Anticipatory grief and resentment
Very long story short, I am caring for my mother who was just put on hospice for her COPD after an extremely stressful 6 months of moving her from hospital to nursing home, back home, assisted living, back to the nursing home, and then back home all because she is never happy anywhere. She continues to smoke heavily and it is quite clear that is the only thing that has brought her any happiness. She has never had hobbies, doesn’t enjoy ANYTHING (puzzles, new tv shows, shopping, nothing). Every move I would buy her a new batch of nice practical goodies and she literally would give it all away. She has had a long tough life and I understand that but she was a tough mom to me. She has always been either extremely hot or cold with me and honestly I was terrified of her but still respected her as a hard working woman. Now as a mom though, I don’t understand her parenting at all and I hold a lot of resentment. Here we are, her dying because of something she has chosen over me my entire life, cigarettes. This whole ordeal began 2 days after I had my second baby and then two weeks later I was hospitalized for a week. It has been extremely stressful as I’m her primary caregiver along with working full time, in college, having my own family to manage. I feel immense relief that hospice stepped in but I can’t let go of the resentment. Resentment that cigarettes have always been her main priority and that they are the reason she is dying. Resentment that she expects me to drop everything I have going on to tend to her. Resentment that she had a wasted life. My dad passed 3 years ago so I moved her to be closer to me. I hoped she would become more involved but nope. It’s tough, and I just want to know I’m not the only caregiver with these complicated feelings of love for my mother but also burdensome resentment.