I just found out that my mom has been diagnosed with dimentia and potentially alzheimers disease. I'm sure I'm mispelling that, but for some reason Blogger doesn't have spell check and I'm just avoiding what I really need to be focusing on, which is processing this grief. I was attempting to fill out my monthly shadow work exercise about it, but I can't seem to get that to work. Why does tech always fail me when I seem to need it most? Maybe because I needed to get back to processing the way I process things best - by free form journaling about it into the blog that only I read. Seems good enough.
It's been a long month. August was filled with so much joy and yet so many things seemed to have gone wrong. Early on in August, I was asked by my sisters to meet them in Southern IL where I grew up to hang out for the weekend. Somehow that got turned into visting my mom and having a discussion with her about her going into assited living. She's beeing living w/ my Aunt since December, and has essentially gotten to a point where my Aunt, her twin, has become her fulltime caretaker... much to the detiment of my Aunt's mental and physical health. As we were sitting there with my mom, it because pretty apparent pretty quickly that my mom was not in a good place mental health wise. And despite my Aunt's assertion that she was working on getting my mom to work on taking care of herself again, that my Aunt was definitely still taking care of my mom.
They had come to visit me in the Spring and said at that point in time that my mom had been doing so well up until her migraines had started. But I know my mom, in some ways on a level that I don't think my Aunt truly understood, despite their closeness. Upticks in my mom's "migraines" have almost always been synominous with my mom's depression modes. Being raised and living in her house throughout childhood was always a roller coaster between the depression states and the manic states. My mom has had so many diagnosis throughout our lives, but the bi-polar one seems to be the one that has made the most sense. And since my brother died five years ago the rollar coaster has only gotten more intense. She has been in the hospital yearly instead of every few years or longer. And every time it seems to get a bit worse. This last time last winter, she had lost the will to live, she had stopped eating, getting out of bed, taking her meds, everything. In December, my Aunt had mom come live w/ her supposedly temporarily. Then they got some home health care for mom and it sounds like they saw a vast improvement in mom's mental and physical health. Aunt D kept claiming that mom had bene so much better, they didn't need the home health anymore... which probably means that my mom seemed so much better because she was in another manic phase. And then came the crash, shortly before they came to visit me. When they were there, my mom as usually claimed to have a migraine for most of the visit and stayed in bed. But evne when I did talk to her, I knew something was off. Mom has always been good and putting on a good face for a day, but the mask quickly slipped, and I knew it was more than just her hearing. She just wasn't keeping up with conversation. Something just wasn't right.
Then earlier this month... she had lost so much weight. And when we asked, there were more excuses. But both my sister and I observed that Mom wasn't with it. She was certainly less with it than when I saw her in the Spring. I walked around her house and observed how far into disrepair the house had fallen... it felt like my mom's physical health and the state of the house were almost connected... they... neither were/ are in verty good shape.
I was so fucking proud of myself though... my focus became about me.. which now I feel like an asshole about it. I was so proud that when I started to disassociate that I stopped, recognized what was happening, and asked myself how I was feeling, which was sad. I felt sad, and I let myself feel that way. After the visit, which felt so heavy, I was so excited to tell my Shadow Work group about it, but of course I didn't get the chance because immediately after that, I went on vacation. Then after vacation, I dove head first into work, then I got covid, which knocked me on my ass for over week... I'm still recovering.
Now today I found out what was so off about my mom all along. The entire time we were visiting with my mom, the one thing she said is that she just wants to be back in her house again... and now, feeling like an asshole for feeling so proud of myself instead of feeling for my mom, I know that's not possible. She'll never be able to live there again. there's no temporary living situation for her anymore. She needs to go into a nursing home with a specific care for dimentia patients. She never gets to go home.
She's lived in that house for 40 years, and now she can't go home. I'm so grief-stricken for her. I'm so sad for myself and the feeling that I can't go home either. Earlier this month, I was talking about the grief of growing up and realizing when your parents are no longer able to take care of themselves - and that is legitimate, but I guess I'm feeling like an asshole because how much more painful is it for my mom who has to deal with the grief of losing her own mental faculties, and never getting to go home? The grief of a woman who has been a prisoner of her own mental health her entire life, and now is having decisions made for her, who feels like she's going to be abandoned to this facility?
And I'm grappling with this helpless feeling because I'm over 10 hours away. And while it makes sense for her to be in a facilty near my Aunt D, mom has never wanted to be far form her, how long can Aunt D keep that up in her age and state? How will seeing mom impact her?
It's just a lot. So this is me just writting it all out in attempt to being to process it. It's heavy. It's feelings with nowhere to go. And it... well, it fucking sucks.
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