I'm Trying To Rise To The Challenge

I’m trying to rise to the challenge.

I haven’t felt this stressed and anxious in a long time.  That is a huge blessing.  I used to Live in a place of anxiousness.  I didn’t even know how anxious I was then because that was my state of being.  In the last 12 years I have moved my Life to living in a place of near constant harmony.  Because of this, I am clearly aware of what anxiousness feels like in my body, and I do not like it. 

This anxious state of being is being caused by the situation with my Mom.  She has been pretty much my responsibility for almost 11 years.  It has been a roller coaster ride with her.  There were some good times, where she wasn’t drinking and was fairly self-reliant. But it was far more often that I was dealing with the havoc of her drinking and, in the last year, the results of all that alcohol abuse combined with the partial loss of her vision due to macular degeneration on her brain.  She has been rapidly losing her faculties.  It started with the hallucinations and has grown to include memory loss.  In August, it became apparent that she was no longer safe living by herself.  I had realized that she was mis-handling her medications and not eating.  I tried using a medication dispenser that would release the pills and sound an alarm, but she couldn’t connect the dots enough to know she had to actually ingest the pills.  I tried to call her when the alarm would go off and watch her take the pills on camera.  Even that did not work.  I also tried changing her diet to pre-prepared meals that she only had to microwave but this was too confusing for her, even with large print color coded instructions posted on the microwave oven.  She was slipping quickly into the fog of the other world within her pickled brain and all my solution oriented fixes were not working.

it took several weeks to meet with doctors and get a social worker assigned to her case.  The problem was that mom can not afford to pay for full time care.  Her insurance will cover 100 days during which I can apply for her to get Medical. The problem with that is that they require her to be hospitalized before they will approve care.  Since September, I have been white-knuckling it, literally, white-knuckling through the wait.  The social worker, Ester, is trying to get the insurance company to waive the hospitalization requirement but she hasn’t had any luck so far.  We also need for there to be availability in a facility who with that will take in a long term patient on Medical.  Originally, Ester warned me that the wait would be around 6 weeks.  Now we are at three months.  I’m hoping that we do not have to actually have a crisis for me to get Mom the help she needs.

Since the process started mom has rapidly deteriorated.  She has lost the willingness/ability to cook, eat, grocery shop, handle her medications, do laundry, care for her apartment, etc. on her own.  As of this writing about all she does for herself is shower and dress, but that is hit and miss.  I have had to rearrange my Life to be there twice day at noon and dinner time to give her the medications and make her meals.  She has simple things to eat for breakfast but it is more normal than not that she either does not eat or grazes on cookies and candy.  There is no way for me to get there in the mornings as well.  She isolates in her small apartment unwilling to venture out.  But she has also twice been caught in the Lobby of her building late in the evening trying to leave to meet someone from that other World of her brain.  Friends and acquaintances from her building were able to stop her before she heading out to wander the streets at night.  The white-knuckle anxiety is real.

I have been able to enlist the help of Lori, even with her already over-burdened schedule, Amelia, her housekeeper, and Danny, when he is in town, to cover me when I have to work. Amelia now also cleans mom’s apartment weekly and checks in on her when she is working in the building.  Danny, being a kind and patient soul, visits mom and spends as much time as he can with her.  I am very grateful for their help.  Without all of them I would not be writing this from a much needed vacation in Maui.  I am still nervous about the whole situation, but I desperately needed this break.  It is time to rest and be able to focus on my Self-care.  I’m still checking on Mom constantly from here but at least there is some room relax a bit.

My sister, Linda has a more strained relationship with mom.  Mom is a complicated person, who can be very difficult, especially for her daughters.  Neither of us have ever been especially close with Mom because of this.  For Linda the divide is deeper.  In the beginning of this current ordeal I was updating Linda regularly about my struggles but it became apparent that she was going to be neither a place of any real support nor comfort.  As my previously scheduled and much needed Maui vacation approached I reached out to Linda to let her know that I may need her to be my back-up if Mom got into a facility while I was away and may not be able to handle the paperwork from the island.  Linda, pushed it right back on me.  It was done politely and without saying “no” outright but the meaning was the same.  Kid, you are on your own.  

This whole experience triggers me on so many levels I am unable to even sort out all the feelings churning in my gut with individual issues.  It is just one churning mass of anxiety that is always there at varying levels.  I do not have a sacred, safe space in which to share much of this with another person, but I can share it with Micheal,  my Higher Power.  There are times of deep loneliness, and in those times I am trying to connect to Micheal, but I haven’t been able to bring him in close enough to get the comfort for which I long.  I’ve pulled out every self healing tool I have learned to get me through this challenge and they are helping but there has been no magic wand to make it all go away.  

Last week I did get some clarity around the situation.  I am a strong believer in generational karma; that children repeat themes of their ancestors Lives until finally the issue is worked out.  I was struggling with, given that is true, why am I experiencing this with my Mom.  She lost her mom early in her Life and so never had to take care of her.  She didn’t take care of grandparent or her father.  Well, she did take care of her father for one week after he had a surgery late in his Life.  She hated it and complained about how difficult he had been.  So why is this challenge in my Life?  Then one day last week it occurred to me.  It’s not a karma lineage from Mom, it’s from Dad.  Dad took care of his mother who was much more difficult that mine.  Neither of his siblings were of much help if any at all.  The memories came crashing back to me.  Dad told me once that he had a lot of friends but very few close friends.  The strained expression he wore at times, his first heart attack at 54. So many memories now all falling into place.  I realize now how much Dad kept inside.  He bore his burdens alone.  He was a man who everyone liked and he had a lot of friends, but now I see he didn’t have anyone to hold a safe sacred place for him.  I am deeply ashamed and embarrassed that it took me to the age of 57 to realize this.  Dad was stoic for us to the determent of his own health.  He must of been incredibly lonely at times and I was too self-centered and immature to see any of it.  I have always said that the obligation I feel to take care of Mom is really an obligations to Dad.  I know that is what he wants from me.  Now I see the greater obligation is to my son and his children.  I need to work out this karma so that they will not have to continue this struggle in their Lives.

The challenge is to remove this anxious churning ball of energy from my gut.  To learn to deal with the difficulties of Mom with acceptance and even gratitude.  To do all of this without needing to whine to any mortal about my circumstance.  To be self-comforting to my inner child while being loving, kind and patient with my Mom and the World at large.  I need to handle this situation in a way that ends this cycle.  I believe this can only be done with the help of my Higher Power.  I have wanted to learn to connect more fully with Micheal, to clearly hear his guidance.  Now it feels like an urgent necessity.

I also want to do everything I can to make sure my final years her on this plane look very different than my Mom’s.  I want to keep my body as healthy as possible.  If my mind starts to go I want to be proactive in finding my own care before I can no longer make those decisions.  I do not want Daniel or Lori to be in this situation.  I’ve told them that I do not want him to take care of me and to not feel the slightest bit guilty about putting me in a care facility.  “Just give me a cookie, I’ll be fine!”.  I will do everything I can to make sure this will be my path.  The goal is Happy, Healthy, Dead.  But, in the chance that my mind does start to falter, I want to have done enough Self-work and have the tools to handle it without being a Victim.  I’ve made and will continue to make this clear to both Lori and Daniel.  I want this cycle to end with me.  I am rising to the challenge.

Blessings