When an elder has been a loving person, we want to visit them, call them, and show them love. An elderly person can sit back and enjoy receiving love from their children. But when that person has been and continues to be nasty and abusive, the children have awful, mixed feelings. We still want to show our love and do what is typically done to be nice to them. But we are so angry and resentful and they are so nasty and button-pushing!

My mother outright says that she is ‘the mother’ and we have to kiss her azz. She can do whatever she wants and we better not criticize it. I accept that and try to keep the minimum of what a relationship should be. Within seconds, she starts pressing my buttons and I have conditioned myself to find an excuse to hang up the phone without incident.

But now she is doing something that will explode and she will most like tell me she never wants to speak to me again (not the other way around). She has manipulated the whole family into giving her money so that she does not have to be downsizing and inconvenienced. They are all doing it, so they say, but I’m not sure I believe them. I refuse and told them so. So, when my mother is truly faced with having run out of money and forced to sell her condo, and I still refuse to help in any way, I will be shunned from the whole family and I know it. So that’s coming. I’ve spend far more energy worrying about this because I know it’s coming than the time and pain it will actually be once it happens. Still, my soul will not let me sell myself out and play into her manipulative game!

I may end up no contact with her eventually by her choice.