'When my mum finally agreed to go to therapy, a 5-word confession turned my world upside down.'

Caroline Baum never thought the mechanical whirr of a chair would become a triggering sound. But for the writer and broadcaster, it became the soundtrack to a daily disruption that was slowly corroding her sanity.

Caroline's mother, who is now 96, didn't have an easy life. Orphaned, for all intents and purposes, at age five due to a domestic violence incident, she entered a volatile foster system that left her feeling abandoned and unloved.

"I've heard since from psychologists that, at five, that's quite an important age in terms of child development," Caroline told the host of Mamamia's MID podcast, Holly Wainwright, when the pair sat down to talk about the complicated reality of caring for ageing parents — a reality that defies neat narratives of gratitude and duty, revealing instead the messy human truths of resentment, love, obligation and guilt.

"If something earth-shattering happens to you, one of your survival techniques can be to build a carapace around yourself in order to survive, where everything becomes entirely and only about you. That is the beginnings of narcissism."

Years later, Caroline has certainly noticed traits of narcissism within her mother. But the writer didn't realise how bad things would get when she and her husband agreed to house the then-90-year-old.

Watch: Julia's question for mothers with grown children. Post continues after video.

"My mother... wanted to live with us in our house and pay for us to build a second story on the house," Caroline said. But what seemed like a reasonable arrangement quickly unravelled.

"I thought, 'Well, there's a kitchenette up there. She's going to make herself most meals and come down maybe for dinner two or three times a week.' But no, that's not what happened."

Instead, her mother came downstairs for lunch every day and dinner every night. And lunch wasn't a casual meal grabbed on the go for Caroline's French mother. It was "a non-negotiable. You stop your day, whatever you're doing, and you have lunch, and it's two courses... a main dish, and there'd have to be dessert."

The daily routine became a growing source of resentment.

"It got so bad that the sound of the stair chair coming down, the mechanical whir of the chair, became a trigger for me. I started to feel physically sick when I heard that chair moving," Caroline shared.

As tensions mounted, Caroline suggested they try family therapy together — a suggestion she was surprised that her mother accepted.

"I remember walking into [the therapist's office] and thinking, 'We are going to eat you for breakfast. We are so f**ked up," Caroline recalled of their first session.

When asked to speak about the issues they were facing, Caroline started small: her mother never said 'please' or 'thank you'.

Her five-word response stunned Caroline.

"I've never believed in gratitude," she said, adding, "I think it's demeaning."

Listen to the full episode of MID below.

The admission was a revelation for Caroline.

"I had never heard a statement like that in my entire life," she said.

"Gratitude is the lubricant in all social exchange. We are all giving and taking and receiving and bartering things and emotions and transactions all the time. If you don't have gratitude, then it is all purely transactional, and that is so cold."

The therapist suggested Caroline's mother try saying 'please' and 'thank you', to which she replied, "Well, I can do that. But of course, I won't mean it."

What followed was both comical and profound — a 90-year-old woman learning basic manners for the first time.

Every evening, when Caroline's husband gave his mother-in-law a glass of wine, she would offer him a sarcastic 'please' and 'thank you' in a condescending baby voice.

Handling the situation with grace and humour, Caroline's husband would jokingly respond, "Mention it."

This became their nightly routine, until one night, something incredible happened.

"After about 10 days, she dropped the baby voice, and she just said, 'Please, can I have a glass of wine?'" Caroline said.

"We taught my mother 'Manners 101' at 90."

The living arrangement changed dramatically when the now-96-year-old started experiencing severe delirium. "She suddenly started behaving like a truly crazy person and hallucinating in front of us, seeing all sorts of figures from her childhood in France, from stories she'd read," Caroline explained.

"Or she'd bang on the floor at three o'clock in the morning from upstairs and say, 'I have to discuss the film we've just watched.'"

Caroline with her mother. Image: Instagram/@lacarolinebaum

When Caroline finally called the doctor, the response was instant: "Ambulance. Immediately."

That day would become the last her mother spent at home. "After that, various other things ensued that made it impossible, according to the medical team supervising her, for her to come home," Caroline said.

In her lucid moments, the 96-year-old would "just say the word home, home, home, over and over and over again".

But while many assume that placing a parent in aged care ends the caregiver's responsibilities, Caroline has found the opposite is true.

"So many people have said to me, 'Oh, you must be so relieved she's not at home anymore.' Well, yes, I don't have the trigger of the stair chair sound. I don't have the interruption of having to make lunch every day… All of those things are a great reprieve. But the myth is that you give these people over into professional care and that suddenly you're footloose and fancy free, and you've got oodles of time, no. You're still bringing things from home. You're often supplementing little or no social activities. You are an advocate. You are the first port of call for any medical intervention."

One day, a nurse complained that Caroline's mother didn't say 'please' and 'thank you'. Caroline told her, "Your job is not to teach my mother manners. Your job is to care for her. I agree with you. My mother is not the most grateful person in the world. She's French; she's blunt; she's spiky. I acknowledge all of those things, but it is not your job to tell her to say 'please' and 'thank you.'"

All of these experiences have shaped Caroline's thoughts about her own ageing.

"This is where being an only child really sucks... I have to think to myself: Okay, what are the options going to be for me? And I've decided that my preferred option is going to be robo care. I want a robot to wipe my bum," she said, adding that she is a strong believer in voluntary assisted dying.

"I hope that we will be able to roll that out to a wider group of people. My mother says to me about once a month, 'I want to go to Dignitas in Switzerland. I need to go to Switzerland.' She doesn't say how we're going to get her to Switzerland, but basically she's had enough, and she would like to check out. And I completely agree with that."

You can listen to the full conversation with Caroline Baum on the latest episode of MID, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Feature Image: Instagram/@lacarolinebaum.