I’ve been in therapy, done grief groups and every day I cry - sometimes almost hysterically. I was an only child and she was my only family. I have no kids or husband There are distant relatives I never met in another country. I was her Caregiver. I feel great guilt for not doing more for her sooner, for not talking to her about what was happening. She tried to talk to me but I’d cry. She moved in with me on late 2018 and the Dr still said she could drive then so I kept going to work and to shows and the gym and thrift stores. I should have been there for her in 2019!! I was there and took her to the store and tried to keep her from driving and brought home food and took her out to eat- I didn’t neglect her but I was not there enough. Didn’t really comprehend things. Couldn’t deal with it. The dr said she was not ready to see a neurologist yet coz she passed word tests and they were more concerned about her weight loss. I feel like that was my fault!! The Dr and I were working on getting her a nutritionist but I think the issue was that she had problems reheating meals or fixing easy things like sandwiches or the food i had bought and I didn’t realize it. I knew she couldn’t make homecooked meals but I didn’t understand that a bowl of cereal was difficult for her or maybe was. I don’t know for sure back then. I lived in fear but I ran instead of being there. I feel like a selfish bad daughter. She had no one but me to talk to. There is no other family and her friends were far away and couldn’t drive being older. Fast forward to 2020 and Covid- I worked from home and stepped up my game. She started to decline fast. Pt oT all the appointments I arranged and I tried so hard to juggle it all. I tried to get people in but it wasn’t too easy with Covid so it was mainly just me. She had Vascular dementia. I didn’t know it was vascular until July 2020. I didn’t expect things to go so fast with her memory. I loved her more than anything in the world. I still do. I was so scared. I feel so selfish not doing more. I thought dementia would be a long 10-15 years. It wasn’t. I didn’t understand that dementia would take her like it did. I told her she’d be ok that those things wouldn’t happen that she worried about but they did. I thought she was just moving and thinking slower and I didn’t grasp the gravity of it all in 2019 and pre Covid. I was non stop worried but i didn’t step up then. I was not home enough. I was every night and morning but I kept going out instead of being with her more. I was w her but not enough. I feel like I failed her. I was physically sick from the stress of both my job and worrying about my mom in 2020 and was throwing up often from stress. I was petrified of Covid. I ended up quitting my job in 2021 and giving all I had to care for her and continued to give my all for the remainder of her life but her memory was not right by then. I missed those moments of talking to her about the important things coz I couldn’t handle it. She deserved so much more . I miss her terribly. I feel full of regrets and loss. She made a family ancestry album and I didn’t look at it with her then. Why oh why didn’t I spend that quality time with her all the years before her memory failed. I called her all the time and went to eat but didn’t do so much more. So many regrets. All the what ifs. She was the only person who ever loved me unconditionally. I yelled at her one night in early 2019 coz I wanted to be out with some stupid guy and she wanted me home. I had been drinking. I’m an awful person. At least that might. I made her cry. I feel like a horrible person. Everyone thinks I should be proud for all I did for her but I have so many regrets and I want to relive the past and do things better but I can’t. I know she loved me and would want me to be happy but I don’t know how to do that. I’m so lost and scared. She was wonderful and amazing and kind. She deserved much more. I feel like I don’t know how to move forward
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Vascular Dementia has a survival rate of about 5 years. It is inexorable and there is nothing you can do to stop, improve or sidetrack it.
COVID messed all of our lives up badly, right? It made it difficult to get therapists in to see mom, but in the end, that wouldn't have prevented her passing.
I think you are holding yourself to a high standard than God. Nothing, NOTHING could change the course of this disease. I think that's a fact you have to learn to accept and go from there.
I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but there are some things in life that can't be fixed and that are not within our locus of control.
I would, since you have done all the things most would recommend in terms of grief groups and so on, suggest that you now see a psychologist.
You could consider a licensed social worker in private counseling practice if you prefer as they are often trained in counseling on life transitions. However, to me, given you describe yourself as crying BEFORE your mother's death to the extent you felt she couldn't talk to you, this is an ongoing problem that may have not a lot to do with your mother per se.
Do seek help. Much in life is a decision. Life is full of tragedy and pain. And it is full of beauty and joy. I love to listen to Dr Laura's call of the Day on podcast. She can seem brutal sometimes, but she is also RIGHT and she cuts to the chase very quickly, often saving people years of time and money in therapy. Dr. L says that we CHOOSE what we think about 24/7, what we concentrate on.
As we draw more into ourselves and circular habitual thinking we WITHDRAW from a world that has much to offer us.
And ultimately it is a choice.
I am 81. You can imagine the losses I have sustained without my telling them to you. The losses include a marvelous Mom and Dad, and a wonderful brother.
We all lose those we love if we live long enough to do so.
The poet and undertaker Thomas Lynch says that "once someone is dead there is nothing you can do ABOUT, FOR, WITH, or ABOUT them that will make the slightest difference to them" and that's the truth. Your Mom is gone; you most surely have my deepest condolences on that.
But you are living.
I doubt you do your mom honor by letting your own life be henceforward about grief.
I sympathize with your pain, but sympathy does you no good; in fact sympathy often holds people back.
The world with all its beauty can be a tough place and it demands of us our best efforts toward our own physical and mental health, and demands that we attempt to help others.
Often, in that helping others we find our own pride and joy and esteem. It takes us out of our own heads and helps us to think about OTHER people.
So while you can no longer help your mother, you CAN help many others by accepting the lesson you learned through her to help other people.
I encourage you to reach OUTWARD to the world instead of inward into yourself.
I encourage you to get professional help for yourself, and to embrace it and do the hard work that will bring you, eventually, great joy. And breaking old habits is, believe me, hard work; you will be very proud of yourself.
I wish the very very best for you.
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Stop blaming yourself. You did not hasten, or bring upon her death. You could have been the most perfect daughter on Earth, and the outcome would still be the same. Mother was supposed to pass before you; it's the nature of things. It's heartbreaking no matter what, but you are not to blame here.
Replaying scenarios in your mind and wishing you'd done this or that is not helping you heal. It's actually killing you. At this rate, you will grieve yourself to death. That cannot be what Mom would want for you.
You say she wanted you to be happy. No one would expect you to be happy after such a huge loss. But, try to consider how she sees you now.
She sees your true soul, probably even more than you do! She knows how you felt. She knows you loved her. She sees your heart. She knows she didn't raise an uncaring, selfish daughter. That isn't who you are! Why would you call yourself something you are not? You are a piece of her life, not an instrument of her death. And you are here to continue to be in the love and light she instilled in you from the day you were born. Don't snuff out that light; it's from her and she knew she could trust you with it. The hole in your heart can be filled with the love she gave you. That love didn't end just because her life did.
Can she truly rest in peace if she sees you blaming yourself and thinking you were the worst daughter that ever lived? Can she be happy seeing you drown like this? She can expect you to feel sad and maybe lost for now... but not taking blame and guilt. These things don't honor her or her memory, because they are not true. She didn't raise you to spend the rest of your days in this spiral.
Grief feels awful. It's a long process. It's okay to cry. It's okay to miss her presence. But please, please don't blame yourself anymore.
If guilt starts to enter my thoughts, I push it back. I did the best I could with no help. I am not perfect and either are you. So stop feeling guilty. We are think we could have done better. We did what had to be done and it had to be enough. So stop thinking about what you could have done better. Its now in the past and nothing you can do about it. Release that guilt and move forward in you life.
“I know she loved me and would want me to be happy …” Yes!
Best to you as you navigate this hard road after such a terrible loss. It does get better with time.
I was not an instinctive mother out of the gate. Every single thing that happened with my firstborn was a first for me, because I was the youngest sibling, youngest cousin, and only babysat about three times 20 years before I had a child of my own.
I screwed up a lot, because the baby books were of little help when my daughter didn't hit milestones when she was supposed to, she was colicky (THAT was a party!), and I even had a pediatrician tell me "don't starve her, Mom" when I brought her in at 10 a.m. for constant vomiting and hadn't fed her that morning.
In short, my poor daughter was a learning experience, and as she grew up, I just told her that she was my guinea pig, and I was doing the best I could.
Fast forward to dealing with a mother with dementia, and I was in unknown territory once again. We didn't even realize she had dementia until she was probably four years into it, because it started at the same time (and likely as a result of) another illness. My dad never really knew that's what her problem was.
I made the terrible mistake of first placing her in a skilled nursing facility instead of Memory Care, because I didn't know there were different types of care other than assisted living, and she definitely couldn't have qualified for that. (She was also mostly blind.) After seven months in skilled nursing, my husband was the one who said we had to move her or she was going to waste away. I moved her to MC after finally realizing that dementia was her biggest issue that we could treat with some success through socialization. She died there in 2021 happier than she'd been in years through no fault of my own. I was just finally lucky in one of my decisions.
My point in all this is to let you know that no one is an expert in anything the first time around. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but only if you can apply what you've learned. Otherwise, you just chew on the woulda/coulda/shoulda stuff like you're doing, and that's of no value to anyone. You can't turn back the clock. You did the best you could at the time.
That's all anyone can do -- the best they can at the time. Forgive yourself and let it go.
I am so sorry that you are blaming yourself for not being there more for you mother. You have done the best that you could have done for her as you also had your life to live. You were a loving and dutiful daughter to your mother, and I’m sure your mother was proud of you. It’s not your fault that your mother’s dementia progressed the way it did, and there was nothing that you could have done to stop the progression. Please stop blaming yourself because it was not your fault.
Now it’s time for you to heal. You said you have tried counseling but it did not help. You can now get rid of the guilt that you are feeling by focusing on the happier times you have had with your mother. Go get the ancestry album that your mother made and look at the happier times and reflect on them. When the sadness and grief try to take control of your thoughts, try your best to push them out of your mind and replace those thoughts with the happier times with your mother. Also, if you have the time, you should try volunteering which will help occupy your mind from the sadness.
DO NOT dwell on the sadness of your mother’s illness and death, but dwell on the happier times you have had with your mother. Time will eventually heal your grief, but for now just focus only on the happier times spent with your mother
Wishing you peace and happiness in your life.
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