My mother is 86 years old and lives in NJ with her 2 elderly sisters. She recently got a bad infection and fell during New Year’s Day. When she left the hospital after 5 days she was placed in a rehab facility to gain her strength back. She suffered from no broken bones, but she also has stage 4 cancer, and that’s where the infection came from: her port. They have removed the port and had her on strong antibiotics to clear up all the infection in her blood.
When my husband and I got there from SC (we drive 600 miles to and from total 1200 miles), the whole time I am there doing whatever I can for my mom — going shopping and getting everything she needs for the rehab — she is so nasty to me. She can’t stand my husband who is so nice to her and her sisters. She calls me all kinds of names and I tell her, "mom please come back to SC with us where you have your own house and me and my kids (her grandkids who are grown) can help take care of you."
My mom and her sisters want me to leave my husband (who I have been happily married to for over 30 years) and come up there and take care of her indefinitely. Nothing is wrong with her mouth or her heart. She said I was the last person on this earth she would live with.
I am so hurt by the way she talks to me and she acts so jealous of my relationship with my husband. When I try to call and talk to her she is so nasty. I told her I would take care of her if she moved to SC (which is also her home) because her sisters are unable to take care of her, but they won’t be honest with her and tell her the truth. I have been so upset and sick and tired of going back and forth up and down the road 7 times in 2024 and 1 time already in 2025. I told her I wasn’t coming back until she was ready to leave with us.
Please help me. This is so hard. I do love my mean mother, but it’s so heartbreaking to me. They even have a problem because my husband drives me there. He even asked my aunt what was the problem with him driving me. She said my mom was just jealous. They say awful things about us. but we continue to be nice to my mom and her 2 sisters anyway. But I am tired of putting my husband through this. Our entire marriage, every time I go around my mom and her sisters (before she even got sick), she has always been nasty to us.
If you are managing her care, rather than doing it yourself, don't visit any more than is necessary.
Make yourself and your own family your priority.
I'm so sorry for what you are going through.
Please for your family's sake and your own, heed the good advice you're being given here and don't enable your toxic mother. Under no circumstances should you allow her to move in with you.
Yes, your mother is old and she is sick. Being old and sick does not give a person a free pass to be an abusive a$$hole to the people who do for them and you need to let your mother know that you will not be verbally abused and treated disrespectfully by her. Nor will you tolerate her treating your husband this way.
If your mother's care needs require she be moved into a nursing home, agree to help her be moved to one. Don't you allow her to move in with you. Don't ruin your life, your marriage, and your family by moving a toxic, abusive ingrate into your home. Don't do it.
I want to tell you what I went through with my late mother’s mental problems. When my mother was no longer able to care for herself in our CA condo, nor able to return back to our home from a board and care, she wrote a nasty letter to me threatening to through me out at age 93. It was then that my brother and his wife moved her up to OR in an AL near were they live. She received counseling from an ombudsman. From then on her health went downhill and died two years later in humane comfort. I had three weeks visit to say Goodbye to her.
You've got to love the threats to throw you out of your own property. My mother tries to make threats about "her" house which is not hers anymore when she doesn't get her own way about something or is looking for a fight. We just ignore her.