Driving Me Crazy
I usually try to write coherently and elegantly but I'm not in the mood, you know what I mean?
My mom is driving me crazy.
She's 92, in her own home, and I moved back home to help.
The communication is crumbling daily. I have gotten so I talk very little otherwise I just start an argument.
When a bill comes in, she opens it immediately and places it in the middle of the kitchen table with the checkbook on top of it and from the moment it arrives I hear, "don't forget to pay the water bill". I don't mean just once, I mean like twice a day, everyday.
I drive her to all her appointments, funerals, church, do all the shopping, every errand, drugstores, post office, bank, everything. Almost everyday, there is something that HAS to be done TODAY OR NOW. I work at home, so it's always an interruption.
Some of the medical appointments are out of town and take all day. It's annoying enough to have to do all this. But then I have to deal with her telling me all the time, "that she could find a ride with the county services because she doesn't want to bother me". What!!!
Which would be fine, except these county services pick her up at 10am for a 2pm appointment and bring her home at 5pm. So we got in an argument about it, and so I said fine, take the ride. So Monday, she's taking the county ride for an appointment one mile away from home that would take me 5 minutes to take her and
5 minutes to pick her up.
I know she doesn't want to do this, but she has it in her head, that somehow this is "helping" so that's that.
There is a local service that offers assisted technology equipment for loan. So I looked it up and told her about it. Already she starts in, with all the scenarios about what it could possibly be about, how we have to be careful, there could be hidden fees, how she knows how these things operate, and on and on and on...
Anything she hears about, she immediately starts making up a story about it. In detail. She hasn't a clue, but on she goes. And the bad thing is, then she believes the story. And this applies to me.
If she gets an idea in her head about me, what I'm thinking, how I'm feeling, what I'm doing, it becomes her reality. And then I have to deal with denying some story she made up about me.
I could go on, but you get the drift. Is this Alzheimer's? Is this just old age? Boredom? All her thinking is all mixed up. Things don't make sense and I end up dealing with these made-up realities.
I'm learning to withhold information. But then it's sad because I can't share anything with her. I can't share anything that goes on in my personal life because she will take charge of the reality of it and run around the world with it until I can't even think.
It's all so hard enough, but to have to deal with these mind-trips is a whole other phase.