Need to vent about my brother

How frustrating. Your brother... doesn't sound like he cares. Similar to mine.. I used to call with updates but when I have, his only reply is "your such a good daughter for taking care of mom, and thanks for the update'. I got tired of hearing this with him not offering any support or advice. Obviously not caring at all .. So I told him if you want to see mom before she completely forgets who you are and passes, now's the time. He just said thanks. His wife perked up (must have been on speaker phone and I didn't know it) and she said well you know.. we have our own things going on and just don't have time. I asked if they were ok, and her reply was yes we've just been busy travelling and biking. I ended the call at that time.

Its sad, but do yourself a favor, stop updating and causing yourself more stress is my advice.

Sounds like you are doing a wonderful job trying to take care of your mom.

Here for you. We all need a good rant session. ❤️

I’m so sorry you’re going through this. It sounds like we have the same brother! I can totally relate to everything you said. I’m learning that almost every family has a “useless brother.” A “useless” family member is manageable if you lower your expectations to zero. What you have is a brother who is both useless and causes problems that you will have to be the one to deal with. What’s the legal situation with your brother? Is he an alternate POA? Mine is not, making it easier for me to put a stop to behavior that is harmful to them.

I think it's a tough place to be—With her in a facility and her daily needs met his point of view may be that she should take whatever small pleasures are left to her regardless of the consequences. Will it be great if she ends up with ulcers or amputated toes because of the diabetes? No-it won't. It might even push her over to skilled nursing rather than MC when the time comes, but you can only do what you can do, and at this point that might be to let it go. Preserve yourself.

Given the consistency of his behaviors, much of this is about control and their relationship and how they use an adversarial relationship with you to meet their needs. Your mom gets to do what she wants, and your brother gets to be the 'good guy'. None of this is about what would be best for her— he's following a playbook where he's been primed to prioritize your mom's wants over anything else. He mirrors her anosognosia and treats her as if she still had full functioning capacity. He gets his validation from her by supporting 'whatever she wants', even though she doesn't have the capacity to recall that what she wants may be harmful to her. Bonus points for him as the golden child when he's able to 'protect' what autonomy she has left, right?

You can't adjust this dynamic if two parts of this triangle are oblivious to it, especially when one part of the triangle has dementia and the other one can't deny the impulse to keep mom happy regardless of her lack of judgemental capacity. Your brother just doesn't have the objectivity to take a bird's-eye view of the situation. Time has shown you that it's an exercise in futility.

Probably the healthiest thing is for you to continue to disengage—you've already identified that any battle will be uphill, where you're unlikely to make any progress and only resulting in frustration for you. It's so much healthier to continue to limit interactions and focus on your peace of mind, because I think this pattern will persist until your mom reaches a stage where she's less engaged. You can't stop every cookie that passes by her.

Sorry to say, i would have disengaged from this dynamic a long time ago. If he knows best, I would just step back and say, well, you know best…take care of it all and make occasional visits to mom, but leave her care to him basically 100%. I wonder if you did this, and stayed out of it, if he would last more than a few weeks and beg you to take over again with HIM staying out of it. What a dufus he is.

To answer your question about how I put a stop to my brother’s behavior, I didn’t. He’s never going to change. What changed is the legal paperwork. About 6 months ago, my parents dismantled their entire estate plan, removing him as the alternate DPOA. At that time, my parents also resigned their position as DPOA for each other and themselves, leaving me and two other family members in charge of their lives, medical decisions, finances and bills. About 1 month ago, they both had a medical emergency that sent them to the hospital, then to a skilled nursing rehab facility and ultimately to a Memory Care Facility. During last 30 days, he’s visited once, at which time, he took my Dad’s watch. I got the watch back, and now I’m certain that the legal decisions made were the right decisions.