We have to leave very soon to the mother’s house.  In fact, we really shouldn’t be spending time blogging right now, but rather getting ready to leave and on our way.  I just get so tired of my mother’s ill health and that she looks to me for help.  I know she is trying to extend herself and seek resources elsewhere instead of to just me.  She occasionally resorts to asking my brother.

And I had already planned on being at my mother’s house today– she needed help with some house cleaning and I know she’ll give me a little bit of money for it or compensate me in some way and I could really use that right now.  Unfortunately we tend to take much, much longer than needed to clean her house and so we’ll be working hard on not going overboard with our OCD stuff and style of cleaning when we know things haven’t been deep cleaned in a long time.  Plus so often we have to take so many breaks because just can’t stay focused or have the energy to keep plugging away at it.  We never know if the ‘right ones’ inside will show up to just get the job done so we can leave.

So really since I was going to my mother’s house anyway and should have been there already (was supposed to have gone last night and stayed overnight), then I really shouldn’t be having these feelings of irritation and annoyance and anger or something.  I’m not exactly sure what feelings they are, but they are negative, and I feel bad about having them as a reaction that she is ill and needs help.

The only thing I can figure out so far is that it triggers a lot for us because she needs taking care of and in a way, we’ve been doing that all our life.  We know we’ll never be a daily nurse for her or anything when she can’t live alone anymore– we are not going to take care of her in that way.  We just can’t do it and choose not to put ourselves through that.  Perhaps if she had been a different mother to us growing up, we’d feel differently.

I feel so guilty for saying any of this.  I know that feelings are feelings and they are allowed to just be and exist.  It’s just I feel like such an awful person, an awful daughter, and so very bad for feeling any of this and having such negative thoughts about my mother, as she wasn’t all bad growing up, and she is better now that she is older.

But Billie just commented to me that she is better now that is sick and needing help and that she didn’t really begin changing for the “better” until she began getting sick 5 or so years ago and no longer had the energy to be bitchy and suddenly began needing a lot of help with things.  I never realized this until Billie just commented about it.  At the same time, I don’t want to fault her for being human and doing what she needed and needs to do in order to get her needs met.  And I think with all her friends dying or people she grew up with in high school dying, along with her illnesses, that she has been facing death a lot more and that has changed her for the better.

I don’t know.  All of this is confusing.  I’ve already spent 15 minutes writing and thinking about all of this.  I can type fast, but the thoughts and feelings take time to put into words and to process.

She was supposed to have been gone today, well all afternoon to a dr.’s appt in Seattle and she was going to be using the Access Bus.  Well instead she began throwing up again for no damn reason (not the flu or anything) and I hear about her throwing up regularly and this time she began throwing up blood.  So she had to cancel all of that and make an appt with a local dr.  This dr. is literally within walking distance of the house and truly not far at all.  It is really and truly a short walk because she lives right on a main road that has businesses and residences.  I know she has trouble walking and I know it is cold, but somehow I have trouble being compassionate with her sometimes and her being so “helpless” because damn it, if it was me, I would do it if I needed to do it.  So lucky me she had somebody helping with some house maintenance project and he is taking her up the corner to the dr.’s office and I’m supposed to go directly there and pick her up.  She told me that she figures they’ll want her to go to the hospital.  Uggh.  If that’s the case I’m seriously thinking of just dropping her off and having her call me when she is done because I don’t want to spend the day sitting in a hospital with her only to have to come back on another day this week to help her clean her house.

I should go.  Now that she is needing me and it is so urgent, we are dragging our feet to get there and others inside are protesting.  It was hard, but much more manageable when we had told her when we could do it this week and had planned ahead of time to go and clean her house today.  We had planned on being there earlier in the morning but then changed the time to noon and at this rate it is going to be closer to 12:30 p.m. by the time we arrive.  So it is crazy, but it is almost like a control thing with us or something.  I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I think things would have been easier had she not been sick and called me to tell me and need me urgently versus us coming on our own terms.

Julie/s