Their Everywhere, Their Everywhere

It is 3:45AM and I was awakened from a sound sleep by a pounding on the walls. I woke up with a start and went to Ma's room to find her swatting imaginary bugs off the walls with her slipper. When I turned on the light they disappeared. Thank God Ma keeps her slippers handy to dispatch the pesky varmints. This is the first time we had visitors that required chasing off in a long time. Kind of missed them. Things have been weird lately as Ma plods haphazardly towards the promised land. Her decline is accelerating and I find myself apprehensive every time I leave the house or return. If she is sleeping I wait to see her breathe, when she is not where I think she should be I seek her out. It is a funny feeling, kind of a hole in the pit of your stomach that never quite goes away.

I have to take Ma to the doctor later today and I am not quite sure what he'll find. She is laboring to breathe and coughing much of the time. The delusions are obviously real to her and I suspect?/fear? she could end up in the hospital. This would put me in a position of having to decide if she should go into a nursing home. This is already a source of conflict between my brother and I as I had her committed 30 years ago when she had paranoid delusions and he hasn't quite forgiven me for that. It needed to be done then and it may need to be done now. I suspect that it will put a severe crack in our relationship, an obviously irreparable crack. If he held on to the emotions surrounding the first commitment for 30 years, this one should last till the grave. Why is it that I am always where the rubber meets the road? The one who gets to do all the dirty work and put up with the recrimination that comes with it. It is a lonely place. Right or wrong you lose. He is emotionally unable to participate in her care or her placement in a home and that leaves me to do the dirty work again. I resent it and embrace it at the same time.

This is a difficult time for me as my Father passed last year and this weekend is the anniversary of my first visit to his grave site at the National Veteran's Cemetery in Bath, NY. I have decided to go back to have a chat with Dad on Sunday to help me sort through this most perplexing time in my life. It is a most solemn and reverent place and I really need to be near the one I am most like. My Father and I were two irreverent peas in a pod. Sarcastic Irish wits with a jaundiced world view that leaves no circumstance exempt from a dark verbal interpretation that minimizes the seriousness of life. I really feel alone in the world without him here. No one with the ability to interpret life in the unique way that only skeptics can appreciate. I remember when I came home from a two day bender with a tattoo I was unaware of. He noticed it while eating breakfast and asked me what stupid pill I had taken that would lead me to mark my body so I would have identifying marks. The way he put it was that I would never amount to anything and now I could not even rob banks because I could be identified by the tattoo. A Father's love for his first born can be a very strange thing. I really need a strong support figure as I deal with Ma's decline and my Brother's ambivalence about the things that need to be done.

I fear that I won't know what to do with myself when I don't have anyone to take care of. No madness to interpret, no imaginary varmints to run off in the dark, no toilet paper to buy. What will I do? Who will I become? My identity has been so involved in the care of my Parent's that I have forgotten what not having to take care of someone is like. I look forward to it and dread it at the same time. It has added a dimension to my life that is indescribable, a sense of value and worthiness that has been lacking since my children grew up. I guess I am afraid of not being of real value to someone I care about. It certainly appears to be a lonely place.

It's A Mad, Mad World For A Caregiver.

I came home today with the intent of taking a nap so I could go out later. Walking through the door the volume from the TV was louder than a drop forge in a steel mill. I turned the volume down over Ma's protests and as soon as I left the room she locked the door from the inside and turned the volume back up. This is kind of a regular occurrence and it usually goes no further. This time Ma opened the door to participate in her most favorite pastime, wasting TP, and when she returned she discovered that she had locked herself out of her room. She stood there quite some time trying all the keys in her possession, not realizing that there is no lock set on this door. I observed her confusion and started the process of breaking into the room. Every time I walked away to try a different tool, she went back to trying to fit her keys into the nonexistent keyhole. I finally got into the room by using my health insurance card and destroying it in the process. I hope I don't need it for anything. I then got a new hand set and proceeded to insure this never happens again by putting the locking mechanism on the outside. Now instead of locking me out I can lock her in. I doubt that this will solve the volume problem.

I am just having another one of those days when everything irritates me. I need to clean the bathroom, bleach the kitchen sinks, wash the floors, rewash the dishes that Ma has cleaned, and get ready to meet my pals in 2 hours. I am Ma's Cinderfella and tonight I am sneaking off to the ball. Sometimes it is more aggravating than others. First I have to throw away her TP empty tube collection and the new twist of saving the little portion cups from the applesauce I get for her. I have found at least 100 of them stashed away recently. What she is saving them for I may never know, but she needs to start it over as I tossed the first collection.

You Can't Put 10 Pounds of Sh** In A 5 Pound Bag.

I lost my temper yesterday. The problem is, the things you do daily that are aberrant and explained away by the elder's declining capacity, build up over a period of time until the smallest task is enough to push you over the edge. Yesterday, I gave Ma a card, flower's, checked the TP, bleached the tea stains out of the sinks, cleaned the toilet, washed the floors, took out the garbage, did the laundry and laid out doses of her medications. I do these things regularly but yesterday the stars just didn't align. She was actually rather upbeat and for the first time in years she decided to cook. We have no oven because she is not cognizant enough to turn it off in a timely fashion and it jeopardizes her well being.

Ma went into the kitchen without a word of warning and began preparing pasta in the microwave. She overfilled the container's and overcooked the noodles with too little water until a brick of mush was all that remained. I stopped her when she was putting the gelatinous mess in the microwave for the fifth time. She was hurt because she was trying to be helpful. The trouble is her helpfulness always equates to more work for me. When i stopped her she started crying which angered me as she was complaining about me being so controlling. Where is the line between controlling and protecting drawn? She stormed off, locked herself in her room and turned up the volume on the TV to a painful level.

I believe I am at the end of the line with my patience. I am a good son that is running out of gas. I need a break from my duties as shanty caregiver. I need a break from the worry and guilt associated with raising an elder. A break from being Vice President of TP. A break from delusional ranting and bathroom invasions. A break from rewashing the dishes Ma cleans and puts away. A break from tea stains on everything. In the words of Lilly Von Schtup in "Blazing Saddles", "Let's face it, I'm pooped."

Mother's Day Eve

This is an unusual time. Ma is declining and the delusions are more real to her. She chased off a delusional intruder last week and insisted I change the locks, so on Thursday night I asked her for her key so I could change the lock. I then put it in an envelope and wrote on the envelope that it was a new key for the new lock. She just had to think that the door locks were changed to feel safe. Life has become a series of little white lies and outright fabrications to deal with delusional perceptions and Ma's insecurities. I seriously hope that her dementia isn't hereditary.

Ma's time is getting short and she is sleeping a lot. She is tormented by ghosts from her past in her sleep and the loss of her daughter in her waking hours. She has become so depressed that she isn't eating ice cream which is not a good sign. Here it is the eve of Mother's day and I am not even sure if she know what day it is. I have a card for her and tomorrow morning I'll get some fresh flowers. Her greatest accomplishment was her commitment to motherhood. She gave up her life for her kid's and, quite frankly, she deserves a better fate than waiting for the Grim Reaper in a delusional funk. A life of quiet desperation is a cruel end to a difficult life.

Aparition Is Run Off By Shanty Elder

Saturday is my day. I have breakfast with the boys and pretty much do whatever I damn well please. Today was no exception. I left the house at 9:30 AM and returned home at 6:30 PM. Ma announced that she had run off an intruder that was sitting at the kitchen table when she got up. I gotta tell you I don't know what to believe. I personally think her night time terrors have become daytime delusions. She claims that a little white man was sitting at the table and she chased him off by hitting him in the head with a shoe, I don't really see it. She insists that I change the locks. Change the locks so the boogeyman can't get back in? She chased off someone in the last 80 years, I just don't think it was today.