Monday, August 6, 2012

TURNING THE CORNER
Melisande Randall

My mom has dementia now.  I am resentful that after a life time of growing up and under my mom and her paranoid, schizophrenic delusions and mood swings, that now, we are left with the needy shell of a human being.  It is humanity and duty and respect that give me the strength to set aside my difficult childhood past as I change my mother's soiled clothes, help her to the toilet, clean her up, and cook her meals, much like she did for my sisters and me when we were kids.  I have to remind myself that Mom "wiped your butts" as southerners love to remind children of their duty to take care of the older generation.  My mom cooking and cleaning and running errands has got to count.  Her motherly duties fulfilled have got to matter.  Do I really need to think of this as being "my turn" to reciprocate the favor of being raised?  It is simply the course of life.  We do for our family regardless of who came first into existence.

But for some reason, no matter how much I count the blessings and positive things from my childhood, like mom showing me how to cook, and mom driving me to school though oftentimes fussing about life to the point I was bolting out of the car to escape her tirade, and mom treating me like a doll in college, coming to class sometimes to take notes for her half-blind daughter...no matter how much I live these highlights, why do I cringe each time I walk up the street from the bus stop and reach my mom and dad's avenue?  Why do I hesitate and get resentful as I reach for my keys to open the front door?  Why do I plan in my mind just how fast I can come in and bring dad his paper and cook a meal and do my mom's medications and clean her up just in enough time to get out of there in ninety minutes or less? Why am I just going through the motions?  Why don't I feel joy in helping the two people who did more for me than any other two people did in providing and caring for me?  Why can't or won't I let my Christianity supersede my pain?  Forgiveness is letting go...but for some immature if not selfish reason, I can't be grateful that my mom is still on this planet.  I feel awful typing that.  I have friends who have lost a parent.  I could cry admitting how honest I feel in sharing this awful thought.  Why do I feel this way?

It goes further than the fact that Alzheimer's Disease leaves its victims in a vegetative state eventually.  My mom is just a step above that.  I don't like to see it now that it is getting severe.  But I think that beyond the loss of dignity as one loses control over their bodily functions, I am not happy that my mom never got treatment and that she lived life without knowing how happy she could have and should have truly been.  Undiagnosed and untreated until we learned she had dementia, here we are having gone from the transition of schizoaffective disorder, straight to dementia.  I feel like now, what is the point of it all as Mom can never be treated for the former disorder and know its benefits.  So what is the point now?  Excuse redundancy as I have to repeat things that resonate with me while I write.  I feel like we in the family have all been cheated but it is not my place to say who should or should not still be here on God's green earth.  I think God wants me to come to terms not just with the fact that my mom was ill and did some pretty awful things that she probably could not and refused to control, but now, He also wants me to accept this Alzheimer's thing.  Why do I have to accept all this stuff?  It is selfish because people have to accept all sorts of things like cancer, death, drug addiction, and abandonment. But it just seems extra cruel and challenging to subject children to the lessons of being raised by mental illness, and then have the affected parent, move right on into a state where they don't even remember all the crappy stuff they did!  Why am I having to come to terms with this?  I know it could be worse....BUT WHY WHY WHY?

So when   I stop and hesitate as I walk down the cross street perpendicular to the avenue where I grow up, I have to swallow a lump that rises in my throat each and every week that I come to my parents' to fulfill my care giving duties and I think of my care giving visits as taking yet another plunge off the deep end diving board of a pool that I do not like to jump into.  What mom and dad did for me has got to count, it has got to matter. But apparently, the negatives outweigh the positives.  My parents fought daily as I was coming up.  And their arguments were loud.  And I left for school a nervous wreck virtually every morning of my life and I returned home with this sinking feeling that there would be more fighting between them when I got home, and guess what?  I was almost always right, like 95% of the time right, maybe even 98%.  I endured a lot of unnecessary verbal and physical assaults as my mother's frustrations got the best of her.  It was unreasonable, unkind, and deep cutting.  Daddy did the best he could to protect me.  But unfortunately, it wasn't enough and it sure was not successful.

My dad is in a wheelchair now.  He still has his faculties, but he is defeated by a life where he repeated the patterns of his own upbringing by a schizophrenic mother and alcoholic father.  How did he somehow manage to marry a woman with a mood disorder, and then let himself, succumb to the powers of a bottle in order to cope just like his father did?  My mom, she is almost unable to walk and her eyes are clouded over as the medications keep her sedate so that she won't be combative each and every time we need to bathe her or sit her down to eat.  The medications are totally necessary in my mom's case but her once darting and sharp eyes, are now dull and unsettling.  I get a smile out of my mother once in a while and I think that is one of the few things that helps me turn the corner and walk four houses down to the home that I literally thought of as a prison when I lived there.  I have to bring back memories of my mother's gardening skills that brought forth colorful roses, and bountiful fruit trees, and fragrant foliage.  She channeled her energies into such wondrous creations.  But now the lawn is halfway dry and the flowers that bloom are only doing so as nature has its way without the guidance of my mother's hands and clippers.

I think of the smell of fried chicken and boiling greens and baking corn bread when coming home as a child....but now, when I open the door to the back porch, I am overcome by the fumes of piss and garbage.  I remember my mom wiping down walls when I now clean and wipe up what she no longer can.  And so I know my mom kept a clean home when I see things in disrepair.  She prided herself in holding that house together and keeping it spotless.

Sometimes a blog has a really distinct message or a really thought provoking story to relay.  But today, for me, I just needed to vent a little bit because for the past two years or so, I have forfeited church on Sunday mornings to pitch in at my mom and dad's house because they are in failing health.  I am needed two mornings a week and that really isn't that much, but for me, it is so draining and it is so hard for me to turn that corner as I am walking towards the home of my childhood.  I have to hold on to memories of normal things like plants in the yard and Mom's meals being prepared...that aroma which  neighbors could smell cooking up and down the avenue.  If I don't remember the things that gave me a sense of normalcy, then I won't be able to do what I do.  I have told family members that it is not out of love, being a parental care giver.  It is as I have already admitted, out of a sense of human need and respect, and maybe even appreciation for how I was cared for in the ways my parents only knew how.  But I have a hard time bringing love into it.  Nonetheless, I still hope that humanity and respect and duty count for something.


1 comment:

  1. You are going again through a very hard time, Mel, and I appreciate a lot your honesty in sharing the controversial emotions you are feeling when going back to the house where you were raised.
    It takes a lot of courage to do so, as I know how each and every corner of that place is holding memories that keep coming out everytime you go there...
    Sometimes it is really hard to hold back the tears and resentment, but in writing we can find a way to let this negative energy get out of our bodies and mind and free ourselves a bit, until the next time we are going to be challenged.

    A big hug to you!

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