Broken

If you didn't read yesterday's post, I would advise you not to read this one, either.  Maybe you can just come for the pictures.  I've enjoyed turning myself into a creature/character.  Here I am morphing back into a more recognizable form, half me, half creature having escaped for the moment, but. . . dying?  That is how it has felt.  

My body has given up.  There are pains I can't explain.  I lay in a tub of Epsom salts yesterday and could not get up.  After the water had drained, I lay there for what must have been an hour, chilled, weary. . . .

Every day now, I am faced with death.  Not my mother's.  Nope.  My own.  My mother will never die.  And each day and each night, I think I will just take the pills.  

The last two days were a struggle.  First the hospital was going to release my mother.  Her/my problem, not theirs.  

Have you ever seen anyone screaming at the ticket agent at the airport thinking that the agent is on his or her way to a board meeting to discuss customer relations?  Yea, right?  It doesn't help.  It does no good.  So. . . I read the room, said what I needed to say, told them what I could and couldn't, would and wouldn't do.  

When my mother first went to the hospital, the palliative care person talked to me about putting her in hospice care.  Yesterday when I went to the hospital, I was told they were sending my mother to a nursing home.  Do you know what a nursing home is?  That is the place where they send you to die a miserable death.  At the last minute, however, they arranged to send my mother to the place I had wanted her to go, the place where she was before, the nicest rehab facility in town.  

That is me at the top of the page having received the news.  All good.  I told people who asked and they were glad.  

I sent an informational text to my mother's hillbilly relatives and got a message back that they had talked to my mother and she wanted to go home.  I started to reply, but decided not to.  

Ever again.  

I got a message from the facility admissions person that my mother would be in room 222.  I drove over to see her.  She wasn't there yet.  

"They are going to transport her over at 6:30.  

At 7:30 I called my mother.  

"How's your room?"

"They are just taking me down to transport now."

"Oh.  O.K.  Call me when you get to your room."

That call went badly.  Very, very badly.  

"I want to go home," she cried.  

I'm not proud of my response.  

"Go ahead.  Go home."  

"Can I?"

"Sure.  Just tell them you want to go home.  I'll check on you in a few days to see how it's going."

When I hung up (in anger), I told myself I was done.  I was over it.  I thought about taking off on a trip.  I am dying, I thought.  She is not.  I need to see one last thing.  

It was time for bed.  

I'm more in control today, but something in me has snapped.  One day, if I'm around, I will tell you about my relationship with my mother.  It is a hard tale.  But I won't tell it while she lives.  

So it may never be told.  

I want to do something other than care for my mother.  I don't think I have so very much time left.  Parents shouldn't outlive their children, but my mother is determined to do just that.  And why not?  But she has shortened my life, I believe, considerably.  I have an offer to go to Japan in March.  I want to go to Japan.  I want to go to Miami and shack up in the Four Seasons for a week, lie by the pool and drink Margaritas.  Maybe I'll sell everything and just rent a place in Key West, wander the island, a tropical Quasimodo, until my final day.  

Sitting is hard now.  Getting up is worse.  Moving is excruciating.  It has happened quickly, but that is how it happens, isn't it?  

Did I show you what I looked like last year on my birthday?  Yea.  Look what your god has done to me.