[133/366] difficulty and death
May. 12th, 2020 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistJust after I wrote yesterday's entry, complaining about my face (I don't feel bad today but I did sleep until noon so I think I might not be entirely well), Andrew told me "I got an email from your mum saying she hasn't been able to get in touch with you for two days and are you okay." I rolled my eyes and snapped at him because as we all know my mom won't be back yet and I'm coping with that really well obviously.
He said the e-mail sounded like my mom and admittedly that is a thing she's done before and not a thing I could imagine my dad ever doing. But that didn't make any sense.
Still, even though I was tired from work and I'd had a tough day mental-healthwise, I figured this meant I couldn't wiggle out of this so I fired up Skype and...then I heard my mom saying "can you see me?" which is how all our conversations start (I never can; she still blames me every time she has failed to activate her own camera).
Glad as I was to see her, I knew it wouldn't be good that she was home and it wasn't. Last I heard on Skype a week ago, Mom had gotten her friend B in for a planned hospital visit early in the recovery from a stem cell treatment for bone marrow cancer. But it didn't go according to plan; B is having organ failure and she's been in a coma most of the week. From what mom was saying, this isn't expected with the treatment B has had and the doctors can't explain the organ failure or the coma.
So that's a nightmare for my mom, obviously. But the original recovery plan chugs along: they have the room in the care home B and Mom were staying in, until tomorrow still. B's husband has lots of physical care needs as well as dementia; Mom says their kids have to decide what and when, if anything, to tell him about this but Mom isn't confident he'd understand it at all. If B can't go right back to taking care of him (I think a friend from their church or something has been staying with him now that she's been away for this thing), the kids will probably have to have him put in a nursing home. They're second-guessing their mom having this treatment now but the situation she was in really wasn't sustainable, it'd been going on since last summer as it was.
It's a really sad situation and Mom was clearly struggling to talk about it. I was struggling to hear it. B's kids have apparently been really thoughtful to Mom, saying how hard this must be for her because she's known their mom longer than any of them have been around, and similarly B's been around my whole life. I see her almost every visit back, because my mom sees her every week, so even last year I saw her twice. She had the bone marrow problem even then, and her husband was already really high-needs, but she was still full of energy and laughter and questions about my life in Manchester and what I'd been up to in Minnesota and that kind of wackiness that old Christian white Midwestern ladies can have.
So it's really sad to think of her doing so badly with no real idea what's going on. It's hard to see my mom struggling to talk about all these details. But it's also fucking me up a little to hear about the tough decisions that might be in front of their kids. I don't know what their adult relationships are like (I only hear about them filtered through my mom and B), but I find myself relieved that there are four of them and I hope they can support each other. I can't help but think that if any such things happened to my parents it'd just be me shouldering these responsibilites and again, still, always, I'm angry and sad that my brother isn't around.
In parallel with dealing with my feelings about what I was hearing, I was actually angry at my parents too. Mom hadn't told me that she was back on Friday already. I barely bothered saying anything about Mother's Day on Sunday because I still thought she wouldn't even be able to see an e-mail if I sent it. I got a three-word e-mail asking if I could Skype, no indication that it was even my mom rather than my dad sending it. I appreciate Mom couldn't say much about why she was home without talking about how badly B was doing, and I appreciate that she wanted to do that face-to-face. But she could've...signed the damn e-mail? Since she and my dad share the account, and since I expected to be only hearing from him, I didn't think it was a big deal to talk to him Monday rather than Sunday. I would've tried harder to be good to her if I had known that was something it was possible for me to do.
Anyway, so my mom handed the iPad over to my dad and he said he didn't have anything to say. We commiserated about that -- not even sports to talk about! -- but it turned out he'd been to Fleet Farm (the kind of luxury we don't have yet in the UK!), stuff in the garden is growing well (my parents grew a lot of food even before it was now the cool thing everyone's doing!), the orioles had turned up for a couple days but then went away despite my dad now having two kinds of oriole-specific food because he loves them so much. Oh and he told me that their dog is almost certainly not long for this world. She's old now and she hasn't been doing awesome for a while, but she hung on through the winter when Dad didn't think she would, and even then he was thinking on Sunday this might be it but Monday she was up walking around again, and he put her to bed (she's got a big warm bed with a heatlamp in the garage) and then saw her wandering around outside again. Dogs! Who knows.
They've had that dog so damn long my brother was still around when she was a puppy. He was excited because she's a hunting breed (a German shorthair pointer) and he was going to teach her how to hunt, hunting being a very normal hobby for his friends but one he'd only started taking up. It's hard to lose yet another bit of the life we shared with him.
It just sucks when all these other things about difficulty and death circle back to how shitty it is that Chris died. Like I said, I wasn't having a good mental health day anyway and this right before bedtime did not help. I hoped I'd feel better today but I'm still thinking about all this stuff.
He said the e-mail sounded like my mom and admittedly that is a thing she's done before and not a thing I could imagine my dad ever doing. But that didn't make any sense.
Still, even though I was tired from work and I'd had a tough day mental-healthwise, I figured this meant I couldn't wiggle out of this so I fired up Skype and...then I heard my mom saying "can you see me?" which is how all our conversations start (I never can; she still blames me every time she has failed to activate her own camera).
Glad as I was to see her, I knew it wouldn't be good that she was home and it wasn't. Last I heard on Skype a week ago, Mom had gotten her friend B in for a planned hospital visit early in the recovery from a stem cell treatment for bone marrow cancer. But it didn't go according to plan; B is having organ failure and she's been in a coma most of the week. From what mom was saying, this isn't expected with the treatment B has had and the doctors can't explain the organ failure or the coma.
So that's a nightmare for my mom, obviously. But the original recovery plan chugs along: they have the room in the care home B and Mom were staying in, until tomorrow still. B's husband has lots of physical care needs as well as dementia; Mom says their kids have to decide what and when, if anything, to tell him about this but Mom isn't confident he'd understand it at all. If B can't go right back to taking care of him (I think a friend from their church or something has been staying with him now that she's been away for this thing), the kids will probably have to have him put in a nursing home. They're second-guessing their mom having this treatment now but the situation she was in really wasn't sustainable, it'd been going on since last summer as it was.
It's a really sad situation and Mom was clearly struggling to talk about it. I was struggling to hear it. B's kids have apparently been really thoughtful to Mom, saying how hard this must be for her because she's known their mom longer than any of them have been around, and similarly B's been around my whole life. I see her almost every visit back, because my mom sees her every week, so even last year I saw her twice. She had the bone marrow problem even then, and her husband was already really high-needs, but she was still full of energy and laughter and questions about my life in Manchester and what I'd been up to in Minnesota and that kind of wackiness that old Christian white Midwestern ladies can have.
So it's really sad to think of her doing so badly with no real idea what's going on. It's hard to see my mom struggling to talk about all these details. But it's also fucking me up a little to hear about the tough decisions that might be in front of their kids. I don't know what their adult relationships are like (I only hear about them filtered through my mom and B), but I find myself relieved that there are four of them and I hope they can support each other. I can't help but think that if any such things happened to my parents it'd just be me shouldering these responsibilites and again, still, always, I'm angry and sad that my brother isn't around.
In parallel with dealing with my feelings about what I was hearing, I was actually angry at my parents too. Mom hadn't told me that she was back on Friday already. I barely bothered saying anything about Mother's Day on Sunday because I still thought she wouldn't even be able to see an e-mail if I sent it. I got a three-word e-mail asking if I could Skype, no indication that it was even my mom rather than my dad sending it. I appreciate Mom couldn't say much about why she was home without talking about how badly B was doing, and I appreciate that she wanted to do that face-to-face. But she could've...signed the damn e-mail? Since she and my dad share the account, and since I expected to be only hearing from him, I didn't think it was a big deal to talk to him Monday rather than Sunday. I would've tried harder to be good to her if I had known that was something it was possible for me to do.
Anyway, so my mom handed the iPad over to my dad and he said he didn't have anything to say. We commiserated about that -- not even sports to talk about! -- but it turned out he'd been to Fleet Farm (the kind of luxury we don't have yet in the UK!), stuff in the garden is growing well (my parents grew a lot of food even before it was now the cool thing everyone's doing!), the orioles had turned up for a couple days but then went away despite my dad now having two kinds of oriole-specific food because he loves them so much. Oh and he told me that their dog is almost certainly not long for this world. She's old now and she hasn't been doing awesome for a while, but she hung on through the winter when Dad didn't think she would, and even then he was thinking on Sunday this might be it but Monday she was up walking around again, and he put her to bed (she's got a big warm bed with a heatlamp in the garage) and then saw her wandering around outside again. Dogs! Who knows.
They've had that dog so damn long my brother was still around when she was a puppy. He was excited because she's a hunting breed (a German shorthair pointer) and he was going to teach her how to hunt, hunting being a very normal hobby for his friends but one he'd only started taking up. It's hard to lose yet another bit of the life we shared with him.
It just sucks when all these other things about difficulty and death circle back to how shitty it is that Chris died. Like I said, I wasn't having a good mental health day anyway and this right before bedtime did not help. I hoped I'd feel better today but I'm still thinking about all this stuff.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-12 09:10 pm (UTC)I hope you can get a rest from difficult thoughts and feelings soon.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-12 09:22 pm (UTC)Thanks.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-12 09:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-12 10:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-12 09:54 pm (UTC)offers tea
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-12 10:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-12 10:04 pm (UTC)I can't help but think that if any such things happened to my parents it'd just be me shouldering these responsibilites and again, still, always, I'm angry and sad that my brother isn't around.
Yeah, I kind of get what you mean. I mean, I do have a surviving brother, but... he really doesn't want anything to do with any of the Important Shit involving our parents. He talks to Dad more than I do, but he's convinced that Mom is the worst mom ever because he can't comprehend that she had to eat a shit sandwich no matter what choices she made and, unfortunately, there were no good choices for us kids. So he barely talks with her, to the point where she was surprised that he sent her a text on Mother's Day. I can guarantee you that if anything serious comes up with either of them, outside of the funeral/memorial service, it's a 50/50 chance that Justin will just go "I'm not doing shit for this".
When you have siblings, you're supposed to be there together for your parents. Joe would have helped me figure out what to do if Dad gets Alzheimer's which is a possibility, since his mom had it and Mom's convinced he already has it (though I suspect he would just try to take care of Dad on his own), and he would have taken care of Mom to keep her out of the nursing home. I mean, maybe I'll be lucky and Justin will step up if something happens to Mom or Dad. But I do feel the pressure of knowing that you're going to have to make all the hard decisions simply because nobody else can and the anger and frustration and utter sadness of knowing that you're supposed to have help and life just took that away from you.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-12 10:12 pm (UTC)Yeah. I wouldn't wish this on anyone, but it helps to have people who know what that feels like. <3
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-12 10:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-12 10:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-12 10:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-13 07:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-13 12:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-13 07:04 am (UTC)Yeah there's just so much to process at the moment.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-13 07:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-13 09:55 am (UTC)Thanks. *hugs*
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-13 09:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-13 09:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-13 03:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-13 09:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-13 09:39 pm (UTC)Too much!
Date: 2020-05-14 08:24 pm (UTC)