I’m fed up caring for my cruel mum

DEAR BEL, UNTIL 18 months ago, I was a happy teacher with more than 30 years’ experience. But four years ago my mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

I lived 100 miles away. She’s pushed all her friends away with her cantankerous behaviour (this a friend’s word, not mine) and has no contact with neighbours. She has always been difficult.

I decided to give up the job I loved. Even with support from social services there seemed no choice. So I left my lovely home, my two grown-up daughters (aged 29 and 27 now) and moved closer to Mum — still 50 miles away, unable to move closer because of my husband’s job.

My girls and my husband give wonderful support. I see Mum every other day and she has a carer twice a day. I am looking at residential homes where I believe Mum will be safe and happy later. But I often find myself so full of anger and frustration I can’t breathe. Mum and I have never been close. Her behaviour to me — in particular the past 12 months — verges on cruelty.

Caring for someone you are incredibly close to is hard enough, but though I love my mum, I don’t like the way she treats me most of the time. My resentment can be overwhelming, yet still I go on. What about the carers who do not want to be carers? We live in silence. If you admit how much you hate the role of ‘caring’, then people look as if you’re breaking a taboo.

All my wonderful female friends were or are very close to their mothers, so I can’t say how much at times I resent mine. I hope you might be able to advise me in some way. SUZANNE

Your letter will resonate with innumerable readers, as it is truly a problem for our times. It is estimated that by 2021 there will be more than a million people living with dementia in the uK, and their story inevitably involves those who are looking after them — roughly about 700,000 unpaid, exhausted, frustrated, dutiful carers.

And many feel as you do, Suzanne. I am sure it did you much good to write it all out to me, in an original email much longer than this.

But here is the unusual aspect of your situation. I want readers to know you have mined your depths of frustration and love and written an extraordinary play about this painful, but all- too- common situation. You sent it to me, I read it — and was deeply impressed.

So if an imaginative radio 4 drama producer or any theatre producer would like to get in touch with me, I will gladly send you this terrific piece, called An Absence of, because I believe it could be turned into something powerful. Please do.

In the meantime, you tell me you are also writing stories. Giving up

the teaching job you loved in order to help your difficult and often nasty (yes, it must be said) mother has taken you into a painful world of simmering resentment harnessed by a sense of patient duty, but it has also released you into creativity.

The tension between what you want and what you feel you must do, between honesty and silence, between love and guilt, love and ‘ hate’ — all this is pulling you in many directions, but you are expressing this in words.

I know you will agree with me when I suggest to others in a similar situation that writing feelings down can be therapeutic.

Not everybody has the talent to write a play, but to buy a notebook and scrawl down frustrations can be useful.

The website carersuk.org contains a lot of information for people in your situation as well as an online forum, which must be useful for those who feel isolated by their caring role.

It’s so important to know that others share your feelings — which is why, Suzanne, I hope your writing finds an audience.