The paragraph before the one about his mom being charming said “in the past”. If his mother is truly brain dead trying to play gotcha seems unkind.
:smack:
It’s true though that a lot of people confuse comas, brain dead, PVS, etc.
While it is true that these conditions are often confused, somehow I don’t think that was your point.
Wait what the Fuck happened? Someone broke into your mom’s home and used her credit cards?
Since my sister found her although she was breathing in a shallow fashion she showed no signs of any brain activity, and no eye reaction. She is not currently under a drug induced coma and shows no signs of brain activity. My sis tells me on Monday they are going to turn off the ventilator and see what happens. They think she is brain dead, there was so much wrong with her(dehydrated, malnourished, blood sugar above 800, failed kidneys, protein in blood that indicates either heart attack or stroke, etc) that they doubt she will wake up.
Obviously the incidents where she was charming were before the current hospitalization.
I’m really sorry. What a sad end to a shitty situation.
And fear of this is why my sister didn’t push for an investigation, along with general brain fog from finding her mom and embarrassment. She said not one EMT or cop would mention or even look at the house, they all went to the curb and talked to her with their backs turned, the EMTs had to break off a door and shove piles of hoard over to get her out and they didn’t mention it. It is like people and authorities in our area don’t even want to acknowledge hoarding exists.
My sister pulled into the drive way, she was gathering mental energy to deal with my mom when a twenty something woman who claimed to be a neighbor banged on her car window and told her you need to go inside. She then noticed all the lights in the whole house were on, interior and exterior which is crazy because my mom is fanatical about turning off lights and anything using electricity.
She gets to the locked security gate and sees the front door open, she opens the gate(the only reason my sister has a copy of it is she stole my moms keys and made dupes) then sees the garage door open too. She goes in house and shuts the front door behind her, she had already looked in the bedroom but saw no one on the bed. This house is like passage ways, it is like the worst you’d see on those hoarding shows. She was in the kitchen looking and yelling when she hears the front door open and the woman was inside saying in here she is in here she is dead, and my mom was on the ground behind the bed.
My sister is crying and yelling, asks the woman to call 911 and she says no only family members can and she doesn’t want to get involved. She leaves and no one my sis has asked has known who she was.
Later when my sis went back to the house to search my mom’s purse was gone from the usual spot, lamps were broken that were working the last time my sis was there, thermostat busted and dangling, piles knocked over. She never found my mom’s keys or cell phone or debit or credit cards, she also said there was no food or drink in the house at all(where is the $200 in groceries). She found old purses all stuffed behind a dresser.
There have been no charges or debits from about 5 days before my mom was found, I think my mom got someone to help her so she didn’t need us and they were making her buy them food and groceries and give them cash. This infuriates me because my mom wouldn’t help me out in a medical emergency even, even as a child she would let me almost die and tell me I wan’t entitled to her money. Never went to a dentist until I was an adult and paid for it myself, had a cavity at 14 that just resolved itself and like healed. But some stranger? YES she would!
She told me if I was going to be her caregiver I had to divorce my wife, leave my son with her, pay my own way back to the USA, rent an apartment because she was not going to let me stay with her, and needed to get a good job to help her out but not too many hours. I DECLINED this offer, and I became her nasty son who hates her an adandioned her to die alone of cancer.
She had three thousand in cash in the bank, and she was getting us into legal trouble trying to scam nine dollars in meal shakes.:smack::smack::smack::smack:
About 2-3 weeks ago she told both me and my sister to stop calling her, that she didn’t need us she would find someone to help her. My sister obliged when she found out my mom told people we were beating her. My mom called neither of us, and did not answer her phone. Eventually the phone was shut off, but my mom has pulled these stunts before numerous times so we said eh mom is being an asshole what is new.
OMG just the financials, I live paycheck to paycheck and have no savings and no credit card over $500. My sister will have nothing until her first alimony payment, my sister had to call and beg her ex husband to deposit fifty bucks in the monring into her account so she could get gas to go home. If my sis could just find my moms debit card or credit she could have some cash to work with. My mom’s estranged brother who she hated has offered my sister to pay for a hotel room online for her and WU her gas money(it is 50 USD back and forth to my sis home city, and the other two hoard houses she doesn’t have keys for or the doors can’t open due to a collapsed pile) and she can’t sleep in the one she found my mom in due to the stench which she said can cause her to vomit.
And there is a mortgage payment, car payment, insurance payments, storage unit payments, water, light every single month, etc etc etc etc. Me and my sis can’t afford to pay any of them, we can’t. We can’t hire anyone to clean up the places.
And to top it all off, even if we did, once the houses are probated(they aren’t even in my mom’s name but our dead dad) the IRS and other creditors will likely take everything. Our only hope for anything is whatever physical objects and jewelry we can snatch out of the houses, which is a lot of valuble jewelry if we can find it. Just the work involved.
We can’t even afford to cremate our mom, unless my sis finds her debit card.
I just feel hopeless, and angry as hell. I didn’t want my mom to go out like this, I told her again and again over decades of wasted effort mom please please don’t die alone in a pile of trash after alienating all your family. Well it happened.
Last conversation I ever had with my mom she told me to leave her alone she didn’t need me she would find someone to help her who would except her terms and treat her like a empress. And also told me she and dad never told me they were proud of me because I have done nothing in life to be proud of, she also refused to say right there and then she was proud of anything.
I’m just spent, and no one understands. My sister said the nurses and doctors at the hospital have said my mom sure has a loving son and brother who aren’t coming to see her.
grude, I’m really saddened to read all of this. Sending you an Internet hug! Just remember that mental illness is an illness and can make the person do sad and nasty things, particularly to loved ones.
Condolences to you and your sister. 
I think Northern Piper is absolutely right. It sounds like there was a pretty severe mental illness involved in this situation, and that probably caused your mom to say and do things that she would have never done if she had been in her right mind.
My family went through this with my aunt, who was an active alcoholic and probably mentally ill, as well as another circumstance I’m not going to go into here, so I’d like to make a few suggestions.
First, ask to speak with the hospital’s social worker. S/He should be able to guide you through the process of having you or your sister or some neutral third party declared your mother’s legal guardian because of her current status. Once this takes place, the guardian will be able to access her bank and other accounts, and to take care of business on your mother’s behalf, such as paying utility bills, applying for benefits, arranging for a funeral, and so forth. The social worker can also help arrange for further care for your mother, should her condition improve. It’s clear from what you’re describing that your mother can’t take care of herself, and she may not have a support system to help take care of her.
Second, you and your sister may want to consult an attorney. Your mother may have made serious allegations against you with APS and you want to know what’s going to happen next. If you call the county or state bar association, you can get a referral at a reduced fee. Even if the lawyer doesn’t represent you during any official proceedings (you may be entitled to attorney representation at no cost if there are any), you want to know what’s going to happen.
Finally, make contact with the hospital chaplain or some other clergyman. You’re going to need the emotional support, and you’re also going to want someone with whom there is a legal privilege. It’s not that you or your sister are doing anything wrong, but you want to be able to talk freely, without any information going anywhere. This is probably overkill, but if APS is, in fact, involved, you can’t be too careful.
Of these, the first is critical, the others less so, but they’re still important. It sucks that you’re going through this, it really does. Feel free to PM if you need to.
First I’d like to thank everyone who posted with condolences or tips.
My mom died this morning at 3am, it might sound weird but what I want most is a last picture of her face. It has been almost 6 years since I saw her and my sis says she couldn’t take seeing her and taking a pic(she said my moms pupils after going off ventilator were locked to the right and one of her arms jerked aimlessly).
I’m not even sad she died, everyone every one dies but I am crying for the lost opportunity and time together that she threw away. I asked her many times without judgmene or emotion to talk to me but she was so used to denial and self delusion it was pointless.
I’d advise anyone dealing with a (real)hoarding relative to LET GO of fantasies of helping the person, unless they are themselves showing physical interest in helping themselves you are wasting your time. This is very much like a drug addiction in which the person is so far into self delusion and manipulation they will profess desire for help, but sabotage all honest efforts so they can continue.
Your best bet is setting hard boundaries and never crossing them, so at least you won’t feel angry at yourself. You can put the boundaries wherever, but put them where you are comfortable and leave them. At least then you will only risk what you’re comfortable with risking.
If I can humanize my mom for a moment, my sister describes an entirely different woman(although there were signs she was putting on an act). My mom was born during WW2 in Germany and some of the early experiences she told me about, and the lessons she learned from them are horrific and warped. My sister says what created the mom I knew was her 18 year old son shooting himself in the head in front of her, after saying hey mom this is what you wanted right. I was conceived after this, and my description of my mom is radically different from my sis. She says my mom collapsed mentally after this incident, and spent six months non-verbal and almost catatonic, like my dad would come home from work and she was in the same chair she was in when he left but it was dark and not a single light was on.
I just wish she had been able to pull out for even a moment to interface with me as an adult, or talk to me honestly. Several times I told her I accepted her hoarding, I was not angry or judging her, I just wanted to talk about it and what it did for her. The best she could offer was “I don’t know know” before getting so agitated she broke off the discussion.
I think she was half way delusion as self defense mechanism and half way malicious or at lest selfish and uncaring. I understand the mental illness aspect, but that is way too pat for me having serious issues myself and not abandoning my son for instance. As the son and someone who grew up with her, I can’t absolve my mom of all sins, but I also recognize she was a broken human being.
My condolences on your loss grude.
I’m so sorry, Grude. I too had a really dysfunctional home, and I hear and know the wisdom of boundaries, you’re right on the money with that.
But when the end finally arrives resolution is so hard to come by, I know. I also lost a brother to suicide, another brutal ending without hope of resolution. Some days harsh looks like an ocean it seems.
All to say, in the end I moved forward, in part, by recognizing that they both were doing the best they knew how. Even if it was weird and twisted, they were trying their hardest, and giving it their all. That’s all the universe can expect, when you think about it.
You and your family will be in my thoughts and prayers over the days ahead, I wish you peace.