All things considered, and despite my declaration in the previous blog post wherein I mentioned my intention to head to Jersey this weekend to do a preliminary purge of mom's shit while she's still in the hospital, I've reconsidered.
Among those "all things considered" are:
- The fact that mom is still in the hospital and there is no indication as to the date of transfer to the nursing home, which once that takes place, the clock starts ticking for 20 days. And during that time, THAT really should be when the purging takes place. Otherwise, I'm just throwing away 24 hours I'd much rather be doing something else--as even if I do come down, I'll be expected to come down during the 20 day interim as well.
- The fact that on Monday I was "thanked" for having a friend (of mine) do a pop in visit by way of her insulting me, saying unflattering things to my friend, and to date, I haven't received any acknowledgment or thank you for doing so. Also haven't received an acknowledgment from my sister re: the visit either.
- The fact that my sister already has mom's funeral arrangements and obituary completed. The obituary chaps my ass in two ways. Traditionally, obits list offspring in age order, oldest to youngest. My sister, of course, listed herself first, me second--the second way it chaps my ass is that she has listed our brother last but hasn't put his wife's name in the obit. I hate my sister-in-law. She truly is evil hot garbage wrapped in skin--but really? The pettiness is appalling, especially for someone who projects to the world that she's so uber Christian.
Given the fact that I've had to take far more (4-5) snow days this winter (and winter's not over yet), and the fact I have my own medical issues etc that demand I take time off for appointments, and given the fact I travel a lot (every six months), there is a finite amount of time I have to take off to meet all these demands.
I plan on zapping a text tomorrow night to my sister and just say "migraine. can't make it. maybe march 1st." March 1st is mom's bday, and hopefully by then she'll be in a facility, so I can kill two or three birds with one stone: 1. The obligatory nursing home visit. 2. The obligatory birthday visit. 3. The preliminary purge.
I am to the point now where if my sister chooses to unload more negativity on me regarding my absence or non-participation in this cluster fuck, I'll just say, "I think it'd be best if we just not talk for a while." And just never call her again. Anything else beyond that, perhaps along the lines of how she can't depend on me for anything, I'll say, "Feeling's mutual." Planning out possible dialogue scenarios will hopefully cut down on any residual "l'esprit d'escalier" I might have, having a witty retort long after having a fight with my sister.
Also worth noting is, when the time finally comes and mom passes, I really feel no need to go to the funeral. All it will be will be more of the same as was the case with my grandfather's funeral. My sister will take center stage (like my aunt did), and the only person who will probably speak will be my niece, perhaps, given services will no doubt be held in my sister's church. I have no need to show up. No need to impress anyone. Additionally, I am sure whatever friends of my sister's that show up will be fully aware of what a shitty sister I am. And well. Stick a fork in me, I'm done. Really. No hatred or animus. Just indifferent.
Now for something incredibly sweet. Mr. P., aka my "brother from an Indian mother," texted me saying how he and his wife want to go visit my mom. And as lovely as that offer is, I had to decline it, for obvious reasons. I just told the Maharajah this, and his reply was, "Obviously he doesn't know what you're dealing with." So I texted Mr. P., back and said thanks but no thanks, and as brief as possible I let him know what's what. Sad, isn't it?
Oh, and remember back in December my mother was lecturing me about my latent alcholism, reminding me about how "dad's family has that predisposition to drink?" Well, no doctor of mine has an issue with my occasional cocktail--save for my endocrinologist, who believes I still have fatty liver syndrome, and told me to keep it to 1 cocktail a week, if that. Turns out the real reason I shouldn't overindulge is because of something I inherited from MOM's side of the gene pool.
Next up: A game of telephone, because well, wouldn't you expect nothing less?
*Hitting publish now*
Unless Mother Nature flexes her muscles and dumps more WHITE SHIT this Saturday, I will be heading to Jersey for yet another (and for the foreseeable time being, LAST) thankless 24 hours of my life I'm donating to "Audrey's" cause.
Turns out, my subconscious self, or perhaps a bit of serendipity is to blame, has structured "book end" activities in such a way as to preserve, what I can, of my sanity and physical fortitude that will no doubt be depleted in the scant 24 hours I plan on DONATING to the charity case known as Audrey.
Day before:
Book end #1: Friday a.m. before work, I have an 8:45 a.m. phone in session with my therapist.
Day of:
Planned Relief #1: I plan on stopping off at my friend's shop to pick something up for an event in April. This will give me a chance to stretch my legs, use the restroom, get some friendly interaction before driving nearly one more hour, to end up directly in the mouth of the lion.
Once I get to Audrey's house, the initial plan is
indentured servitude, as sis wants to do a preliminary purge of
extraneous shit out of mom's house, assuming (perhaps rightly) mom won't
be coming home. We find out this week when she'll be transitioning from
the hospital to the rehab center and from date of transfer, we will
have 20 days to do whatever we can without her influence/interference.
Purge out what we can, and after 20 days, does she come home? Or will we
have to liquidate the house for sale, to subsidize her being in a
nursing home permanently?
And
of course, I can't drive all that way without seeing Audrey. You know
her? The cunt with the never ending craving for life blood and good
will? Yeah. Her.
Evening of:
Planned Relief #2: Bright spot capping off what will no doubt be a draining, thankless day, will be the idea of having dinner with my friend who was so kind to visit mom. And I have a certain measure of a thrill cooking a meal for someone who is a trained chef, someone who KNOWS what good food IS, not someone like Audrey who slops stuff together and thinks VOILA! Good eats! (NOT!!!) This is the same woman, who, when Hurricane Sandy hit a few years back, was eating meat which had remained unrefrigerated for FOUR FUCKING DAYS. Yeah. Good times. People in their right mind do not eat rotten meat. Clearly, she's got adequate mental acuity to continue to live alone. (NOT!!!)
Day after:
Planned Relief #3: GO HOME. DECOMPRESS.
Monday:
Planned Relief #4: Deep tissue massage (to undo all the angst) and spend time with my husband.
Tuesday:
Book end #2: Chiropractic adjustment (to undo all the angst).
So, this post is brought to you by an aphorism and a Jewish proverb:
Aphorism:
"Let no good deed go unpunished."
Jewish Proverb:
"Man makes plans, and God laughs."
My final thought in this blog post:
Life, by its very nature, is a character building exercise. Some folks choose to be Jiminy Cricket, whereas others can't help but personify Cruella Deville.
(Re: Audrey, see also: Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors.)
Rather than craft a full on blog post, I figure I'll just do a "Quick and Dirty" cliffnotes/high points blog post utilizing a very cleaned up, redacted C&P of the conversation I had with my friend, who was so very kind to me for taking a few minutes out of his day to visit my mom. This will not be a good deed/request which will be repeated. She's just not worth the effort.
Him: Hey! Just got back was there for a little over 10 minutes would have stayed longer but the pity stuff you told me about started coming out.(how dare you block her from FB! lol!) anyway I was nice and pleasant told her if she needed anything to call you to let me know.
Me: tell me everything. she is a trainwreck, isn't she? did i lie about any of it?
Him: not at all. her eyes lit up when I told her I was a chef and she went into her being a cook at the nursing home she added she cooks better than what she is getting there and also asked if I was married I hear wedding bells!!LOL!!
Me: She's a horrible cook.
Him: oh yeah its (talking about food) somewhat of an icebreaker other than that well you and your sis almost never come to see her and the only one that does anything for her is her soninlaw as she was trying to say it in a nice way (in her own words)lol nice saying that to a complete stranger eh? as if she wouldn't think that I wouldn't tell you that
Me: My brother in law only does sooo much because he loves my sister and because if my sis continued to do everything shed never see her daughter.
Him: i was surprised i made it 10 minutes such negativity
Me: (Internal dialogue I didn't share: I'm surprised I've survived 45 years of her narcissism and negativity.) My bottom line is i refuse to kill myself to make her happy, because clearly, that is impossible to accomplish.
END NOTE: Neither my mother nor my sister have acknowledged my friend's visit. I'm not angry. I don't regret having normal impulses to help my mother and my sister, who clearly are abnormal. However, I am disgusted by it.
So yeah. I get this image zapped to me in a text on my phone SATURDAY. The only thing from this image that is redacted is her last name--gotta salvage some sense of privacy here. But posting this as an indicator of how deep the FEED ME SEYMORE, FEED ME NOW of the never ending hand holding and constant craving for attention going on with my mother, and of course, my sister's inability to draw a boundary or two regarding how many times mom can call her a day, how many times a week mom expects her to visit her, as well as an acceptable time of day mom's NEED FOR FEEDING THE ATTENTION can take place.
Without further ado, the image:
So, the good daughter and sister that I am, I asked a friend who is HYPERLOCAL to the hospital in question if he'd be so kind to do a pop-in type visit, and SWEET MERCIFUL MAHATMA GHANDI! He will go for a visit. So I let my sister know this in text, within an hour of getting the texted image, and until current writing, 12:23 p.m. on MONDAY I still haven't received acknowledgement from my sister. I also sent a reminder, "Hey, just reminding you my friend is going for a visit," to which has remained unacknowledged.
Whatever. Story of my life. Work me up into a fucking frenzy, make me sick with all this drama, then silence. And I'm giving up yet another day of my life to this shit show on the 15th, as I"ll be there to help purge out mom's extraneous shit in the house, despite the obvious: that we do not know if she is going to be in the nursing facility as a temporary or permanent solution. Whatever. There are limits. I refuse to make myself sick or lose my sanity because of all this. I moved to a completely different state to get away from this shit. Unfortunately that state is in the same time zone as Dramaville.
Anyway, Saturday I was laid up most of the day in bed trying to break a migraine. Apparently, I inherited these from mom, and my mom used to get violently ill in her late 30s and 40s from them. When she was sick, the whole family was sick. The sound of her wretching echoed throughout the house. Fortunately there are meds for that, and I've got a husband who has a tidy little routine to help me break the migraine, or else we both are in its grip for the duration:
- He will come in and give me my frova w/some water, and a heating pad for my neck and face;
- If I am able, I will immediately get out of bed (when the heating pads turn tepid) and take a hot shower, and shampoo, and hope that will break it... if not...
- He will take out the TENS/EMS and hook me up and set the damned taser to STUN;
- Invariably the wave of nausea will hit, he then whips out the cola syrup (anti-emetic), which, hilariously BRINGS ON THE PUKE;
- I wretch. And from the living room he chirps, "Yay! Puke! You'll feel better soon!"
- I then try to nap off what I can and humanize.
So. The migraine finally abates. And I get out to do the grocery shopping as we were anticipating more of the WHITE SHIT (TM). So once home, but still in the parking lot, I decided to call my mother. As it stood at that moment, I had gone two days without calling. I am trying to wean her off the expectation of a call every single day, when clearly she's out of active crisis mode. And I decided to call while I was still in the parking lot because I view my home as my sanctuary, my place for peace, and let's face it, all this drama and attention whoring is not peaceful at all. So I call. The dialogue goes thusly:
Me: Hi.
Her: Can you call me later, I'm eating dinner?
Me: (very flatly) I've been laid up in bed with a migraine all day. I'm going back to bed.
Her: Well, do your best.
Spoiler alert: I did not call her back that day, nor did I call her Sunday. The sun does not rise and set according to her convenience. Maybe, if she's lucky, I'll call her tonight. MAYHAPS. Tho, I wouldn't bank on it.
So yeah. She knocked on death's door, and thus far, death has not answered. Perhaps Death is a lot like me, sitting on the other side of the door saying to themselves, "Fuck that noise. What do THEY want? Fuck them!" and just not answer. And yes, I do this very thing. Because everyone wants something, either to sell me something, or get me involved in condo life shit. Fuck them And well, fuck my mother.
You'd think being so afraid to die and alternatively wanting so bad to die, then not, might have elicited a MODICUM of awareness of the finite nature of life, and perhaps for her to more wisely spend whatever allotted time she may have left. But sadly, no. She'd rather revert back to a raging bitch.
Perhaps in her raging and her demands, perhaps therein is an indication there's more fight left in her, perhaps more LIFE left in her. Perhaps. But at the moment, her not-so-inner narcissist is using all this time and drama to feed her ego, feed this incessant need to be the center of everyone's universe, making demands upon people's time and energy and empathy. My tank of empathy is now on "E." I cannot even imagine the hell my sister is in, and she is the one in the trenches on the front line, trying to slay this monster by herself. But again, that's a trap of her own design.
And again, about that awareness? My mother is so self unaware that she fails to realize how very lucky she is to have my sister local, to have my sister AT ALL, yet all she does is drain drain drain the empathy and good will, drain drain drain, call call call, complain complain complain. Fuck her. We all have lives of our own. Mom fails to realize that if it were not for my sister being here and caring and BEING THERE, and if "I" were the person running point on this, I'd go to a judge to get conservatorship, and slap her ass in a nursing facility quicker than you could say FUCK YOU. If it were up to me, she would have been in a nursing facility YEARS AGO.
Gotta feed the ego! Feed me! Feed me all night long... sing it along with me. This is the theme song. And if I can figure out how to make the FEED ME SEYMORE! FEED ME ALL NIGHT LONG as an mp3, I want this as my ring tone for my mother. And just like the plant in LSoH, my mother will not rest until she's consumed every last bit of my sister and her life giving blood. Fuck her.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7SkrYF8lCU&feature=youtu.be
Actual exchange in the elevator today:
Co-worker: Hey how's your mom?
Me: Oh, she's back to being a narcissistic, raging See You Next Tuesday.
Co-worker: Ah, nice. She must be feeling better.
As some of you might know (from FB) my mom's been in the hospital approx 10 days, for a gall bladder attack. For normal people, they would have been in the hospital that Friday, had the GB removed and been home by, I don't know, maybe Monday the latest? Not her. Nothing with her is ever routine. Everything is potentially life threatening.
Look, I'm not made of stone. She was in the hospital by Friday, so I came down on Sunday as she turned septic, and well, NORMAL FOLKS OF REASONABLE QUALITY OF HEALTH have been known to die of sepsis. So I went to see her. And her health vacillated back and forth, and surgery was scheduled for Monday, then rescheduled due to her A-Fib. And knowing I have a finite amount of personal time (of which I'd much rather use on MY OWN SHIT), I bid my mother adieu, thinking this was the final good bye.
Surgery came and went on (LAST) Tuesday, and despite the docs abandoning a laproscopic procedure midway and ended up cutting her gut open like a tuna fish can, she survived the surgery. Then it was ZOMG DEATH WATCH for a few more days as we all waited for her to get off the ventilator. True to form, waffling right on through this. Despite her declarations as much as she wants to die, HERE SHE IS, still converting oxygen into carbon dioxide. Still here.
And rather than have a momentary presence of MIND, and realize she could have died, no. She's not happy. She's angry and irritable, and DELUSIONAL, thinking she is fit to go home to take care of herself (which she very clearly IS NOT), and of course, will be fighting the decision to put her in a nursing facility until she is able to come home. IF she is able to come home.
I firmly support my mother being in a facility. But what I think matters very little. I am not my mother, nor am I her power of attorney. But she needs a facility:
- 3 hot meals a day on time every day;
- Medication dispensed consistently on time every day;
- Round the clock care, so if she takes a tumble, she won't be on the floor for hours, as she attempts to summon help via status updates on fucking Facebook, in the end she sat in her own waste for roughly 4 hours before help arrived;
- Back up generators in the event of another Storm Sandy knocks out the power grid again, she won't be stuck in her recline and lift chair stuck in the upright position and in her own waste for roughly 18 hours; and lastly
- She will get some measure of social interaction vis-a-vis the medicine or her food schedule which she is not getting at home.
She's obviously less than thrilled with things. And today she must be feeling better physically, because she's already reverted into her old standby habit of passive-aggressive abuse, in this case, playing the part of Pitiful Pearl, lip pooched out, quivering, voice faltering and sounding feeble-ish. Today I called and she was boo-hooing into the phone with the Pitiful Pearl voice whimpering about how horrible the care is at the hospital, and how they put her on the potty and left her there. Well fuck YOU! If you want to go home so damned bad, get yourself off the fucking potty and quit whining.
Ten days into this and I am drained of whatever empathy I am capable of. I have reverted back to MY standby of sleeping excessively to avoid stress. I haven't felt good nearly the entire month of January thanks to a bronchial thing which morphed into a sinus thing, and the overall doldrums of a thus far VERY BITTER COLD winter, plus worrying about whether she lives yet there she is feeling sorry for herself, wanting to die. And I just can't abide it.
At first, I thought it was perhaps contrived out of thin air, her allegation that a nurse or a CNA actually had the gall to say to her that she brought this all on herself. But yanno what? Even if they DID say it, and it IS INAPPROPRIATE to say, it is 100% true.
She DID bring this on herself, and by "this" is her beyond-morbid obesity (if there even is such a category). She's like Pizza the Hut from Spaceballs, eating herself into oblivion just about. Thinking that all she has to do to manage her diabetes is to inject herself with insulin and she's good. No. She's over eating, and eating a lot of things she has no business eating as a diabetic, and as someone with diverticulitis. She's got horrendous cellulitis ravaging her legs, and she's too fat for a CAT or an MRI, and they held off on doing surgery for as long as they did because of the risks involved, but in the end they decided that either she'd die of sepsis or die under the knife. Color us all surprised when she pulled through the surgery. There she is, waffling to the end. Not sure if she wants to stay or if she wants to go... playing two ends off the middle, and she's too dull to realize that even though she did survive the surgery, by no means is she ALIVE.
