Looking for advice on parent who wants to travel but can’t

nyarnal1

My mom’s sister recently passed. She lived 2000 miles away from us and had no kin. I need to travel to help handle the estate, etc.

My mom keeps insisting she’s going and I have to explain that she can’t travel. She gets disoriented in her own home and needs supervision 24/7. As much as I wish I could take her with me, travel just isn’t safe as she can sometimes wander and become lost. I explained that I was going back there and would bring back her sisters ashes so we could have a nice service here. She became very upset with me and started yelling “I’m not a child!!!!!!” then shut herself in her room.

Any advice on how to comfort her while also explaining the whole situation? Appreciate everyone’s advice - this community has always been very helpful to me.

H1235

Could you tell her you are just going to pick up the ashes and will be making a separate trip later to deal with the estate, or something along those lines. Would it be possible she might just forget about the estate. I would not worry about explaining the whole situation to her, it’s probably too much for her. I hope you can find something that will work.

Bridge4

Not sure what stage your Mom is at, but it sounds like you might be giving her too much information. You could create a more generic reason to be away without the heart-rendering, and upsetting reminder about her sister’s passing. Since there is no other family for your Mom to see, this is really a “business trip” where you need time to focus on the estate settlement and other end-of-life issues. Your Mom is not likely to understand or be helpful in any of this, so besides it making your task much more difficult it will be very stressful on your Mom. The frustration of trying to reason with PWDs, whose reasoner is broken, is confounding because we usually do it with good intentions of keeping our LOs involved out of respect for their interests, but unintentionally inflict more pain on them than we would if we just take care of things for them in a loving and responsible way.

harshedbuzz

Your mom likely has anosognosia and can't appreciate the ways in which she is impaired. This means you excluding her from a trip to take care of adult tasks she sees as her own responsibility.

It's best to create some fiblet in order to make the trip happen. Bridge is spot-on that you're giving TMI. You could tell mom you're on a business or girls trip for a couple of days or even claim to have flu and staying away to prevent her getting sick. When the ashes "arrive" the funeral home sent them.

I snuck down to Florida to sell my parents' home there and empty out their personal items. WE told dad I had a cold and when the PODS and car were delivered, he didn't even question the how or why.

HB

Quilting brings calm

I agree with the others. Do not tell her where you are going. Make up something. If she doesn’t live with you, do not even tell her you ARE going. Just be ‘too busy’ to stop by for a few days. Don’t give her opportunities to select choices that she can’t actually do.

terei

I agree. You are continuing to give her information that she can no longer cope with.

nyarnal1

Thank you everyone - I have taken the 'business trip' route and not bringing up any details. She's just entering stage 2, so she still has much of her memory so she does ask often about her sisters cremation status. I just tell her it's taken care of and that they will ship her to us when it's done so we can do something nice. At that point she usually doesn't ask again for a while. If she does start fixating on it I try to change the subject or redirect her attention to prevent her from becoming too upset.

To a lot of your points, she has always been the one to handle these things so I know it's frustrating for her to not understand why she can't still do it.

Just taking things ones day at a time ❤️