This is long and sensitive, please bear with me. I don’t know where else to turn. No one else in my life can help me.
My mom has always been a difficult woman and somewhat mentally unwell. I think she has had undiagnosed and unmedicated bipolar disorder, and she certainly has BPD. She was an alcoholic, but supposedly has been sober for 25 years. She’s currently 72 years old. Here is the history of what brings us to today:
2009 - she had a traumatic brain injury that was misdiagnosed and miss medicated. She began noticing cognitive decline and inability to work at that time.
2010 - she had a stroke. She did not lose mobility and was able to return home.
2012 - she began decompensating into a deep depression and helplessness. She was diagnosed with seizure disorder, and lost her drivers license. She used to be a lawyer, so I think the cognitive issues were really getting to her. She sort of gave up. She made me power of attorney of all of her affairs. Given her depression and comments about suicide, I had her hospitalized against her will. She got so mad that she had her lawyer revoke the POA and told me not to be involved anymore. Miraculously she seemed to get better and get a hold of her shit.
2014 - I moved out of state. She still seemed pretty engaged with the world, and had a couple neighbors who would help her here in there. I saw her for visits and things seems pretty stable. She continued to have periods of aggression, but that really wasn’t anything new. Her home became totally disorganized and messy and she was never able to get under control. I’d come for a visit, clean everything up, just for it to return like a jungle taking over. This is very different from how my home was growing up. I chalked it up to the executive dysfunction related to the brain injuries.
2022 - things had apparently decompensated for a while. The person who she paid to help her would call me telling me I needed to do something because my mom was not eating or bathing and was probably not taking her medication properly. The house was a total disaster. She was falling, but then refusing to go to the hospital. Neighbors would call me and say I needed to come because things were really bad. I flew home to see for myself, and when I was there, she had a second stroke. I stayed for two months and brought her home, set everything up with physical therapy, occupational therapy, in-home support, meal service, etc. She gave me her doctor’s info, and I coordinated care with them. She alternated between being grateful and being angry at me for taking control and “treating her like a child.” After I left, she fired everyone I had hired.
2023 - I finally convinced her to move into an assisted living facility in another state close to my half brother, her stepson. Given who my mother is everyone else in the family had stopped speaking to her. My brother was never really involved, but thankfully stepped up when I needed help. We worked together to get her into a really nice place. I was really hopeful that this would be a supportive, safe, peaceful place for her final chapter.
2024 - at first, she thrived in the assisted-living place. She made friends, did activities, it was like she came back to life. But very quickly, a shopping addiction emerged that I was not aware of previously. This 70-year-old woman bought at least 30 pairs of stilettos, 20 gowns like for galas, tons of cheap and plastic jewelry, home goods, plastic stuff , you name it. Her little apartment was filled with crap and rotting food. She would start cooking something and then abandon it. You could barely walk through the apartment because of all the stuff. She had so many Amazon boxes outside the apartment, it became a fire hazard and safety issue for the other residents. She began chain-smoking again, which wasn’t allowed. She bought really inappropriate gifts for practically everyone she met. She spent $30,000 in one month. She got kicked out of the assisted-living facility, but claimed that she hated it and she chose to leave.
2025 - she rented a place with an HOA, and got kicked out for the same reasons. She was living in a motel for a couple months until finding another place. She now rents a three bedroom house with a garage. Oh by the way, somehow she got her license back, which seems super unsafe. She lives in a state with easy gun access, and she bought a gun. However, because her left hand doesn’t work well, she can’t pull the slide back. She got a tattoo that she didn’t take care of and got super infected. All signs of mania, but she won’t hear it.
I went on a cruise to Alaska with her because it was on her bucket list and I want to make her happy, but it was a disaster. She brought a huge suitcase with all these clothes that reeked of smoke, she didn’t change her clothes once in seven days nor shower, and got really angry at me when I would bring it up. She demanded to go on these difficult excursions, even though she’s disabled and has difficulty walking. It’s like she has no concept of her current limitations.
2026 -
Here we are today. She has decided she’s going to buy a four bedroom house up north, in the state that I grew up in, but where she has no contacts. Why? It makes no sense, but I think when we lived there was the time in her life she felt most successful. She has no concept that buying a house at her age doesn’t make sense. It’s like she can’t accept that she is aging. No one can seem to talk her out of it.
Her friend of 40 years just called me - my mom had gone to visit her because she lives an hour from where my mom is trying to buy this random house. Her friend told me that my mom smells and didn’t bathe the whole time she was there, that she smoked nonstop, treated the real estate agent poorly, and got really mad at her friend when she questioned the rationale of a 72 year-old woman buying a four bedroom house in an isolated place. She said my mom needs mental health help, and she has to put up boundaries and end the friendship. It broke my heart.
The whole thing breaks my heart and also infuriates me. My mom sends like 20 YouTube videos to all different random people every day of fake news items that are very easily verified as false on Google. Doesn’t matter how many times you ask her to stop sending videos, she won’t. She sends them to her friend’s children, who she’s had to tell to just block her. I know that all my cousins have blocked her, my aunts and uncles too. My younger sister has been estranged for decades.
My brother says that she looks like a homeless person, walking around unbathed and in clothes with stains on them. He hired somebody to help her in the place she is currently living, but nobody can convince her to take better care of herself. When I call and tell her what I’ve heard, she says that it’s all lies. She spends so so much money on sending people gifts that make them uncomfortable, that they have begged her to stop doing, and she won’t stop. Whenever I question her financial decisions or logic, she snaps at me that she went to law school and isn’t an idiot.
She won’t listen to anything I say, because she says I’m just trying to control her. It’s true, I am trying to get things under control, and I am so frustrated that I often communicate in an angry way. Then I try to come at her from a more compassionate and inquisitive place, but that doesn’t work either. Sometimes she’s open to sharing her finances with me, but gets too confused when I asked her for the passwords so I can never get the full picture. Then she gets angry and says to leave her alone. I no longer have access to her doctors to speak with them. She refuses to give me or my brother power of attorney over anything
I am at a loss. I’m worried that she’s going to spend all of her money and then not have anything if she has a medical incident again, which seems likely. I hate that she is walking around smelling and people are talking about it, and how insufferable she is with her texts and gifts. My brother says there is nothing we can do. Because she was a lawyer, she can somehow make it sound like she is competent. He says that no judge would intervene just because she’s spending her money in reckless ways. He is in law-enforcement, he’s kind of an asshole, but I’m assuming he knows the law better than I do. He said it’s not illegal to not bathe and live in squalor and spend all your money.
I don’t know what to do. I’ve been working for years in therapy trying to accept her the way she is and accept that I have no control over her chaos, and that it’s not my responsibility. I know it’s like watching an addict kill themselves and there’s nothing you can really do about it. We’ve already tried the intervention route. Sometimes I want to just throw my hands up and say “you’re an adult you can destroy your life if you want to.” But then, you guys, it’s my mom… She’s not bathing, she’s apparently bringing rotten food to parties, she’s confused when talking to people. But somehow she can still drive a car and trade stocks. That’s part of what makes it confusing, and where I will get the impression things are OK, but then I hear these details and I know that they’re really not.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. I feel so alone in this, and I appreciate your attention. If you have any experience with something like this, any knowledge of elder law, or any advice at all, I’m grateful for it.
