Whenever I tried to make any overture toward her she would fall into the same pattern of telling me over and over again how horrid my sister and I had been growing up and how my father and her parents never understood that she had to discipline us. I always ended my visits there feeling as if I'd stepped into the psychiatric ward again.
I could not understand how my sister handled it at all. In retrospect I suppose she didn't really handle it at all. In 2001 my sister and her husband separated. In January 2002, days before her 40th birthday, my sister was found dead of a single gun shot to the head. It was debated back and forth for some time between murder and suicide. Suspicion swirled around the ex-girlfriend of the new boyfriend, but eventually, when nothing definitive was found it was let drift into the obscurity of a rural sheriff's back files.
January 2002 changed more than I could have ever dreamed. My father's relatives, who had never had an easy relationship with my mother, made certain that once the arrangements were dealt with for my sister that my mom was packed tightly into my small car and sent with me and my husband, back to Virginia.
For the first six months I tried to deal with her health issues, my job and my own unresolved problems. Mom spent every spare moment telling me over and over again about all the hell I'd been to raise, how dad had treated her badly, how her parents undermined her at every turn. I spent this time getting her physical health seen to; she had cataract surgery and medication evaluations. Then one day, I could not take another round of her telling me of her troubles. I locked myself in my room and was grateful to have a flight of stairs that she could not negotiate on her own between us.
My husband and I began the search for an assisted living, a psychiatrist for me as she had one, and some general help. I had never dealt with social services before in my life, so the learning curve was long and hard. In the intervening time I had to quit my job because her health was poor enough that I was constantly taking her to doctors and for tests. I could not work and maintain both schedules. Even with the assisted living placements, the facilities expected me to be available to take her to the doctor.
As her bills grew, with me not working, my husband and I made the decision to sell our home of ten years, the place we had intended to make our home for the rest of our lives. It was costing more than we could handle with mom's bills as well. No one told us, not social services or anyone else, that there was any way to get assistance to keep us from going bankrupt to take care of her over and above her own income.
We were loosing ground fast, bills mounting and the assisted living facilities still demanding my time and flexibility to "Be There For Her". I went into real estate to try and make some money while being the most flexible with my schedule I could be. Even with that change I was not handling, not coping with the difficulties of dealing directly with my mother. I found that I was loosing my hair; I was ill, very often aches and pains that had not been there before took me out for days. I was also certain that I was loosing my mind, that I was becoming as mom is, crazy.
I tried counseling, they offered me pills. Pills that literally knocked me out to a point where I had severe difficulty waking up. The doctors were unhappy with the result, not because it was a frightening occurrence, but because I was on the lowest dose of the medication and they didn't know what to do without the pills. I was also found to have Systemic Lupus which they tell me likely flared up due to the stress and that was causing some of my systems as well.
I found a course of holistic meditation and conversational therapy was my best option to try and bring my own mind back to a point where I could function again. I began to withdraw from dealing directly with my mother, much to the consternation of the assisted living facility management, but I could not take care of her "business" if I maintained what I, my husband and the therapists considered a toxic relationship.
You see, with anyone other than the "family" my mother presented a completely different personality. I only saw that person when she was in public. All of her current caregivers think the world of her because she always seems so grateful for the attention and so distraught that her only living daughter is consistently absent. I now face that fight when ever I have to speak to the management at the facility.
