Be Strong

So, I wasn't going to obsess about the fact that today is my Mom's birthday. But no matter how much I say I'm going to be tough and ignore it, it comes anyway. I've even tried being too busy to notice, but it only delays the feelings by a couple days.

I didn't want to blog about more depressing thoughts...but the whole purpose of this blog is to purge, so purge I must today. Some of this is redundant, so if you've read my earliest posts, I've covered the subject before, but in less detail.

My Mom did more for me than I ever gave her credit for. I see that now.
Going back to the beginning, aside from the obvious giving birth thing. (Which, after I gave birth to my Son, when she walked into the room, I said to her "Never FUCKING again", and I meant it. I also kept my word!) Mom endured an abusive asshole for a husband for a long time. And as I've said in the past, she only left because of me. She was afraid he would abuse me. And he did to a degree. He hit me for sucking my thumb when I was like 3 or 4, I remember watching for the static on the tv when the garage door opened, so I could hide the fact that I was doing it. I remember him making me stand in front of the clock until I could tell him what time it was, and I would cry and say I promise when I go to kindergarten I will learn how. To this day, when someone ask me what time it is, my heart stops for a second. My most memorable childhood events were almost always a negative experience concerning my Dad. His fits of rage, breaking things, punching walls, yelling, getting arrested...etc. Good Riddance to bad rubbish I say. But why do I still want a Dad? I wrote him last year around this time....fully expecting no response, but afraid I would get one. Did I want to invite that back in my life? Not really. But, no worries, because he once again lived up to my expectations. I just get lonely this time of year, an only child from a small family, an aunt and uncle i talk to maybe once or twice a year, and see even less. No parents, no family, my nuclear family that I have created for myself coming apart at the seams, with little to nothing left to hold on to. We've been beating the proverbial dead horse for years now. It's all gone...gone.

My Mom and I were very close. After she left my Dad in the middle of the night with nothing, it was just me and her against the world. She worked hard, and we had little, but she always made sure I had whatever she could give me. She sacrificed everything for herself to provide for me. As far as I know, she never even had another relationship after my Dad. I never questioned it. She had a bad feeling about men after that. Who can blame her?
I was always in a race it seemed to make my own life. Engaged early, moved out early, married, homeowner, mother...I don't know why...I guess I was just trying to prove that I could do better.

After I moved out of her place, we spent a lot of time together. We used to shop every single weekend. Shop, lunch, craft sales, dinner, dark, go home. Talk on the phone every day. When my Son was a toddler , she had to have a disc replaced in her neck, she basically lived in my living room in a two bedroom house, for months until she recovered. After I moved to a bigger house, she moved in to the lower level. She and my Son were extremely close. Anything he couldn't get from me, he always went to her. She was more than happy to spoil her only grandchild.
Her fave pastimes were watching tv and eating. But she became diabetic. And her inactivity and unwillingness to manage her diabetes and diet took it's toll. After a while, she applied for disability, quit working, and rapidly declined in her muscular ability to care for herself.
A couple times while I was out, she fell, and my Son had to call me to come home. I had to get the neighbor to help me lift her. (She was almost 200lbs, and I had a knee brace on from my first acl surgery) She spent 2 weeks in the hospital, and months of in home, then external therapy. I spent my weeks going to my therapy for my knee surgery, then carting her around to her therapies 3 times a week. She got better, but then within a year, inactivity took it's toll again. I tried to do the tough love thing, but she was not having it. I spent far too much time being angry with her for not helping herself get better. Bad feelings. She finally asked me for a bedside commode because it was too hard to walk the 10 feet to the bathroom (which I had remodeled to be handicap accessible for her while she was in the hospital the first time). I got one for her just for the time being, but I had to have 'the talk' with her. What if your grandson comes home from school and finds that you've fallen, and it's spilled all over. Do you really want him to find you that way? You can't ask him to be responsible for helping you anymore if it's this bad, he's only 12. Let's find you a nice place where there are people who can take care of you 24/7. So, back into the hospital, and then a nursing home. That was a traumatic experience, let me tell you. I spent 45 minutes each way traveling every day to make sure she had the care she needed, because I trusted no one. I finally got her into the best one, where she could have a room of her own, but it took a year. She spent a few years in the nice place, but because of patient rights, they couldn't make her do therapy if she said no...so she rapidly declined. Delusional phone calls in the middle of the night, when do I get to come home? Tearful phone calls that she messed herself and didn't' have any clean underwear. Thank God for 24 hour Walmarts!

One day she got septic (body full of infection) they took her to the er, and then admitted her, where she was hooked to iv antibiotics. But she kept pulling them out, so they had to restrain her. One day when I was feeding her, I let her out of restraints to eat, and she grabbed my wrist, looked me in the eye and said, I love you, I love you, I don't want to live like this.
The next time she got an upper resp. infection they called in the middle of the night wanting to take her to the er, i told them no. But it's all politics there, it looks bad on their end if a resident dies, so they pressured me into taking her to er by saying once you get there, you can tell them no treatments. So I did, but the er says once they're there, it's their responsibility to treat someone if it is treatable. DNR means if they code, not to bring them out of it, but if it's something that can be corrected, their hands are tied. So they had to help her. I sat by her bed, and she told me and my son how much she loved us, and we told her we loved her too.
I was very angry at God for making me be the one to say, don't give my mother simple antibiotics, because she wants me to let her die. It was all in my hands, and I was ANGRY. Why couldn't God just take her in her sleep, and not leave this damned decision up to me? Why do I have to euthanize my almost 64 year old mother? It isn't fair!
In hindsight, I see that I got the chance to tell her I love her, and she told us too, and that is a priceless gift. But at the time, making her hospice, planning her funeral while she was alive, having to read about the process of death....it was too much for me to bear. I spent a lot of time on antidepressants and sedatives....there isn't an awful enough word to describe it.

A couple months later, I'm told she has a cold, and need some oxygen, and that this would probably be the beginning of the end, did I still want to do this. Well.....NOOOO, but I had to.
Got a call one afternoon, after having spent some time with her earlier, she was sleeping a lot. "Your Mom's breathing is shallow and her oxygen rate is low, the time is near" What a voicemail that was! And I wasn't available to take the call. I called back, and asked, so what are we talking, weeks, days? "In our experience, probably Hours...you may want to gather your family." I was so mad at myself for delaying listening to my messages. Here I was wasting precious time involved in the daily stupidity of my selfish little life and my Mom was dying!
My aunt and her husband came to her room with me and we waited. Shallow breaths, almost stopping...is this it? Then a breath...no it's not. My son wanted to leave, he had an assignment due, I told him he could go if he wanted to. He drove himself home. Shortly thereafter she slowed significantly. I sat next to her on her bed, put my cheek to her cheek and whispered "It's ok Mom, I love you, It's ok." And then she was gone.
The nurse came in, listened for a heartbeat, and confirmed that it was over. I walked out into the hallway of the nursing home, looked at my Aunt and said, So now what am I supposed to do?
I think my Son was angry that he left and she died. I know I was angry that I wasted precious time and didn't listen to my voicemails....just plain angry at the world for making me have to be responsible for all of this!

It just sucks to be the strong one sometimes! This is the third loved one that I've watched take their final breath...I am only SO strong!!!!! And the pain never goes away.

updated edit:

I've not decorated or handed candy out on Halloween since October of 06. Halloween was Mom's favorite, we used to go all out for it, and I just can't get my stuff out.
Nor have I yet been able to put up my Christmas tree (it's full of ornaments that my Mom and family have bought for me, unicorns, rocking horses, all the things that I dearly love, reminders of what used to be and what isn't there anymore.) I got tired of people on my case about the tree thing, so I bought a small fiber optic tree & put it on a table in the front window and said "There's your f*cking tree, happy now?" Ok, that was a bit harsh, I admit...but I just can't do it, I will when I'm ready and no one will push me into it!

A member of the "lost my Mother" club now. An only child, with a absentee Father since 1974, and both my Grandparents gone. Having no parents is like having the last thread that was holding you to the earth cut, and you're drifting aimlessly, with no place to belong. You're alone. You can be in a room full of friends, and still be totally alone and completely lonely. You know people out there love you, and it means the world to you that they do....but it isn't your blood. It is a profound sadness that never goes away. It may get fewer and farther between in frequency, but the pain, sadness and lonliness is hauntingly always right there under the surface.
I've adapted enough to let it all simmer under the surface, but there are two days each year that I can't stuff it down anymore. October 3rd, the day she died, and October 22, her birthday. October is an awful month...the Holidays aren't too fantastic either these days. It's like being on an emotional rollercoaster. You stay on it long enough, and you're inevitably going to puke your guts up.