Oh, you noticed? I have such observant readers! Yes, I dumped those posts about poor Helen and then restored them. This one may be the last for a long time, though. It’s time to take my life back, is why, and she will go her own way, regardless.
Basically, nothing has changed from that time three years ago.
She needs round-the-clock care but isn’t going to get it, since the hospital was set to release her today if she agreed to eight hours a day of home care instead of a nursing home, and that’s what she’ll pick. As soon as the nurse is gone, she’ll go wacko with the voices in her head, forget to take her anti-psychotic meds, make my brother come stay at her place, and keep him up all night reporting on the murder, rape, and dope transpiring just outside her window. If he isn’t there, she’ll call the sheriff, go next door with a butcher knife, or hop in her car and kill someone. This is gold-plated guaranteed, take it to the bank and beat me silly.
But never mind. As of right now, she probably has home care, and Medicare will pay for it. I’ve found out what there is to know, done my best, and run into the wall again. (There’s a dent that matches my head.) My conscience is clear, I’m off the hook, and so is everybody else.
Now I think I’ll get drunk, take a hike, and have a bath.
Onward!
UPDATE: My brother reports some inaccuracies in the above. One of them is that the home care person will be there at night, when the “voices” are worse, I assume, and this way Helen gets the meds that help her sleep. He also has the car now, so she can’t drive off in a rage and land the Toyota in someone’s living room. Presumably her minder will keep her from calling the sheriff and keep her from the butcher knives. This is a great improvement, all the more so because I don’t have to do squat, and there’s a partial load off my brother.
Of course, when it comes to what I write here about my family, I’m entitled to gloss, exaggerate, obfuscate, and lie like hell in the service of the art. My rants are true, but this is also therapy. I put on my shaman suit and let ‘er rip. What you read isn’t family history so much as the sound of my psyche meeting the Mother (haha) of All Cattle Prods.
But my brother’s gone through hell here, too, and rates a ton of credit for overseeing this improvement. That’s the reason for this update. The old lady’s still as dangerous as a gut-shot rhino, but now we’ve got a stronger fence, and those things work both ways.
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FYI, prof John,
-Many of Mommie Dearest’s voices are amplified thru the insidious meds
http://www.cchrint.org/tag/shane-ellison/
Well, they certainly could be! She’s taken so many different kinds of prescription drugs forever that nothing would surprise me. Entirely possible, I’d say.
Kind of sorry you did delete, I’m glad I read them before they vanished because I’m glad to know what’s going on with you. Deletions aside, it sounds like you are finding the right way to walk through this.
I have an old ma myself, luckily not a nutso one, just fading away at 93 and– like everyone in her Florida assisted living place– heroically keeping on in the face of diminishment. I spent 11 days embedded in her life earlier this month. What a hard job it is to be old and displaced. For everyone there.
They’re in the WordPress “trash.” I can restore them with one click if I decide later they have literary merit. (I often do that.) It’s just that I have to fight so hard to break away. There’s so much anger still, more than I have yet expressed, at all the pain and wasted years, plus anger at the fates for having this endure so long. My 99-year-old aunt in Maine is just the same. Like a generational/family curse! Meanwhile, my sister T. is dead and never lived to see the end of it.
STFU and hit Restore. You’ll be glad you did.
STFU is always a good thing to tell me! But geez, did you READ those earlier pieces?!? Anyway, I restored them.
Yes, I did. You’re on my Speed Dial, which increases the chances now of a daily read.