Thank you SWOT for the book recommendation and Cedar for the video, which I watched.
Two years before my mother's final illness she was hospitalized with diverticulitis a non serious problem that affects more than half of people over 60. I have it.
Five days after my mother was hospitalized my sister finally sent me an email telling me of my mother's hospitalization. In the short email she told me that my mother was confused and unable to any longer care for herself in her home. My sister had arranged that my mother be transferred to a Rehab Hospital.
My Mother had an Advanced Care Directive. Should my mother become incapacitated any decision about her treatment had to be made jointly by her two daughters. Incapacity was a medical-legal concept that my sister had no ability to act upon absent a legal process.
Before she had advised me that my mother was ill my sister had waited until she had successfully convinced the physician that my mother lacked capacity to care for herself in her home, because of a spell of diverticulitis. And gotten my mother transferred to a Rehab hospital, without talking to my mother or me.
Only when it was a done deal did she send an email, which by accident I saw. I had been working out of town and in my work cannot easily access internet.
Let me restate this: my mother had not been told where she had been taken. She had lost control over and power over her life. Because my sister had decided to take it from her. Contrary to existing legal documents.
In the email there was a name of a Rehab Hospital which I called.
My Mother and I together tried to figure out what had happened. There was a social worker next to my Mom and I asked to speak to her.
I told her this: My mother has support. I would like to know what are the conditions and limitations of my mother preventing her discharge. I am available to care for her in her home and will take responsibility getting her to whatever outpatient care she needs.
My Mother has the capacity and the legal right to make her own decisions, absent legally viable determination to the contrary.
If she chooses to go home, please assist her in doing so or let me know what the barrier might be.
The social worker did not respond in any meaningful way except with mild arrogance or hostility.
I proceeded to explain to my mother what had happened to her, as best I could understand it, and to tell her that at any moment she could take control of her care.
I called my sister on her cell phone with my Colombo guise. I said I called Mama and spoke with the social worker. At the mention of those two words, social and worker she lost control.
She began to scream at me something like the following (with a voice dripping with hatred, contempt and derision.)
Sister: I will not let you ruin everything I worked so hard to put into place. *Screaming.
Me: L, you're not the only game in town *poor choice of phrasing because I was out of of town and she had taken advantage of the fact.
Sister: I am the only game in town Sisssster (said in a hate-filled and demeaning manner)...I will break you...if you get in the way.
The upshot is my mother called halt. Got herself out of the hospital within the next 24 hours and went to stay for 2 weeks with her boyfriend, and was fine.
My sister felt she had been betrayed by both my mother and me. To my sister, my mother had no right to get angry and to defy her control.
And I had no right to have a voice in anything to do with my mother, especially protecting her.
She did not contact my mother for a year. Until she wrote a letter to my mother, who was then 85, to tell her mother that she was toxic and that she had breast cancer and blamed her for it. She would forever sever contact with my mother and I because we were so deadly to her health and spirit.
In our part of the country real estate really took a dive in those years. My sister's million dollar house had gone down in value to maybe half of that, at most. She felt justified in restoring her coffers, I believed, by moving against my mother, and seizing her assets. Where I stood in this, mattered not at all.
In a way this was a blessing in disguise because it alerted me to what she could and would do and how we needed to be prepared to protect us. For when my mother truly could not take care of herself or make her own decisions.
A year and a half later my sister had secured a new job out of state where the cost of living was lower. She sold her home and a moving van paid for by the new employer would take her things to the new city and state.
Almost 2 years later I got another email from my sister declaring that my mother (she had begun to see and talk with her a year before) was no longer able to live independently in her home (again) and required assisted living. She's just not the same, she said to me. She doesn't remember anything. There was no mention of taking my Mom to the doctor or otherwise helping her stay in her home or helping her out, at all. She commenced to contact my mother's therapist and enlist his aid to force the situation.
I wrote back to my sister that I was in constant phone contact with my mother and that shortly I would go visit her to make my own assessment (I was again in a different city working....)
This enraged my sister again, because the delay, I guess, did not fit into her moving plans...with respect to my mother's furniture. Or, I guess, that I had an viewpoint or had spoken at all.
I visited my mother twice and indeed determined she needed help. But, the house was spotless. All bills were paid. But she was clearly, failing. I was buying food online and having it delivered, but having lost her appetite she only drank the Ensure. The food was untouched. I quit my job and went to stay with my mother so we could find out what was wrong and what was needed. It turned out that she had TB and was hospitalized immediately. She never again was to go home.
We were both terrified to call my sister but we knew we should. By that time my mother had changed her advance care directive naming me with sole care and financial powers. We were still frightened. Both of us.
Finally, about 4 days after my mother's hospitalization, I called my sister and told her my mom was in the hospital.
"Can you explain the delay in calling?" (She is an attorney, after all.) "Mama did not want me to call right away. With your new job she did not want to worry you." Silence.
Within a couple of days she arrived without letting either of us know, arriving at my mother's hospital bed with the protection of a friend.
My Mother told her this (I later found out): I do not want you to interfere in my treatment. I do not want you to take control or interfere. We, Copa and I, are arranging a stint in the Rehab Hospital. Please do not interfere with my treatment. And my sister told her she would not.
My mother called me to alert me that my sister had come.
M and I went to visit and while we were there my sister arrived, this time with her two girls. (I have previously written about that encounter. This was when my sister tried to stare down M and look his body up and down, I guess trying to intimidate and dehumanize him.)
M left the room. A female physician entered, conversed a bit, and left.
My sister got up and followed her. And began to speak to the doctor. And talked and talked. I could see her through the window in the door.
I began to get scared and not know what to do. I feared that my sister was trying again to take control of my mother's medical care according to her own ends. My mother from the bed could not see my sister talking to the doctor outside the door.
After maybe 6 minutes, I said, P is talking to the doctor. I think I should also listen in case I am missing something important.
One niece, the more sophisticated one, tried to cover for her mother: she said, Oh, she went to the bathroom.
I said No. She's been outside talking to the doctor. I think I should go and listen, because I am sure she is bringing up important points that I need to learn.
And then, my sister re-entered. My mother said to her: P, you promised me that you would not interfere with my doctors and my treatment. I ask you again, please do not get involved with my care.
And my sister became angry. She gathered up her two girls and she left the hospital.
That was the last time she ever saw or spoke with her mother.
My sister sees this entire episode as my fault. She accused me of forcing my mother to choose between her and I.
She saw my mother as having chosen for me, against her. That my mother had chosen me to take care of her. After my mother's death she wrote this to me in an email.
Actually, I think this is a lie, a cover story.
Because my sister had to have an excuse for not visiting or talking to her mother as she died. But there is a reality to it, too. My sister could not share one bit. She wanted everything or not one bit.
Not that she did not have that right. To completely ignore us. She had that right. It was her decision to make.
But my sister does not take responsibility. She blames.
If I look at the above through this lens, I see the following. To my sister, my only role is to support her, in whatever she wants to do. My only role was to have stayed quiet and to have permitted her to do what she wanted.
She feels herself to have been betrayed by both her mother and her sister. My mother for protecting herself. I betrayed her by offering support to my Mother. My sister by my absence had had in her whole life free rein to access 100 per cent of what she wanted from my mother.
To her, I had zero percent entitlement, even if given such by legal documents.
She declared the situation to be as she saw it and wanted it. And when anybody said anything, she upset the table and ended the game. She learned this at my mother's knee.
Twenty years earlier there had been a similar circumstance when my mother had stolen our inheritance.
My sister called me to tell me, that my Mother had stolen our inheritance from both of us.
But there was no alliance here.I tried to scope out a course of action. Instead, she yelled at me, declaring there was nothing to be done.
She was an attorney, mind you.
I ended up getting an attorney and negotiating a payment for her and for myself. I was at a disadvantage because I did not have the will *my sister did, nor did I know how much money there was. (I know now that I could have obtained a copy of the will, as such are filed in the courts. I did not know that then and was not told by my attorney.)
But my sister knew that. I wonder now if my sister had made a deal with my mother and tried to cut me out.
Because the upshot is that she was angry at me. After she got the money she did not want to pay a part of the legal fees after the issue was settled and told me that I was abusing her by calling her, to even ask.
She had no gratitude that I had stepped forward and got something for her. She was angry at me, in fact.
I still do not know if part of it is that my sister had attempted an end run. and wanted me to accept being cut out completely so that she could deal directly with my mother alone. Two parts of the pie, not three.
What does that say about me, and her contempt for me, that she feels I am such a fool as to have permitted this.
There are moments in life when one has to take a stand and fight, or else, one risks not being a person at all. And this was one of those moments for me. I did not fight my mother for money. I stepped up for myself. Because I would not have existed had I not.
Yes, Cedar. I think my story shows this.
There is no reason what so ever for my sister to hate me. The only reason I can think of is that I survived, without compromise, myself. I guess the other crime is not wanting much to do with my sister. Or for have seen her for who she was.
I think my sister felt free to express her hatred for my mother at the end, because she felt my mother was incapable at the end of doing anything to deprive her of what she wanted. And all she ever wanted was money and stuff.
My sister felt abused and betrayed by my mother at the end. And my mother felt tricked by my sister. My mother I think always thought that there was some loyalty there. My mother could not understand what happened to their alliance.
S, you tried to tell me when you were a girl that she was like this, and I didn't believe you.
Honestly, as I write this, I still do not know what hit me. It really is CPTSD. I mean, let me turn into a Valley Girl right here.
WTF, did I end up in a Mafia family or something? Am I some goldfish that got lost and ended up in a school of sharks? I do not have the language to understand, to conceive of where I ended up in my life.
Unless I am not seeing my part, which is uglier than the rest. And I am just not seeing it.
If I could do anything different, it would have been to trust my sister as being motivated to do the right thing for all of us. But where in my experience would that trust come from? I am still calling upon myself to try and see it from my sister's point of view.
But she hates me.
My sister sees me as having done horrible things. She accused me of stealing my mother's money, while I cared for my Mother. Without proof and despite an increase of assets during that time and a careful accounting of every (conservative and justified) expenditure. She tried to make me pay her for anything of my mother's stuff that I wanted, contrary to the will. She took advantage of my innocence and ignorance of hidden gifts made by my mother, that were to have been rectified.
Even after writing all of this out (sorry) I am scratching my head. What happened? How did this happen? Is it all my fault? Really.
It is really helpful to write this out, because I did not know that all of this self-doubt and self-accusation was still inside of me.
Even though I knew to be afraid of my sister, and even as I saw this unfold, I am still completely stunned by it. I cannot accept that I am part of something so ugly.
My sister sees me as the guilty party. She ardently believes it.
And I keep asking myself, if indeed, I am.
Was the correct response through this all, to stay away and let my sister do as she would with my Mother? Is my sister correct, that she deserved 100 percent of control over my mother's care? And her assets?
Am I wrong to think that my mother should have been respected and included in her care decisions to the extent she was able? And what about help?
Did I cause all of this because I suspected my sister or at least did not fully trust her? Is that why she is angry with me? Because I doubted her?
I am beginning to feel as SWOT does. That no good can come of looking any more at any of this. That really there is nothing to understand. Because how can you really understand something that you do not have the language to understand?
But I do not know another way to do this. Because I keep not getting better. And there is something that I need to learn and I do not know what.
