I Manage… | Where I am Today

It has been a rough couple of years.

…More like a decade if I’m being honest.

I have been my mother’s caregiver for what feels like my entire life. I was her buffer. Her therapist. Her only friend.

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t managing my mom’s emotions. Keeping her on an even keel made everyone else’s life a little easier.

Therapy wasn’t encouraged in her family. Even if it was, she wouldn’t have been able to afford it. So she self medicated to dull her anxiety and depression with alcohol.

Both of my parents did.

…and so did their parents and probably their parents before them.

That’s just…How it was.

So I managed.

That became who I was.

For my Parents. My siblings. My extended family. My friends. My boyfriend. My church. My coworkers. I embodied The Fixer and The Peacemaker roles.

So when my dad passed away, I bought a duplex so my mom could ‘live with us’ without living with us and we continued on in our familiar roles.

Until five years ago. I thought it was just her drinking at first. Repeated conversations and mood swings were her normal so the escalation made sense for the progression of her addiction.

So, I managed that.

And about three years ago her health began to decline. She stopped eating, had several falls, and a couple serious hospital stays. Things were getting beyond my ability to manage (which if you know me even a little bit you know that’s bad)

I worked with her doctor and a hospital social worker to get her into a skilled nursing facility for a while (which she hated for obvious reasons) but she did get a little better.

And then she came home and it wasn’t long before she was declining again.

We went through the same process two more times.

Until she never recovered. Even after eating properly and not drinking, her memory continued to decline. She asked me if I had seen my dad lately and thought I was a nurse a few times.

…and I managed.

I visited almost every day and brought her dinner. We talked and played cards. I was “on call” to help calm her down when she had a bout of paranoia and answered all of her many (often the same) questions.

She had a series of cognitive tests that continued to get worse until she received an official Moderate / Mid Stage Dementia diagnosis and the staff and I agreed that she was not safe to come home again.

I managed that too.

Until she came to a stage I’ve since learned is common in dementia patients. The “I want to go home” stage. We tried the truth. (That did NOT go well) We tried therapeutic lies. (That worked for the 15mins it took for her to forget we’d just had the conversation) At some point every visit would devolve into me promising I’d see her tomorrow and her asking why I couldn’t take her with me.

I had a small mental breakdown. Finally! A problem I couldn’t fix.

I stopped being able to visit. Literally. I would drive over to the facility and not be able to make myself turn into the parking lot. The thought of going inside made me want to throw up.

The staff assured me that what I was feeling was normal and they (and my therapist) advised a break. My mom is safe. She’s content when we aren’t constantly triggering each other.

And now I have a new task of learning how to manage myself.