Have you noticed my new writing style? I call it erratic and without flow. I've been without the internet. So when I had access I've been making half-ass posts. If and when I did post my grammar sucked, I forgot to conclude and enter vital tags. It's not like I've been completely off the grid either. I've had internet, borrowed it at times, paid for a rather shitty hotspot and then resorted to sitting around at places with even shittier wi-fi. Yesterday we were gifted with the joys of stable and fast internet service. So I've changed back to my former writing style and managed to fix this mess. I apologize. I wasn't hacked. I'm not suffering from a degenerative brain disease. Well it isn't me. It's more or less everything around me.
My last update revealed that I had taken a job, my mother was ill and I was having technical issues. A few weeks after that post I had no choice but to quit my job and work full time taking care of my mother. The technical issues still persist but I've found a method to the madness. It's my mother that I am worried about. One would assume we are fighting the great battle called cancer. Actually, no it isn't the cancer. We are brawling with family. Yes, the f word. People take sides when their loved ones start to fade away. Some people try to align but they all have their own ulterior motives. Most are petty, selfish human motives. We wish to possess a loved one beyond their time or ability. We begin to think of only our loss or our setback. Others show all this concern about wishes trying to tie it into religion and tradition. The reality is whatever you think someone wants isn't what they want at all. Then there is money.
No one has been looking out for my mother other than me. So it isn't about her value to our family. No one questions what she ultimately wants. It still fascinates me when she tells people she's Catholic. I've never seen her attend a single Mass. However, in my role as daughter and caregiver I'm not driven by motives and I don't judge her. I am not keeping her from a destiny. I'm not worried about the afterlife. I could care less about the money. I just want my mother to be okay. I don't wish for a cure. I don't want her to be "comfortable". These are strange wishes that don't come true. You can't comfort someone who is suffering. You can't wait for miracles to happen. The only thing you can provide is some sense of normalcy and dignity. You can make sure the bed stays made. You can break out the crock pot and cook a nice meal. You can provide a mani/pedi. You can talk about that one time and back when. These are all things I didn't or couldn't do when my mother was taken for granted. I can't just wish, hope and dream those niceties away. I had to do the above 100%. I also had to remove her from a rather toxic environment.
This removal was not by choice. Her family basically forced us out. They strongly believed she wouldn't make it and never expressed otherwise. My mother has an 80% chance to live. In fact, her doctors say the cancer is gone. She's done with treatment. She is just recovering from it. She wasn't recovering in a house full of vultures. They were also working really hard top prevent me from allowing her to recover. We had to sever all ties. I really thought in doing so my mom would turn around. She hasn't gotten any better. She ultimately feels defeated and heartbroken. There is nothing anyone can do to restore her morale. Theres no pill for that. Theres no gesture for that. I just have to remember that she maintained a life before I came. No matter how good, bad or different she had one and so did I. So each day we reveal a bit about ourselves to each other. I learn something new about her former self. I express whatever it is I'm harboring. We have both been way too busy to ask and never thought we'd have to tell.
Sometimes she tells me something good. Sometimes there are things I wanted to hear. Then there are a lot of bad revelations. She finally told me about a house she owned. Sadly, the home had been in default since her diagnoses and she never thought to tell me. Someone very close to her and I and the family took advantage of it. They stole most everything out of it, tossed whatever was remaining and then proceeded to vandalize the house by flooding it. I had to explain this to my mother and she put it on my shoulders. I was responsible for everything involving her property and it all happened overnight. I had to contact the police. I had to start the insurance claim. I had to work with contractors. My mother just isn't capable of handling her affairs anymore. So the past month all I've done is take care of her and work on repairing her house. Eventually we would move-in making this unknown investment our safe haven.
I totally took my 70 year old stage 4 cancer having mother, my two dogs and all I could put in my hatchback and went to the nearest and cheapest hotel. This caused a lot of problems. Logistically you really can't care for someone in her state in a hotel. There is a lot of preparation to do it and I didn't really have that. I also lost that sense of normalcy I'd promised her. I also forgot to bring more than a few pairs of underwear. So things we're quite off for about a week and a half. Then there was promise. Insurance was able to start on the house. We we're having a horrid hotel experience and it was costing us everything. It was purely coincidental that insurance offered to take over the billing. We promptly moved to a better hotel and waited for them to start the process. Then came a big snow trapping everyone. The contractors couldn't finish their work. The adjuster wasn't in the office. We we're stuck in our room with the dogs. Yes, we were in a hotel room for nearly three weeks. Lets just say the internet was the least of my problems.
Today we are in the house. A house we both sacrificed a lot to recover. I'm no homeowner. I really didn't know what to do when she sprung this on me. I'm still quite baffled that my mother would buy a home and choose not to live in it. She wasn't even making money off it; she was supplementing the tenants rent to pay the mortgage. So before all of this, before the cancer and before I came - my mother was under a lot of stress. As much as I do not want to be the person controlling things - I have no choice. So I'm now a legal doppleganger of my mother. I pay her mortgage. I put contact paper in the linen closet. I hung curtains in the living room. I hacked Ikea's Summer Vegetable soup in the crock pot. I dispense her meds. I show her funny videos of cats. And now we have internet and like 1300 cable channels! She calls it "our" home. This is the first time we together outfitted one. There is no celebration in it because we're here for all the wrong reasons. However, something feels right about moving on. I wish her no more stress and I'm certain she knows where my loyalties lie. I blog. She watches HGTV. We have a PET scan in April. I wish to be back to life as I once knew it in May but it all depends on that scan. For now we have March - an entire month of normalcy. Again, I did it for her. I do it all for her.
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