Helen Chronicles

Scratch the previous post, we’re cranking up the melodrama! As I write this, my 89-year-old mother in Tucson, AZ is in the hospital again. She’s there because she called 911. She called because she thinks she’s dying, and because, to choose the best of all her paranoid delusions, her doublewide is “wired for explosives.” Yes, [...]

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I am so doomed. After a long day herding (delightful) out-of-town company around, my wife and I were sitting in the saloon having a nightcap. I reported on two phone messages from my brother in Tucson on the state of things with Helen, how she now hears “voices” all the time, that the home care [...]

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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 [...]

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She wanted to come home today, but they wouldn’t let her. Helen’s in the system now, the jig is up. Now I know why I was tense all day and couldn’t work, the reason for the disturbance in the force. My brother called from Tucson again late this afternoon with another update on my 89-year-old [...]

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She’s dying “in the next two days,” according to her. Eighty-nine years old, shambling toward the end, supposedly. But who can tell for sure? The old woman is in the hospital now, recovering from a urinary tract infection, this after being up all night from not taking her anti-psychotic medicine. The “voices” won’t let her [...]

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Apparently I will never learn. Every six months or so I hear from someone that the old lady has really jumped the shark this time, she’s batshit loco and about to be locked up, mere minutes away from dissolution, or else we have to get her into a nursing home this minute! I get rousted [...]

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The weirdness had been building all day long, the way it sometimes does, like a slowly rising muck. I did my best to put it out of my mind and updated a website for some good people, which helped a little, but not enough. My wife was out of town. At about 9:00 p.m. the [...]

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We were just digging into a delicious beef stew my wife had made when the phone rang. It was a little after 6:00 p.m. “It’s Helen… [two rings, three rings] Okay, I’m going to answer it,” I decided. After all, what if my brother had just died? Or what if he were calling from her [...]

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Stolen cars, smashed lamps, stolen money, no money, lawyer threats, lies, lost heritage, no love, no trust, more threats, hearing voices, pure hate, no sense, crying out, shutting out, no fun, no one, all gone, wasting, wailing, flailing, failing, do it again, over and over and over and over…

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