This is not me.
No, I do not do this.
I am not that girl.
Yet here I am.
Mom and Dad swore up and down that they would never be a burden on us girls. They made it very clear that our opinion on the issue was irrelevant and unwanted. They would be the masters of their own destiny and we should just be prepared for what that meant.
Then Dad died. It was sudden and shocking and peaceful. He had a fabulous day, sat down to watch a movie with Mom and drifted off. Aaron R Ford Jr. was gone and the world would never be the same.
I rushed to Oklahoma. I was in a daze and I really had no idea what to do. What do you do when your dad dies? All I knew was to get to Oklahoma. I was the first to arrive to mom’s side but a day had passed and she was a mess. Then my sister was there. The three of us, there. Just there, without Dad. We are a family of strong, dominate women. We were all in tremendous grief. All lost. All of us nothing but raw nerves on which the other two were tripping. I felt immediately that our whole family dynamic had changed. Without Dad’s neutralizing force we were an ugly mess. I am most most like Dad and I felt I had to step up, I needed to be the peacekeeper. I’d like to say that I did step up, that I became Aaron’s daughter and I held us together, but that’s not what happened. It took some time for me to grow into that role and I’m still trying to fill those shoes.
We got through the memorial with the help of the our families, and his niece and nephews who traveled to honor one of the best men to ever walk the earth. We all laughed and we cried. We honored Dad in a way that I know made him proud. Then it was time for everyone to go. They left one by one and there we were again. Dad’s three girls, all alone.
Mom, in tremendous grief but as stubborn as ever, insisted on staying in Oklahoma by herself and so we left her there. We just left. We were wary but secretly relieved. Well, I can not speak for my sister, I was secretly relieved. My world was on the verge of falling apart and I knew I didn’t have the capacity to take on the challenge of Mom. Not willing to deal with the problem I scurried away from it like a rat. I went back to my Life and it’s impending disaster. I called Mom frequently and tried not to notice that she was often drunk and always depressed. I was barely hanging on myself. I knew I couldn’t take her on as well.
Months passed and I knew mom was degrading. I knew it, but I wouldn’t admit it to myself. When she was sounding really bad I would always ask if she was ready to leave Oklahoma. I was always grateful when she said no. Then one day she didn’t say no. Through tears she told me she couldn’t do it anymore. She was throwing in the towel. We had to come get her.
Ok, we had to come get her. Ok. I’m grateful now that as much as I was in denial about mom’s condition, I didn’t hesitate when she asked for help. I called my sister and we immediately got into action. Just like when Dad passed, I didn’t know exactly what to do, but I started the “doing” and hoped that the “what” would be revealed. We put our Lives on hold and we were there within a week. It was the worst three weeks on my Life.
By now I was very conscious of my new role in the family and I was trying hard to be Aaron’s daughter. I wasn’t good at it. This period of time would change my relationship with my sister for ever. This is a story in itself that I may share another time. For now all you need to understand was that after three weeks we had sold off most of mom’s possessions and moved her to Arizona to live with my sister. In Oklahoma we had found mom dazed, unkempt and emaciated. She was drinking an enormous amount of alcohol and was always drunk. Now I was driving away from mom again. Leaving her with my sister. Knowing that she was not in a good situation but still relived that I didn’t have to take on the “Mom Problem” as well. The denial was becoming very hard to maintain, but for now it was helping me to survive.…literally.
The next years brought the World crashing around me, both globally with the Great Recession and personally with the trifecta of Foreclosure, Bankruptcy and, sadly, Divorce. I was at my lowest point with no family for support and few friends. But it’s true, God does not give you what you can not handle. I put on my big girl panties and started rebuilding my Life. I worked on myself relentlessly. I did my best to make sure my son was getting the Love and healing he needed and I worked hard at building new, supportive and loving relationships. I also worked at letting go of relationships that weren’t loving and supportive. I continued to phone Mom daily. I did not approve of a lot of decisions my sister was making around mom’s care and the granny flat they were building for her, but I held my tongue. Mom is not an easy person with whom to deal. She can be mean and unpleasant. If my sister was willing to take that situation on she had the right to make the decisions as she saw fit. So I let my sister do whatever she deemed best as long as she was taking care of the “Mom Problem”. I was just grateful that she was dealing with it and I tried to ignore as many of the anxiety producing thoughts as possible.
Then the one day the call came. It was my sister and she was done. She could not take one more minute with Mom. She threw the hot potato in my lap. Again I got into action. I found a place for mom to convalesce from her resent hip replacement. We got her moved in and I proceeded to learn my new role as the bearer of the “Mom Problem”. I hated it, and I felt guilty that I did not feel guilty about hating it. Mom living with me was not ever an option. I told everyone that I worked too many hours and I had stairs in my home, which was true. But the stronger truth was that I was glad to have a reasonable excuses because there was nothing about me that wanted to invite my Mom’s chaos into my fragile new World. I was working hard at rebuilding my Life and establishing a serine home. That serenity was precious to me and I was not willing to let my mom take that away from me. But that truth was hard to live, especially in a world full of other women who wouldn’t think of putting their moms anywhere but with family. I envy the relationship these women have with their mothers but that is not my story. I’m not that girl. Mom and I were never close. My mom lost her mother when she was eight years old. She didn’t have a mom, so she never really learned to be a mom, at least not like what these other women experienced. The fact is, mom prefers men. She really should of had sons. When she’s around male energy, she lights up. My sister and I seem to bring out the worst of her. I know I’m making my mom sound like a monster and that’s not fair. She is a very complicated woman who had a horrible childhood. She created herself and her Life out of nothing. The fact that she was able to give my sister and I relatively good childhoods is a miracle and I respect her care and the sacrifices she made for us. But she never learned to deal with the demons of her childhood. She just became a world-class, Type A personality and kept busy to keep her demons at bay. She would have frequent “melt-downs” which I now attribute to undiagnosed mental illness. She self medicated with alcohol and prescription drugs. Life with mom was a roller coaster ride of ups and downs and as a sensitive child, I learned to keep my distance as self defense. Then mom and dad retired to Dad’s tiny hometown in Oklahoma. At first everything was great. For the first few years they were busy with house projects and being active in the community. But eventually they got all the projects done and they had a lot of time to sit on their porch and just enjoy themselves, which for mom involved drinking. I didn’t realize that her drinking was becoming a problem. In hindsight I should have, the signs were there. She had finally slowed down and all the demons were catching up with her. Mom was now handling the demons by self medicating with beer. I do not know how much she was drinking before Dad passed but I do remember that she was sensitive about the subject with me and she always seemed to have a beer with her after noon. By the time my sister and I had moved her to Arizona, she was putting away a case of beer a day. My sister had enabled Mom to continue limited drinking when she lived with her but Mom had fallen in the shower and broken her hip. I’m pretty sure alcohol was a part of that accident.
In the nearly ten years she has been in San Diego the roller coaster has been a non-stop ride. She continued to drink. She broke her other hip and a shoulder. I’ve lost track of all the emergency room visits she’s had from drunken falls. On July 4th two years ago she had another fall. She wasn’t seriously injured but she was in the hospital for four days detoxing. The detox process nearly killed her and it scared her enough to finally stop drinking. Things got better without the craziness of alcohol but not for long. Soon she started hallucinating and was diagnosed alcohol induced dementia. She pickled her brain.
Through the last few years I have problem solved every new challenge of the dementia but usually without the grace and patience I wish I had. I’m sorry to say I’ve been angry and resentful a lot of the time. I’m learning compassion but when it comes to Mom, I suck at it. But I’m trying. I hate being here. I hate that I got stuck with the hot potato. I hate that she did most of this to herself. I hate having to deal with all of it; doctors appointments, medication, groceries, bills and, most of all, her pickled brain. I hate being that girl.
Now she is to the point I have dreaded. She can no longer reason the simplest problems out. The wires no longer connect and she is not safe living on her own. She can not handle her medications. She doesn’t always eat and she is again becoming reclusive. When she isolates the hallucinations become worse. I’ve done everything I can to keep her in her apartment because I know how much she will hate being in a full-care facility. I know it will kill her; her spirit and her body. But it’s time. There is no choice.
I am reaching out to her doctors and asking for a referral for social services. Mom can not afford a full-care facility so she will have to become a ward of the state. From what I understand, this can not happen until she is in crisis but I am hoping that I can get her help before something bad happens. So right now I am bracing for impact. Bracing for her tears and her anger. Bracing for my guilt. Bracing for my resentment of being that girl. I’m bracing for all of the unknown that is on it’s way and I’m praying. I’m praying hard to finally fully becoming Aaron’s daughter because that is the girl I need to be.
Blessings
Bleu
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