Yes, the mother who is causing you so much emotional pain undoubtedly has NPD, Narcissistic Personality Disorder..
You are being saint like in your devotion, but nothing you do or say will ever change her.
In a terrible way, she is also condemned to live out her days locked into a cage of her own emotional dynamic.
Narcissists are unable to experience any true emotion, are unable to empathise, and as you know, manipulate, control and undermine you endlessly, not to mention gas lighting too.
You are, too sadly for words, her victim, whom she needs in order to justify her own existence.
Your choice to stick by her as she ages is contrary to all professional advice.
The Grey Rock treatment requires superhuman energy to carry out, no doubt about that.
I speak from bitter, lifelong experience of a long marriage to a man with this mental illness.
Not only did I suffer from coercive control and abuse throughout the marriage for almost thirty years, after divorcing in order not to become ill myself, and continue to work and support our children, there followed 22 years of deep depression for six months of every year.
I now understand that this was a form of Complex PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Now in my early seventies, I have only been free of depression for the last two years and eight months.
I have paid a very heavy price for this relationship. My ex-husband died recently. His death has thrown into focus the suffering and toll his narcissism took on the whole of my life.
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