Hi Anita,

I got my mother on the phone this morning (it’s currently 11:30am when I write this), she blamed me again about something and I would like your opinion. I will try be as neutral as possible when I will explain the situation, I don’t want you to be biased.

So, a few months ago her and me were supposed to go to the USA. To start off, I told here I was going to plan the trip and so I did the reservations for our plane tickets and I managed to do the ESTA for both of us as I’m the most comfortable in English. Until there everything worked properly. She got her ESTA and she was supposed to receive all the informations about the flight on her mail address.

Then, because of the COVID the trip had to be cancelled. I got a refund quickly because I was supposed to go with US Airlines. She haven’t gotten her refund yet because she was with the Lufthansa and apparently there were many issues with them to get something.

So she asked me if I could deal with that. I said no sorry I can’t yet because I have my finals soon, I have a lot of works, I’m stressed and anxious but you can try to call them. “Ok, do it when you have time then”, she basically said.

Me: “Can you not do it? I mean, you’re in France, you are retired, you can call them anytimes, I really don’t have time now”

Her: “No but can you do it because you are the one who made the reservations and you can do it right? When you have time”

For the reminder, she had all the informations required, the dates, the payments etc. At this time she didn’t even try to see if she had the mails from the company about the flights because “you did the reservations so you have already all the informations”.

I tried to call Lufthansa but I didn’t get any responses and I told her that. So she started to get angry but again I told her that if she wanted to move faster then she had to do something because I thought that was extremely unfair to let me do everything because I was the one who made the reservations. So she finally decided to look for the mails and she found out that she didn’t have them. We went into a fight because she blamed me for that and I told her that wasn’t my fault, that I didn’t have control on her mail address and that everything was supposed to land into her mail address and noting in mine. So I gave to her all the phone numbers I already tried and I told her to call them. Before even trying to call them she told me by message “………… (yes with all those points)ok….. can you give me the dates?”. I lost all my patience when I saw that 1h later she was still struggling for some mysterious reasons, to find the most basics informations about the trips and I told her that WE were going to deal with them once I’ll get back at home for holidays.

So, I went home. And she told me “yeah well maybe now that you’re in holidays YOU could try to fix the issue with the company no?”. I was literally “WHAT THE F, did you even try to call them when I gave to you their phone numbers after our conversation?”, “ehh no because you said you were going to deal with them”.

In my head I really thought “ok, so you are the retired one, you are the one who got plenty of time but you are just too lazy to take care of your OWN issues, RIGHT”.

She said that she didn’t call them because they would probably speak in English and she wasn’t as fluent as I am. => Excuse invalidated because I gave to her the number for our country.

So I tried many times to call them through summer but I didn’t get any responses. She tried once and after she gave up and told me “now I tried, keep trying please”.

I got her this morning on the phone and before I said goodbye she said “pff there is the issue with the Lufthansa to deal with, we’re far to be done with them..”. Did she really try to guilt-trip me? I have this feeling she really tried it and I can’t stop myself being so mad at her for that. She never did something to fix by herself that issue, I was extremely busy until july and she couldn’t afford moving her little finger to deal with it. Now she’s blaming me because for her it’s my fault if she haven’t received a refund yet. I just can’t believe she really dares doing it. Is that too complicated for a grown-up adult without any mental or physical disabilities to take care of herself and not counting like that on her child for a reason which is actually pretty superficial? I mean, I’m ok to help her as much as I can, but please, in this case she can do as much if no more as I can..