Nope, I don't want to be around for her the way I am at the moment. I'm sacrificing a nearly all of my life, and a lot of my sanity, to look after her as much as I do. And no, I don't think she'd be happier if I drove her up to Glasgow and dumped her there for the rest of her life. I think she'd be happiest if I handed my life over to her completely, and let her move in with me, and have hotel service for the rest of her days.
I fail to see why my life is any less valid or valuable than hers, especially considering she's had thirty more years of life than I have had, and none of them were spent with her mother in law living in her house being waited on hand and foot!
I'm trying to find a 50:50 split, where I actually (!) get to have half my own life to myself, and not as the servant and caregiver to a 90 year old.
I don't think that's unreasonable, and I wouldn't suggest any further sacrifice than that by myself if I were reading about myself here.
Do you think she feels sorry for me? Do you think she thinks 'Poor Jenny, having to look after me! Poor Jenny having me to stay for a month at a time! Poor Jenny having to provide a hotel service to me! Poor Jenny giving up her time and her life to me!'
I don't think so. I think she's glad, even grateful possibly, but she never says thank you for what I'm doing for her (other than saying thank you for a cup of tea etc), and yes, maybe that's because she's got incipient dementia, but it still means that I am taken for granted by her, and she is not exactly 'volunteering' to go home for two weeks! She agrees with me when I tell her I need a break, but she doesn't offer first, believe me! And even if she were openly grateful and appreciative of what I do, that doesn't take away the brute fact that I've spent the last five months doing very, very little else apart from looking after her hand and foot and having her live in my house like a permanent house guest! I've had about four weeks on my own away from her since the end of September, that's it. Four weeks of my house to myself. Other than that she's been in my house the entire time.
Do you think I show her my irritation and resentment and mental torment over losing my life to her? Do you think I'm not ' nice as pie' to her when she's with me? The worst I do to her is keep her waiting for her lunch if I've 'overrun' on my coffee with my carer friend (as I did this morning by about half an hour). Do you think I'm not cheerful and smiling and cossetting and helpful and endlessly patient with her? Do you think I don't take her to the shops nearly every day, or take her out for a little drive in the countryside, or go off and have nice teas in nice tea shoppes and out to lunch sometimes as well? Do you think I make her watch the programmes on the TV that I want to watch, instead of the ones she wants to watch? Do you think I don't give her her dinner at the time she likes to have her dinner, and not the time I like to have mine? Do you think I don't take her to the hairdresser, or wash her hair myself, or that I don't do her laundry, and clean her flat when I go up there?
Do you think I don't do any of that, and with a smiling, cheerful, willing, friendly, affectionate, cossetting, attentive, patient manner to her all the time?
I GIVE and I GIVE and I GIVE to her - so don't tell me that I should do any more than I am already doing.
As for wanting her to die - she can live as long as she likes, with my blessing, but not if I have to give up the rest of my life to continuing to look after her the way I am doing now, because, like I say, my life is as valid as hers and I'm entitled to my life as much as she is entitled to hers - but she is NOT entitled to live at the level of the sacrifice for her that I am currently making. I am not sacrificing my life just so she can live to a hundred!