Just a vent-can anyone relate?

I just have to vent today. I am an only child who had to move my folks out here to Independent Living in Colorado from Florida back in 2011 when Dad couldn't drive anymore. Got them placed in Assisted Living in 2014 after Dad fell & broke his hip; he passed in 2015. Mother is still alive at almost 93 and now living in the Memory Care building of the same AL they'd lived in since 2015. She is glad Dad died b/c he was never the husband she wanted or needed anyway, so Good Riddance to him. She had to move there after a bout with pneumonia in May which landed her in a wheelchair needing A LOT of help, more than AL could offer, and after her dementia had progressed to a moderate level. She is still pretty lucid, however, and in much better mental condition than most of the other 23 residents in Memory Care.

Mother has always been very difficult to deal with. In fact, when I heard about Dad's car accidents in 2011 and knew I had to move them here, I cried on my new husband's shoulder. We were married in 2009, have 7 children between us, and his parents are long gone. He could NOT understand why I would be crying over having my parents living back near me (my mother, NOT my father was who I was crying about).

Now he understands 100% why I was crying and has probably done some crying of his own when I wasn't looking.

All my mother does is complain. No matter how much is done for her, it's just never enough. She received 4 phone calls *that we know of* on Thanksgiving alone and said Big Deal when I remarked how nice it was that she got a lot of calls. "No I didn't" she said. Ok, I replied, because arguing gets me exactly NOWHERE. "Well don't get HUFFY" she said, to which I replied I wasn't. "When people call for TWO MINUTES it's like they didn't even call." So the calls she DID get weren't long enough, so they didn't count. She hates the two nieces that called her, and threw in that she'd be better off if neither of them EVER bothered calling her again.

She hates her neighbors at the MC. They're all 'idiots and morons' and she wishes some of them would die. One of them DID die a few days ago, now she's complaining about who might come in her place..............that person might be even WORSE. Most of the residents are DEAF, don't you know? It matters not that mother is 80% deaf herself and refuses to wear hearing aids. She finds it VERY annoying when SHE has to raise her voice to be heard. When I have to raise MY voice for her to hear me, I'm 'yelling'.

Yesterday I worked a typical 12 hour shift which left me with a typical headache. I called her on the way home and she was in a very foul mood, as usual. I should add that DH and I had gone to see her on Saturday, bringing over homemade manicotti, 2 bras that she 'needed b/c the others were stolen by the staff', and a HUGE box of Russel Stover chocolates. So.......last night, she says she may have looked fine on Saturday when we saw her, but 'people look fine one day and they're DEAD the next'. She's been 'threatening' to die now for several years. I told her I was sorry she wasn't feeling well, even though she refused to say *as usual* WHAT it was that she felt. She then went on to start crying saying she's 'soooooooooo lonely like a dawg in this room all alone all day'. I suggested she leave her room and join the activities in the main hall, to which she replied 'Yeah Okay Thanks, I knew I shouldn't have bothered you with MY problems.'

I'm sick and I'm tired. I'm 62 years old and every single day of my life my mother makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong. Like I should feel guilty for being alive. Like I should feel responsible for her LIFE, her social calendar, her entertainment, her misery, the fact that she's in a wheelchair which is also my fault b/c I didn't force her to walk again in rehab after bad neuropathy SHOULD have put her in a wheelchair 5 years ago.

Can anyone relate? What is YOUR "I can't cope anymore" story?