Overwhelmed..

That word sums things up right now.

Things have come full circle for my mother and I. A year ago I was upset and scared, because she married a man she did not know well at all. A man she met online, who frightened me when I met him, because he was so utterly like my ex-husband, except older. What I was not aware of, at the time, was that he also had a violent nature and dreadful anger management issues. Something he refused to acknowledge or believe, as he felt the world revolved around him and nothing he ever felt, did or said, could ever be wrong.

Without going into all the details, what has become full circle is that now my mother and I are roommates. This is a positive thing, for both of us. We have both been alone for years, for her, since my father died and for myself, 11 years. We also get along very well. For so many years I’d not been able to do anything practically to assist her, now I can. I just wish I were at a better place physically, so that it would not be so difficult, as it is now.

I am still on disability, on very high pain meds, which I’d run out of the last week, of all weeks. On the 10th, I moved into a new apartment, the next evening my mother flew in from where she lived before. Her estranged husband arrived two days later with a trailer containing most of her things, a few things had been left behind, and we hope he will be decent enough to forward them to her, although she has doubts that he will.

I had to do the majority of my packing alone.. and I was completely astounded when out of the blue, a friend sent funds that enabled me to hire a company to move most of my things. Due to communication issues with the moving company, not everything was packed, so there are still things left at the old apartment that need to be packed still, but they were things that were too heavy or in a place too difficult for me to handle alone.

Another friend was amazing in coming to help unload the trailer, almost single-handedly. He did not have much time that he could give, but what he did have time to do, he did provide.

The difficulty though, is in the unpacking. It is somewhat like having two households to unpack, and my mother is unable to do too much. We’ve hardly had any time to have a breather, we still have not had the chance to do grocery shopping, which will mostly be done through Safeway’s website today.

I have been averaging 1-2 hour sleep a night since her things arrived, for when they did, her cat also was delivered. Which sparked wars between not only my two cats and the new cat, but my two cats have also decided that they loathe one another and cannot be in the same room without snarling, growling and hissing. My mothers’ cat, which is truly a sweet cat, has had to be segregated into my mothers’ bedroom/bathroom. One of my cats has segregated herself into my bedroom, sneaking into the bathroom to use the litter box and eat. The other cat spends most of her time in the living room.

I apologize for rambling.. I took a 30-minute nap in my recliner tonight, but have not had more than an hour nap at any given time since Saturday night.

The day before yesterday, while driving home after my mother and I had done some shopping for the apartment, I fell asleep while driving, only for a second thankfully, but it terrified me, and my mother was scared as well. She knows I have not been able to sleep and worries that I’m exhausted, but I can’t relax long enough to sleep, in addition to the kitty wars.

I’d just managed to get to sleep yesterday morning (since it’s now 4:15 a.m., it would be yesterday, despite not having had any sleep yet), when my grandmother called, crying. This is not an unusual thing; except it was the first time she’d called my number to do so. My mother does not yet have a phone, so knowing my mother was here; she called, because she has a never-ending need for sympathy. My grandfather is in the hospital, he is very ill, has serious heart problems as well as other things, but my grandmother refuses to believe that he is that sick, since she believes she alone can be in pain or sick. It always seems to be a bit of a competition, if she hears someone else is sick or hurting, that she has to explain how much worse off she is, because she doesn’t want anyone else to get sympathy, she wants it all for herself. My grandmother wants us to go and visit right away, or to be more exact, wants us to run down to see her every chance we get, several times a week, without thought to what difficulties we might be experiencing. It seems her life goal has been a longing to live with my mother, but that is not something I could ever live with, myself. Since she lives 80 miles south of us, it is not something we can do often, especially if I am not getting sleep and the only way to be able to accomplish much in the apartment, is to use the pain meds prescribed. I have tried to go without the last few days so that I could drive us around without fear of the meds affecting me, and yet I still fell asleep at the wheel for a split-second, and with the pain, I cannot move easily.

In an aside, a friend of my mother goes to visit my grandmother rather frequently, out of friendship to my mother. There is a woman who is a caregiver to my grandparents, who slept there 24/7 for several days, with only being paid 6 hours per day. My grandmother is resentful because this woman had to be away for a few hours the last few days. What my grandparents are not aware of, which I only found out a few minutes ago, is that this woman’s 39-year-old daughter died the other night from a seizure. She has not told my grandparents, because she doesn’t want to add more worry to both of them, especially with my grandfathers’ heart problems. The friend told Mom and I in confidence, the friend was asked by the caregiver not to tell this to my grandparents.

After resigning myself this morning that I would not be able to sleep, I went to my old apartment early to pick up a few things to make our first meal in our apartment. I was unpacking the car, it took 4 trips, just as I was coming back into the apartment with the last box, I heard my mother crying from inside the apartment and rushed in as fast as I could. What I saw terrified me.. my mother lying on the floor, between the front door and the coat closet, blood pooled beneath her head and weeping hysterically.

It’s one thing to know from being told over the years, that my mother falls frequently. Even to having witnessed the one fall she had where she lost consciousness. But it’s quite another to having been gone from the apartment for less than 90 seconds, and then see that she’d fallen and hurt herself.

She fell face first against the corner between the two doors, did not break her nose, but lacerated it and was bleeding from inside as well. I know that facial injuries do bleed more, but it was still a startling thing to walk into. In addition to having to see how much pain it caused her when one of the paramedics tried to come into the door, after knowing that I’d opened the door much wider to rush in to aid her minutes before.

There are so many boxes still that need to be unpacked; the stress of this keeps me from being able to relax enough to sleep. And yet I know I need sleep, to be able to function well. I don’t want to go into the kitchen to work on that, because I know it would likely wake my mother, who needs all the sleep she can. She will be in quite a bit of pain today from her fall; I do not want to do anything to jeopardize her having some time without pain, while she sleeps.

Which is why I sit here and ramble on incoherently.

One good thing that came from the visit to the hospital, is that my mother was given a referral to a doctor in the area. Since she never lived in this area, this is a top priority. I am hopeful that she can get an appointment soon with the doctor, so that he can write a prescription for a walker. With my mother having numb feet and a problem with her balance, she needs something she can hold onto. She catches her slippers on carpeting, without realizing it, because she cannot feel her feet, which is why she falls frequently. With having a doctor in the area, hopefully she can get one of the emergency lifelines, a necklace to wear that if she falls, an intercom can hear her and talk to her, if she is unable to move to get to a phone. I worry so much when I do go to work, for her to be alone. There is one walker that she wishes, that costs $150, if the doctor gives a prescription for it, there is a pharmacy I was referred to that would bill Medicare for it.

There is just so much to be done.. and without anyone who can help.. even just to get things unpacked so that it’s not an obstacle course, I’m beyond overwhelmed.

I would never choose to do anything other than what I am doing right now. For so many years I wanted to help my parents.. and then when my father died, I was limited on what I could do. Now I’m finally able to do what I wanted to do for so many years. I’ve been on hyper drive, trying to get everything done as fast as I can. For several days in a row, I would not sit for more than 5-10 minutes at a time during the day, because I knew there was so much more that needed to be done. I accomplished a great deal the first three days, but with every day running around to do the errands she’s needed done, I haven’t been able to do much since. That in addition to being out of my pain meds, where I could not function easily.

I hate how this sounds; I know I sound like I’m whining.. I truly am not trying to. I have no regrets with the decision we made to become roommates; it’s what we both needed in our lives. She has suffered so much the last year with the man she married; I am doing anything I can to try to help make up for it. Before I unloaded the car this morning, I gave her 14 long stem roses. In well over a decade, I have not been able to do things like give birthday gifts or Christmas presents. Often over the course of my life, I’ve been in financial straits that would not allow that. So when I have a bit extra, I like to give something nice, something unexpected.

When I gave them to her, she started weeping. In the card, I wrote to her how I felt she was the best mother in the world.. she said she didn’t deserve them. She has done so much for me.. that she’d feel so poorly about herself, makes me even angrier with her husband. He did to her what my ex-husband did to me. Shattered her self-esteem. So one of the first things this morning to do will be to get her glasses repaired, so that she can enjoy them.

For anyone who had the patience to read this.. I truly apologize. I know I have really rambled badly. But after sitting here for the last two hours crying for being scared and overwhelmed, at least writing this helped me calm down again, getting it written out. Tears don’t help me feel better, but sometimes writing it out does. There’s so much bottled up inside, usually to the point that I can’t even think where to begin, nor to want to think about it so much that I can’t just get some rest from fretting. I guess I’m reaching some emotional and mental limits.. which I do not like at all.

I dislike facing my limits constantly, but when it affects someone I love so dearly, it upsets me even more.