You all know, I think you do anyway, that my mother lives with me and has for almost a decade. When I was on internship I got a frantic call from one of my aunts who said my mother was dying. I was 28 years old and was confronted with the possibility that before I turned 29 both of my parents would be dead. We lost my father in May of 2001 so in November of 2004 I was prepared to swear off all holidays and become a hermit. I managed to make it home and find out that no she wasn't dying but she did have a pretty nasty brain tumor that had to be removed. Surgery was fine, only one seizure--which is how we found out that she had the tumor in the first place--post surgery and possibility of full recovery. Well physically she's mostly okay at this point. She gets tired when she needs to walk too far and using the shopping cart to support her instead of a walker cause that would mean she was old. Mentally and emotionally though totally different story. She's my mother so while she drives me crazy I won't put her out but it has taken everything in me some days to not seriously consider her dropping her off at adult day care for a day or twelve. She does inconsiderate things, flat out rude things and inconceivable things routinely and it has impacted our relationship of course but more than that it has strained her relationship with my brother and sister in law. Mom doesn't work because of the memory issues she has had post surgery so they want her to visit the grandkids and mom is quite positive my sister in law is just this shy of satan so she refuses to go without me. Granted I haven't been working lately but yeah kinda have to conserve funds for the move. I'm sure you're wondering what this has to do with what happened today. I was just trying to give you appropriate back story.
So today as part of our annual recalculation of her disability payments I get another letter from the long term disability folks. I have to get some paperwork she needs and that means tapping into the SSA website. Well that led to some interesting financial conversations with the old woman based on some things that came up in her profile. Suffice it to say she's done ignorant things with her finances again that thankfully haven't caused her severe damage to date but if something had happened to her tomorrow I would have been massively confused about the bills she may have had because she never told me about any of these things. I'm sure you're wondering if she's not in trouble why worry? Primarily because I've been avoiding incurring unnecessary debt for the last near decade to make sure I don't put us in a position where I have to really tap into the money she gets each month. I've not gone on a vacation, splurged on a thing except my hair, done squat I may have wanted to do because I didn't want to put the household in danger financially. And she's being the irresponsible teenager instead ahhh. The worst thing was she really didn't get what the issue was for quite some time.
I hate when I really want to shove her into traffic because as best I can tell she REALLY never thinks this stuff through. She just does it and goes with whatever may happen later. I need a break but remember how she won't go visit my brother without me and they REALLY are just getting over this last tantrum about not visiting the kids. Thankfully the letter and gifts she just sent made the girls happy which made the parents happy. Regardless, I just kinda wanna shut the world out for while. But I couldn't let this stay in my brain otherwise I'd stay cranky and drink heavily.
Talk to ya soon and I'll hopefully be in a better mood.
Sounds like you need a break, even if its only for one night. Perhaps you should guilt your brother into coming to your rescue, that's probably what I'd do.
ReplyDeleteIf my mother wasn't a total loon when she was with my brother's family I'd pack her up and ship her off this weekend. But she really thinks she should be able to hang with my nieces without having to interact with their parents. I'm going to take a Daily Vacation like one of my friends in school used to suggest. Just gonna hide out and take care of me today. That will probably require drinking a bit lol.
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