My mom called me from thousands of miles away to ask me what asthma medicine I take and where she can buy it, I asked her why she needed it since she doesn’t have asthma as far as I know.(also told her Asthmanephrin and any pharmacy)
She told me her lungs are hurting and she can’t breathe after going into a vacant house she owns that is hoarded to the rafters to empty the dozens of five gallon buckets she has to catch rain water because they are full in a room where the roof has collapsed, said everything in the room is coated in black mold and everywhere she steps or touches or brushes against anything a cloud of black dust flies everywhere. I said mom those are mold spores, it can kill you breathing that shit in the fuck are you doing in there. Well I’m not there to empty the buckets for her she said, I said mom I have ASTHMA and I’m not going to kill myself over your hoarding mental illness even if I was there.
Why can’t the roof be fixed? Because to get the money for it she would have to call out the insurance company to view the damage, what caused the damage? A hurricane FIVE YEARS AGO! She still thinks she can move the hoard to storage units and call them out, I told her they will laugh in your face and she will spend twenty minutes trying to argue they won’t(I hold the phone away from my ear and do worthwhile stuff while she rants) she is totally delusional.
AND she can’t have contractors in to fix the roof due to the hoarding, yee!
I begged her not to do this, I said if you are going to do this anyway go to Home Depot and buy a respirator mask in the paint department a good one. I told her the cheapest one is twenty bucks, better than nothing. No she doesn’t have twenty bucks, I offered to buy it for her online and then she said no she doesn’t want to wear that on her face it will be uncomfortable.:smack: That was a few days ago.
My sister called while I was out and told my wife my mom is currently in the hospital undergoing respiratory treatment and is in bad shape.:smack: Saying I need to go out there and take care of her because my sister has had it with her insanity and delusions and wants nothing to do with her.:smack:
Won’t spend twenty fucking dollars to stay out of the hospital or not die, won’t wear a free fucking respirator to avoid breathing in deadly mold because it is uncomfortable:smack:
The craziest thing is that this hoarding shit of her pretty much killed my co-dependent dad, and is likely to kill her too. I have tried to get authorities involved but no one will do anything, my sister is much closer but also refuses to do anything. I just don’t care anymore.
I feel for you, I have known several hoarders and they are hard to turn around. If she won’t take advice all you can do is love her the best you can from a 1,000 miles away, don’t let her make you feel guilty.
I’m beyond guilt or still thinking I can help or save her, I wasted enough years on that. I don’t even care about the hoarding anymore, it is inconsequential to me as my mom has stage four cancer which is terminal and beyond chemo or surgery and her survival chances to make it five years from now are twenty percent or so.
I still hold out foolish stupid hope that she will show some interest in seeing me or her grandson before she dies, without making outrageous demands and forcing us to confirm to her mental illness to see her. Like she will meet us at McDonalds for a visit, fuck that I’m not wasting my time and money. So yea I still answer the phone and still love her in some way, she is my mom. But I have learned to not risk anything on her because she will let me down.
I already know how it is going to go when she gets out of the hospital, she is going to blame ME for this. I abandoned her when I should have stayed to be her Igor moving her filth around so she doesn’t have to. And she is going to say “OMG son do you know the doctors and nurses told me you can die from inhaling mold?!?! They said that black dust I told you about was mold spores and they can really hurt you, why the hell didn’t you warn me son?!” :smack::mad:
She always does this, always. She will deny I ever warned her, and claim it is all my fault. I laugh at it now.
There’s something here with regard to a hoarder’s mentality to not let go/move forward and treating her adult son with adult knowledge and adult advice as still a child with child knowledge and child advice but I doubt that offers much solace.
So sorry to hear this Grude. I know exactly what it’s like to watch a loved one destroy their whole life, and relationship with you, rather than take the necessary steps to heal.
My only advice is let go and let yourself grieve. You can do the work now and be through it sooner, or continue to suffer and then do the grieving. May as well give yourself the gift of getting it over with sooner.
I haven’t spoken to me Mother in over two years, and I haven’t missed her once. It’s a lighter feeling even when times are bad, knowing that I don’t have to deal with her making things worse.
I am a child of a hoarder mother who essentially died because of her hoarder mentality if not the actual hoarding. It’s tough.
I do suggest that if your mom does get well enough to meet you and your child at McDonalds you could consider going. It is not a waste of time if you get to spend some OK time with her and the cost of a few ice cream cones or small meals is not important. We always had to meet my mother at restaurants and I don’t regret those visits.
Even though she has a frustrating mental illness, it is an illness and one she would have a hard time dealing with even if she tried.
Yes I have. Grude, in the current thread, expressed an interest in his mother spending time with his child but specifically pointed out that meeting her at a restaurant would be unreasonable. He’s still talking to her on the phone so I gather he hasn’t cut her out of his life yet. He could give it a try and see how it goes; if she acts like a normal person then great, if she doesn’t he can not do it again.
Yes you do - if you didn’t actually care, you wouldn’t have written the OP. And that’s okay - it’s normal to care. You need to find ways to cope with teh crazy, but you may as well accept the fact that you’ll probably ALWAYS care. Just don’t let it take over your life.
I don’t care about the hoarding, I have accepted it is a sort of addiction to her and she will never give it up or feel emotionally well or whole without it. I am at peace with that.
What drives me batshit insane is I don’t think she really loves or cares about any of her kids or grandkids, she also doesn’t want to spend time with us or want us to help her(I’m not talking about cleaning). She just says if you care you’d give me money, money she will use to go buy more USELESS SHIT to add to the hoard. I refuse, and that means I don’t love her, and the idea she would ask me for money is laughable.
My sister still tries to forcibly clean, my sister caused a large fight because she took five gallon buckets of human waste and got rid of them while my mom was passed out. She fights with my sister about the toilet, she wants my sisters used toilet paper to save. My sis said my mom won’t use the toilet.
When my mom told me she couldn’t even allow paramedics to pick up my sick dad outside the house because they would smell the human waste and garbage sacks of soiled diapers, I was aghast that she had sunk that far.
I fucking DREAD, DREAD, DREAD having to clean these houses when she dies.
EDIT:I don’t understand how someone can spend every single penny they have every month of adding to the hoard, and not have money to eat or pay the mortgage. It is insane and disgusting.
I explained it in the other thread but there is no inheritance, all three houses will likely go to the IRS and creditors when finally probated(they aren’t even in my mom’s name). All we will be able to get is whatever physical objects are in them we can extract from the filth.
Anyway an update on this sad situation, my sister called me and said she caved in and went to the house my mom is living in since she was released from the hospital.
I don’t even want to share this really but she said she found my mom dazed and delirious with the place hoarded even worse since my sis did a forced cleanup, she had not eaten since she got out of the hospital even though she has a freezer full of TV dinners because she is afraid of or forgot how to use the microwave and also isn’t taking any of her meds. And the floor and couches and I guess everything is covered in diarrhea, yea.
She is forcibly taking my mom back to her house and said she is going to place her in a assisted living home no matter what it takes even if she has to go to court because this is just sick and she couldn’t even spend more than a few minutes in the house without going outside and it is unlivable.
I wished her luck sincerely and said it is about goddamn time.
My brother and I where in the same boat with my dad. We found a company that bought his house as is. That’s what they do. They buy wrecks. We ended up getting a lot more than we thought we would, and we didn’t have to spend weeks, months getting the house back in shape. It was a god send.
My only exposure to this kind of thing is the Hoarders show, but this sounds just like that. The relatives crying or yelling about why doesn’t the person love them or their kids or other relatives more than the hoard and the person just looks dazed and cannot make the connection. I’m sorry you have to deal with this.