipers on the steering column. When I told her to use the shifter on the console, she didn’t know what it was until I told her it was next to the cupholder. She’s been driving the same vehicle for 6 years.
It looks like she may have to stop driving on her own, and she’ll tell me to leave again. I could go, I already pay for an expensive apartment in NYC for my family, I don’t HAVE to live with my mom, but who else is going to take care of her, my rich brother? Not a chance. She’s 88 years old, and nobody else will even acknowledge that she needs help, because then, y’know, you’d have to help. Better to pretend there’s no issue, then you can ignore it.
I’m not ignoring it. She may be a narcissist who has resented me my whole life (I was a 9.5 pound baby, born 7 months after they were married, get it?), but she’s my mom, and I feel obligated to help her in her old age. Someone has to, and I can’t just leave her alone. Something terrible will happen within a month. I worry horribly on the rare occasions that I visit my own family.