Does ‘full-fledged recluse’ mother-in-law need help?

Dear Carolyn: My husband and I are torn over his mother, between believing she needs help and accepting that she can live her strange life the way she wants. She’s in her late 80s and has, in the last three years in particular, blown past hermit into full-fledged recluse. She leaves the house only to go to the grocery and the hair salon. More times than not she refuses visitors, including family. Although she is physically capable and has a brand-new car, she announced she will no longer drive outside of her town – this includes not coming to any family functions. To “visit” her during the height of the pandemic, we drove up and stood in the front yard to speak to her through a window. She is appalled that people have resumed going about their business without masks. This week, when my husband offered to come pick her up – an hour and a half drive away – and take her another hour and a half further to see her only sister before a serious surgery, she refused.

Some of this is pandemic-related, some of it is more long-standing. Three years ago, when her husband died, she refused any visitors, which seemed odd and sad, but we wrote it off to her style of grieving – except she is still behaving this way. Looking further back, her husband worked in construction, leaving her by herself for hours each day in a rural home with no neighbors within a mile. She gleefully recalls how, when the kids were small, she would unplug the TV, tell them it was broken, and send them out to play – and lock the door.

Do you think this is just her personality, or does she need intervention?

– Torn

Torn: I don’t see any signs she needs “intervention,” and I don’t know how she can be any clearer about not wanting it.

● Her grocery-shopping and hair appointments prove she’s neither unable nor unwilling to go out for essentials: food, hygiene, baseline social contact.

● A woman who locks her children outside to steal some solitude sounds like the least surprising candidate ever for turning down visits from family.

● A decision by a nearly 90-year-old driver to limit herself to short, local (familiar) trips sounds eminently reasonable. We’d all be wise to respect our limits, reassess them periodically as we age, and adjust our habits accordingly.

● Her pandemic strategy might be why she’s almost 90.

● And she’s not wrong about the masks, since they didn’t stop being helpful – generally speaking, we just collectively declared them more annoying than they’re worth to us now, and left the medically vulnerable to fend for themselves.

● A three-hour round trip to visit her sister is no breezy little jaunt. The drive, the visit, and the return add up to a lot of social exposure. Add in the wear of travel and it could easily, logically, have been too daunting for her.

My goal was to rebut your concerns point-by-point, but in the process I developed respect for your mother-in-law. Thinking it’s about your way vs. hers is what has you “torn” – so let that go and commit to a “her life, her way” plan. Let loose, even, and glory in how plain she’s made things for you.

Carolyn at