I can’t stand it anymore. I thought it wouldn’t be a problem for me, but now I’m at my breaking point. At least I want to share what I have to say.

I am not an only child, I have an older brother by 3 years. My mother gave birth to us at quite an advanced age, but it did not affect our health or upbringing. She gave birth to my brother at the age of 42. He was a long-awaited baby for her and my dad, because mom couldn’t get pregnant for many years.

And three years later I was born. Mom was 45 at the time. Of course, my mother’s age was taking its toll, and my brother and I were brought up, so to speak, in the old way, but overall we have nothing to complain about. Then my father died when I was 17. For a long time my mother could not accept this. It was also a great sadness for me and my brother, but we were able to get through the loss together and move on with our lives.

After graduation, my brother received a job offer in the USA, where he still lives. I stayed to work in my home country. Today, my mother is 79 years old and needs care almost around the clock, so I decided to take her in. At this age, a man behaves worse than a child. She often forgets to turn off the iron, even though I have asked her many times not to iron.

She’s also always trying to cook something, but because of her age, she’s not very good at it anymore, but I can’t tell her about it, I’m ashamed. Her forgetfulness is growing day by day and it scares me. Once she went out for a walk and forgot the way back. We had to look for it for a long time, and finally my friend saw it by chance and called me.

I shudder to think where she might have gone if her friend hadn’t met her. Caring for an elderly person is very difficult, and besides, you want to live your own life. I don’t have the energy for this anymore. I am also not a young person, at the beginning I took care of my children, and now my mother. I don’t know what to do, but soon I will run out of strength.