u/cp1976

This post is for anyone who can relate. I'm not looking to be shamed, or spoken down to for how I feel.

I am grieving my father who died 2.5 years ago. My grief is extremely complicated due to my mother. She talks about him non stop 25 hours a day, 8 days a week. I can never get a break. She is always shoving her grief in my face. Dismisses my own grief. Interrupts me when I have a hard time and want to turn to her for connection. I'm met with "Well how do you think I feel?". Grief Olympics are a huge thing when it comes to her.

My issue is I need to get away for a few days. My marriage is strained due to the hard time I'm having in my own mind and with my own mother (the stress it has brought on), and my mom is too much to handle for me right now. I have a much older brother but he's estranged from her for obvious reasons and I have no help.

I wanted to head back to my hometown for a few days in Eastern Canada because I'm desperate to connect with my Dad's side of the family. I just need connection and to be around them since he was the only one in his family who left to come to Toronto and now he's gone. I told my mother I was thinking to go for 4-5 days but over a long weekend. It's all I can afford to take because I only have 7 days vacation left and I'm trying to use them wisely and because I'm considering my mother, I told her I would need to have a few spare days in case she needed me to take a day off for her to take her to her appointments.

Well.....she isn't having ANY of that. She wants to go for 7 days so she can have time to see everyone.

My father's family is ENORMOUS. My mom only has a few cousins left. You can count on one hand. My father's side is so huge that you would need two weeks to see them all.

I am only going down for me. To get it out of my system. To spread some of my Dad's ashes. Whoever I get to see, great. Whoever I don't. OH WELL!! I'm doing the best I can with the days I have.

My mother is being so difficult and she's more than pissed off that I want to take some of my Dad's ashes and spread them in the neighborhood he grew up in. She wants to be there. Yet, she wants to dictate how long we should go down.

I can't pull blood from a stone.

I need this so badly but my mother is making me feel so guilty.

Telling me "go right ahead!! Go do it!!" But I know her. She will make me feel HORRIBLE for not taking her with me.

I feel so defeated. So broken hearted. As long as my mother is alive, she will constantly talk about my Dad every single minute of every single day and will make it hard for me to move forward with his loss.

She refuses to go out with friends. But she will complain to me day in and day out how lonely she is. She is extremely emotionally immature and I just can't deal with it.

Grief is hard enough. It's even harder when you have a complicated relationship with the parent that's left behind.

My husband said I should just go. Go for the 4 days. But it's so hard when I feel so much guilt and resentment for my mother who won't ever let me live it down.

I'm just looking for someone who understands or can give me some compassionate advice.

Thanks.

Reason why I'm asking is because I get very strange sensations that I can't quite put my finger on when I bend my head downward. Very similar to seizure sensations but not quite. It's like a tingling I feel from my chest to the top of my head. A "rising" feeling. But that's it. Nothing else (outside of my usual neck and head pain from the ON).

I haven't had a full blown seizure in 28 years. I'm on 400mg of Carbamazepine a day.

I just can't explain these sensations and my doctor is dismissing them as due to Occipital Neuralgia. I can't really decipher if the sensations are from that or not.

Anyone else?? I get feelings of disorientation and anxiety pangs. Mild panic. Strange head sensations. I already have diagnosed generalized anxiety but this is when my head is bent downward and I'm reading or looking at my phone or just looking downward in general. My head and neck feel tense at the moment and I'm feeling all kinds of weird tingling sensations. Some of which I can't even put into words.

I am going to come across as a horrible person probably. I truly don't want to be but I am truly struggling here. In the worst kind of way. This is why I need to get my thoughts off my chest and wonder if I'm the only one who experiences this???

My Dad died 2.5 years ago after battling Lewy Body Dementia for 4.5 years. He ended up falling and breaking his hip just two days after his 78th birthday and passed away 7 weeks after that.

My mom was his primary caregiver. Married for 55 years. I was his secondary caregiver and had a wonderfully close relationship with my father. I'm married with no children and I don't have any responsibilities that would take me away from caregiving for either of them, with the exception of a very demanding job. I have a 58 year old brother who we were all estranged from for 17 years and he came back just a few years prior to my dad's death and has since disappeared again because he doesn't get along with my mother.

So I'm now basically doing EVERYTHING.

I have a complicated relationship with my mother too but I've stuck it out. Therapy has helped somewhat but I chose to stay rather than become estranged.

Here's what I'm dealing with:

My mom cries every single day. *EVERY SINGLE DAY*. That's her right. It's her way of dealing with my Dad's death.

She talks about him. Every single day. To me, to my husband, to ANYONE who's willing to listen. *AND I MEAN EVERY DAY. ALL DAY LONG. EVERY CONVERSATION*. It's non stop. I wish I was lying!!! She even tells me how she talks TO him (which is fine. I talk to my Dad too). She lives alone. I am married. I do not have the money or the means to have her come live with me. I visit her 1 sometimes 2 times a week. That is all I am mentally capable of doing. I talk to her every single day. Sometimes a few times a day.

But you know what - sometimes it's just too damn much, you know?

It took me almost two years to actually get out of the massive depressive slump I was in due to my Dad's death. It also devastated me. It ripped my life up and spit it out. Is it different than losing your spouse?? Absofrikenloutely. I cannot compare. But is it still A LOT to process? ABSOFRIKKENLOUTELY.

My mother makes things all about her. She always has. Ever since I was a kid. She has left me no room to grieve ON MY OWN TERMS she has what I feel has shoved my Dad's death constantly down my throat. I am constantly reminded he's dead. I am constantly reminded that she's hurting the most but won't process it in a healthy way. She lays on the couch all day long and ROTS away. I did too for a short time but I had to continue living. I went to my doctor and told her I was struggling, I did some counseling to process some complicated feelings and now those complicated feelings are BACK AGAIN because after 2.5 years, my mom still talks about him \*IF NOT MORE NOW THAN SHE EVER DID BEFORE\*

I just cannot handle it. I am ready to explode. Boundaries don't help all the time. I constantly have to be available for any phone call because what if it's an emergency? I'm always on edge I am constantly bombarded with her emotions.

When it comes to my emotions? I get nothing. I get The Grief Olympics. But she ALWAYS expects me to hold space for her and if I can't or if I shut down, she criticizes me for it and basically makes me feel horrible.

I just want to carry on in my life and think about my Dad in my own way that does not SUFFOCATE ME. I am literally suffocating. And I am finding it hard to move through life with his death being constantly shoved down my throat.

And death, and dying, and illness of others. Literally anyone. I literally DO NOT CARE.

ALL I CARE ABOUT IS I'VE LOST MY DAD AND I JUST WANT FOR ONCE TO ***NOT BE FORCED TO THINK ABOUT IT ALL THE DAMN TIME!!***

My 80 yo widowed mother lives on her own and is fairly self sufficient. My brother is estranged from the family so I do all of the help when she needs it.

She has recently suffered from a pretty bad UTI for the last couple of months and has been on antibiotics , and her urologist has now suggested that she get a daily catheter inserted at home by a nurse that visits daily. She also has some small kidney stones that she may or may not have passed yet.

She isn't showing any signs of confusion or anything concerning her cognitive health.

Does anyone have experience with a nurse coming in daily to insert a catheter? Did it help your elderly parent?

I am in Toronto if that makes a difference.

I feel so embarrassed.

I logged off work yesterday and completely unraveled while my husband was in our kitchen making us dinner. Hyperventilating, sweating, chest pain and tears. I had to take an Ativan. I think when I logged off work knowing I would be off today to drive him to the airport it hit me I would be on my own for 2 weeks with just my dog. We have no children.

He left today and I feel like I'm losing it. It's been a few years since he's gone on a solo trip to see his brother but I am finding that since my Dad died 2 years ago, I have felt more clingy to my husband.

*And I hate that*

*I hate that about myself*

I wish I was like other people who act all normal and fine when their spouses leave. Or are other people like this but not as intense as me?

WhYTFaMiLiKeThis 😭😭