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The longest. Post. Ever.
A little background. My mom was a strong independant woman who raised me, on her own (while she had various marriages and relationships), to be self-reliant, outspoken, empathetic, and generally a woman of the new age, if that makes any sense. She had her weaknesses: she drank some (but did a quick stint in a weekend rehab place that set her right), and seemed to pick men that were all kinds of wrong for her. In all, though, a wonderful lady.
But my the time my new tall sweetie I brought home from grad school met her, she was a bit loopy, and gaining in neuroses. Ron wondered if this was the same person I described, and at the time I didn't really see it, but kept it in mind. As the years went on, he became more and more right, and she became less and less independent and more conservative as her 2 main illnesses progressed (diabetes and periperal neuropathy) and she went into her 50s, married to a libertarian gun nut but a nice and good guy.
My mom's relationship with my older brother has always been rocky. When my brother was, what, 12? He moved out to live with mom's parents, and then Dad and his wife. Today my brother would say that mom lied to him, and made him her therapist, and the divorce was her fault. I think when you have a single mom, it's inevitable to have a bit of a therapy role since everybody's talking about everything and you work stuff out together, both ways. I was her therapist, too, after he left, but that worked for us, pretty much.
So, on some level, my brother sees the same stuff that I saw, but reacted a totally different way to it. On another level, what he sees is totally bent. My dad (since a recovering sex addict) cheated on my mom for probably the whole 14 years they were married, and was generally a lying cheating prick who fought the child support and was a dickhead for an ex. Yet, the failure of the marriage was my mom's fault. Right. Bent. Just the other day I even talked to my dad about this perspective, and while he said my mom could be kooky, she wasn't a liar and she was a very good person. Would that he could translate this to my brother.
So. My brother, who is turning 40 in October and is just now finally growing up in many way, has his baby preemie in February, and takes offense that my mom doesn't come to visit right away, though she had a bad head cold and miniature horses to take care of, with no one else to step in. Meanwhile, baby's other grandmother has flown from Germany to be the dulla (?), to sleep in the baby's room and feed her while the parents actually get some sleep at night. This sets the scene: my brother's ashamed of my mom, yet disappointed that she didn't come to visit her only grandchild right away; my mom's not that healthy, and loopy in general under the drugs she's been on for years, and she's embarassed that she didn't come right away; both German grandparents are in town and are the nicest possible anal people ever.
After not quite harassing my mother to come visit, I got her a plane ticket to come to San Diego at the end of March, and we drove up to LA to my brother's. While my brother offered to have my mom sleep in the baby's room at night when we were there, Mom and I decided that was a bad idea: crappy cot combined with a bad back, not a good place for me to sleep except the couch, and nowhere to go to escape. So, we stayed with a friend of mine.
On the drive up we had the logical next step of a conversation regarding the way my brother can be a fun and funny and nice guy, but a total dickhead to my mom and ueber critical of her. We talked about how the stuff he says to her is almost always about him, and not about who she really is. She agreed, and seemed to commit herself to try to not take stuff he says personally.
The next 3 days was a nightmare combination of my brother being a dickhead to his mom, her taking EVERYTHING personally, including everything I said to her, her being standoffish and snobby to the Germans, and her being generally out of it. This was generally a build up until one single event that solidified it in my mind: the Saturday night Apple to Apples game.
The Germans, including sister in law to be, had a great time, translating for each other and generally kicking our asses. My brother got frustrated with the game initially because, though he drew and played perfect cards, people neglected to choose them. (How could I ever choose "wildfires" over "my underwear" to associate with the word "smelly"?) While he eventually chilled out, my mom took offense at the music being up, because it must have been intended to bug her, and the jokes about George Bush were of course aimed at her personally, because on our own, the Germans and I would NEVER make disparaging remarks about such a venerated and wonderful leader of this perfect country. We were specifically trying to insult HER. She was so offended by the end of the evening that she left without saying goodbye.
In the car on the drive back to my friend's place, it was an interesting discussion regarding what my brother and I thought of her, and finally me telling her that of course I get that the divorce wasn't her fault, and it's not that the whole world blames her. As if we hadn't had this discussion about a million times in 30 years, and as if she had no idea I didn't understand the anger and resentment and hurt at my brother and our dad, and blah blah blah repeat-o-gram.
And it comes down to this: after that weekend, I realized something that I'd been moving towards for years, but hadn't quite reached that point yet. I had to cut back on my mother. Seriously. Call less, visit less, and generally, when I call, let her just talk until she's done and then say goodbye. Because she's so mentally out of it so often, it's nearly impossible to talk with her like a normal friend; she's scattered, forgetful, and reads into everything you say as if it's about her. It's about her horses, and her health, and that's it. I'm always too tired to tell her about the projects or other stuff going on, which is a bad sign.
At this point, I really wanted to post and share, but I was so busy at work, and feeling emotionally tired of it and drained. It was 10 years of a fading mother-daughter relationship, with a solution that would save my sanity, but curtail the exposure.
At this point, it would be a single post, and I'd hear from y'all about what you've been through, and how it related, you know how it goes.
But there's a followup to this story, and while it wraps things up a bit, in retrospect, it makes the tiredness and drainage seem like a waste.
In June, I call my mom, and she was lucid. We hadn't talked for a while (see above re:containment), but during that time she had eaten herself into a shame spiral (Hi, Stuart Smiley!), and finally went to her doctor to get a name of an eating disorder doc, who met her, looked at her myriad of meds and went, "well, no wonder you're feeling this way." Just taking the step to see that doc made my mom eat better, and she's lost probably 30 pounds, which, for a diabetic, is key. The doc took her off some meds, but put her one one specific one. She wakes up early, takes out the dogs, takes the drug, and goes back to sleep. When she gets up, her brain is clear. She can focus on one specific thing, and not wander all over the place. She can find words. During that one phone call with her I had the best talk with her in years. She asked about what was going on with me, and I felt inclined to tell her. It felt bizarre, but in a good way, and I'm cautiously optimistic. My brother says that she calls more often (a bone of contention for him, since she never calls either one of us), and she doesn't go on and on about her horses, but asks about the baby. It felt (cautiously!) as if I had a mom again.
That next Saturday, she was watering some plants, lost her footing, and fell over and down a 4 foot retaining wall. She'd crushed a couple vertebrae, they thought initially, and she was in the hospital for a few days (when will *I* get to ride in an ambulance??), after which my stepdad took her out because the staff 1) wasn't feeding her (hello! diabetic!), and 2) wasn't giving her all her meds. She's recovering nicely, is up and about, and totally dependent on my stepdad to care for the horses. They're discussing a specific spinal surgery that may help.
Two steps forward, one step back.
And an LJ question: when you're writing a post, and it takes you so long to do it that you're heard about a million songs, how do you pick one for the music field?