On his last phone call to mom (on his own phone before it got shut off) she randomly mentioned she needed new dish towels and dish cloths, and since it was the 1st, he said he would buy her some and I could come pick them up (she doesn’t even need them!). This is after a couple of weeks of him being completely broke because my cousin just gave up on giving him groceries or whatever (he often sells them to his neighbors). He sends money he doesn’t have to give to his son, and his son wastes it like clockwork. That’s why I won’t let mom give him anything because it literally helps nothing, and the money is gone.
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Almost a year ago he sold his car for $400 bucks to buy a “cart”. I suspect the cart cost almost as much as he sold his car for. But I don’t even think he has the cart anymore, so he probably sold that, too.
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Now he didn’t pay the bill on his dirt-cheap cell phone, and that got shut off.
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I don’t know what happens next but he doesn’t have much else to lose. I think he was depending on my cousin to buy him food, give him loans, or whatever. I know he has several credit cards with $300 limits that are all maxed out. My cousin tells me he pays enough to unlock them again, then maxes them out again.
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He tried floating the idea of going with us to dad’s grave again a week ago, and I told mom no. The idea of him trying to use graves to get money out of mom sickens me, and he has done that before for other graves. (He uses holidays, birthdays of dead relatives, death anniversaries of dead relatives, mother’s day, yada yada, as an excuse to try to guilt mom to go to the grave, then try to get money out of her. He in no way thinks this is weird or offensive, and thinks all family is financially responsible for him. Last year he only got money for Christmas and his birthday from us, and he hounded mom for his birthday money for two weeks. It’s bizarre to me that a 70 year old man wants birthday money from his 75 year old sister.)
That sounds like a good plan. It is protecting your mom from unnecessary losses that seem to repeat themselves every time she tries to help.
My husband has a cousin, 55 years old, who is schizophrenic and has made herself homeless in Oakland right now. The family has tried to help her for years, even paying for an apartment for her for the past 4 years up until December. They had to make the collective agreement to let her be, and basically let her live her own life since they suffered continuous emotional upset over her nonsensical decisions. She too let her phone get turned off, and maybe, it is better for all of them to let the communication die out since she used the phone money for alcohol, and the communication was often very upsetting to the rest of the family. The situation creates great sadness.
I hope you are taking care of yourself!
I finally picked up the towels my uncle bought, but it was a good 6 weeks after he bought them. Mom knows I thought this was all a ploy to get money, so she gave me 20 bucks to give him for the towels.
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My uncle seemed kind of sad, and finally didn’t seem to care about the money. The cousin who was talking to him stopped because he was being too hateful about other family members (and saying things that were clearly untrue). The uncle who lives out of state was talking to him some on the phone, but he told mom he isn’t talking to him for a while for the same reasons.
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This sz uncle is still calling mom, but not nearly as much. Now I’m feeling guilty, since he is fairly isolated now, but I see no way around it if he continually wants money, or upsets everyone with his delusions. I wouldn’t mind him visiting mom if I didn’t think it would start down a road of him trying to manipulate the situation for money, or trying to get mom to stop her Parkinson’s meds, or anything else that happens to pop into his head.
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I would guess he is still talking to his daughter, who lives in a different city (although there were times in the last couple years I heard she was trying to talk to him less also), and also to his son who also has sz and is still in the halfway house as far as I know. Last mom said anything about it was that the uncle was only sending his son $150 now, as he didn’t have anything else to send. I don’t think he can even afford that.
It seems no one is talking to my uncle anymore except his two kids (one also with sz) and my mom. He hasn’t been calling her as much (at times he was calling 3-5 times a day). But he called her yesterday, and apparently his accusations of molestation have completely changed. Now he is saying it was the husband of one of their sisters, but the sister died in the mid '80s and her husband died about 25 years ago. None of the new accusations fit with the old ones, and when I asked mom if he realized his entire story changed, she said she didn’t think so.
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He also apparently said that, when he was a kid, doctors took him into the basement of a neighbor’s house and gave him x-rays. He said he just now realized that’s what they did. (He said the same thing about his earlier accusations–that he “just now realized” or “just now figured out what happened”.)
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I texted my cousin who had been talking to him up until a month or so ago. She said when he talked to her, he pretty much accused everyone in the family of molesting him at one point or another. She told me a few other things that he said that I just didn’t want to hear.
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I told her at this point I am very vigilant to lock up the house at night because I don’t know if he’ll get it in his head to take a cab or uber to our house because of some delusion in his head. She says she does the same. He still doesn’t have a car, and is still terrible with his money (and still giving some to his son with sz every month). But my cousin says he has walked great distances in the past when he gets something in his head. We live 8 miles away from him at least, although my work is only a block from his house.
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Mom was telling me she was concerned that maybe something DID happen to him when he was a kid, and this is why he’s like this. I told her that wouldn’t cause sz, and he’s had these random delusions for decades. I also told her that when he was on the shots, he was better. When he was off the shots, he was worse. She repeated what he says, that he doesn’t have sz because that one doctor one time didn’t think he had it and took him off the medicine. No other doctor agreed over decades…even his current doctor, who as asked him if he has missed any shots because of his symptoms.
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Last I heard his daughter is trying to get him involuntarily hospitalized, but he hasn’t done anything yet, or had such a massive break that neighbors called an ambulance or something. Anyway…
Everything is about the same, but I did notice when mom was talking to my uncle on speaker phone the other day that he says things like, “I have more goodness in my little finger than they have in their whole body.” He talks quite a lot (and is very insistent) about being better and smarter than doctors, neighbors, anyone, and thus he gets very angry about being in his tiny apartment with very little money, etc. He goes on and on about being a better person than so-and-so, how he is basically selfless and caring, how the doctor or the pharmacist don’t understand some simple thing that he understands, etc. It’s all so very weird because he sometimes acts AS IF he is selfless and caring, but then all the rest of the time is spent trying to get money out of people (which he immediately wastes if he gets it). He only buys mom dollar store stuff so he can try to guilt her into giving him money or whatever. (He asked for her car so he can “come take care of her”, even though he was the one who sold his car for a measly 400 bucks and has no way to buy it back for the same amount, as the guy who bought it said he could buy it back any time.) Anyway…I’m just venting a little.