::Waves::
Thank you to everyone who asks about and post concern about Dad here and at wordsmithslash@yahoo.com. I keep putting off updating on him since there always seems to be something new we're waiting of info on.
2006 started with his bout of pneumonia, which was actually fortuitous since it led to them noticing the mass forming in his lung. He broke his hip shortly before he was scheduled for implants of tiny gold seeds so that high doses of radiation could be focused on the mass so it got a bit bigger while we were getting him back on his feet. He was moving better after the hip surgery than before since the two week stay in rehab had him up and moving every day - and he maintained that increased mobility as long a the cute physical therapist was coming a couple times a week. However once that stopped he went back to only moving when he couldn't find away around it (that'd be me).
The living room is about 25 by 15 and he has his chair, a hospital bed and the TV - this is pretty much all he needs to live. The bathroom we added on the first floor is just off the living room - which adds five to six feet to the steps he must take per day. The Kitchen is passed the bath off the dinning room its 7 by 13 (the kitchen not the dinning room) the whole downstairs of the house including the stairs up to the second floor and down to the cellar is about 30 by 25… not a big world, when the weather is nice he will go sit on the back porch sometimes but this is a guy who runs the furnace in June. The more I try to get him to get up and just walk across the room the less he moves. He has a tendency to get dehydrated and I swear it is because he feels if he drinks less it will be less trips to the bathroom. He's not in pain when he walks (although his pain threshold is so low he'd ask for anesthesia to have a Band-Aid removed) but he is very weak and unsteady - due to never moving.
Brother took him in to have the lung cancer checked as it has been six months since they finished the radiation therapy. Now they found a mass in his colon and want to do a test. I asked Brother to see if they can do it as an inpatient as with his mobility and weakness, I really don't think he can purge his bowels without breaking another hip. (I've had a colonscope - not the fun for all activity you would expect it to be)
Brother has been a lot busier lately since the divorce finally went through and he did get one of the smaller businesses they owed - so now he has a job that doesn't get pulled out from under him (there was a time she was firing him every time PMS hit). The SIL - or exSIL - or shall we just call her Sybil? I have known this girl since she was sixteen - yes, she was self-centered and selfish but she could be charming and wasn't that I could see absolutely crazy… I remember talking about her with my mom right after the first of their children were born - 'cause I thought she had some out-there ideas on child raising and seemed more concerned by if she was the baby's most favorite person rather than what was good for the baby. Mum, who had a policy of staying out of things like that, said she was just young and she'd grow out of it…. She never did. She is still messing up her kids but good and while I feel for them and wish them the best - three of them are over eighteen and really need to decide if the ease and comfort of their co-dependency is worth being tied to an obsessive control freak for the rest of their lived.
Sybil's currently playing some sort of game with dad where she calls him and acts all concerned about him and his health. She then promises that she'll bring the kids over to see him and then never comes. Now dad has his own issues and while he tries to play the martyr about how no one comes to see him or calls him, he really makes absolutely no effort either. He constantly says 'you're right' to me but still everyday stays 'she didn't come' - I point out that every one of his four grandchildren have cell phones stuck to their ears 24/7 and if indeed any of them wanted to they could call for 2 minutes and say 'hey, how are you?' and really don't need mommy-dearest to broker a meeting. We live maybe 10 to 15 miles from them and they have cars. They know he is alone all day while I'm at work and don't have to worry about seeing me - they all work for mommy so don't have to worry about being late or leaving early or not coming in at all.
In the past 2 years he saw the oldest the most maybe 8 to 10 times - this was because the oldest was under house arrest at brothers for a period of about three months - until the whole SuperBowl incident (see previous post - and who says we don't put the fun in dysfunctional) He has seen the oldest girl maybe 3 times? I'll be generous and say 4, and the youngest boy - that'd be my godson, twice. He has seen the youngest the most because the mother of the year (when not making noises as if she is going to go to court and say Brother molested both his daughters) lets the youngest visit her father - there's a court order but that hasn't stopped her from sitting the girl down and saying 'when your not here mommy missing you so, much' crying until she gets the kid crying and then calling Brothers voice mail and playing the kid crying and saying she doesn't want to come see daddy. (oh, yeah one of these kids is going to write a book if they live). He saw the great-grand daughter 3 times… I think, the mother is very stand offish since she lives with Sybil and can't read if she is to be nice or hate the old man and is afraid (and rightly so since there is no telling what that woman's reaction to anything will be) that if Sybil thinks she is not siding with her and completely in support of her 'I'm the victim - this is all my husband's fault' mentality that she'll be cut off from any funds.
I think the latest contacts - which started right after Christmas have been spurred by Sybil wanting $10,000 for tuition for the oldest girl. This is the one who started college - got sent home about 3 weeks in for being dangerously underweight and making herself barf - was shipped off to the clinic for about $40,000. Brother has never been permitted to see any of the doctors he is expected to pay for - the daughter is now not speaking to brother - because mommy told her daddy would not let her go to school. Brother actually said - let's get her healthy before enrolling her and putting her back under pressure - fix the weight first then when she's handling that send her back to school. Sybil of course wouldn't her it and sent her back to school - this is a girl who 2 months before had been 85 pounds… needless to say she's still bulimic and back at school. But it's all her father's fault - the daughter has no responsibility for her health and wellbeing.
That is the big issue. The one that is killing my brother's kids. In order for Sybil to maintain this fantasy world where she is the heroine in some Lifetime Movie - nothing in her life can be her fault. Actions can have absolutely no repercussions. Her sons' drug problems and mental disorders, her daughter's negative self image and self destructive actions, are not due to their actions, have not been exacerbated by her deep-seated need to be the be all and end all of their lives - their savior and the one they turn to for every decision. In order to stay in control to be the good kind caring mother she truly thinks she is she has to blame everything on my brother. This is all because he left her. She won't ever admit that she drove him away or in anyway influenced his leaving.
In her the script that is her life they were the a close loving couple who one day out of the blue he just walked out for the other woman. I watched my brother in an abusive relationship for twenty years. I didn't help him. Partly because I didn't know how and partly because like my mother I think you just stay out of it… getting between a couple like that is just bad. Maybe, as the youngest I thought he wouldn't listen to me… maybe I felt he'd already made his choice and chose her over his family. Because make no mistake - she was very clear that they were his family now. I see now that that is classic abusive spouse behavior to try and separate the 'victim' from any sort of support and she did succeed to some degree. My brother has reconnected with friends from grade school and high school over the five years it has taken him to go from moving out to being legally divorced from that woman. I really respect that he joined a support group (he's one of the only men) I think men especially have it hard. Just admitting that they've been in that kind of trap takes so much strength on their part give what the male social role still is. I really missed my brother he was a couple miles away all those years but he changed, I like having him back again.
The problem is all his kids need help. He still loves them and worries for their health - mental and physical. The key factor in all of them getting any sort of help is to admit that their problem is *their* problem but her problem is so tied to everything being my brother's fault that she will not let them admit that even to themselves. If you asked her point blank if she would rather see her kids dead or healthy, happy, successful and with no need to have her in their lives she would cry and tell you how much she loves them and how much she has done for them and how much they need her … and that's the deal breaker. She is so tied up in the role of the mom of the troubled kids and playing the victim and detailing how much she has spent and how much she has done to get them all help. She can't give it up. Aside from the normal obstacles to get around with drugs, violence, and various forms of mental illness those kids have this scream emotional sinkhole standing between them and any sort of recovery. My heart goes out to them but I'm back in that frustrating sideline hoping that at least one of them takes a page from their father's book and walks away - it seems like their only chance to survive.
Wow, what a downer… but very cathartic. Thanks for listening. I actually had a great Christmas. Brother cooked - he does turkey and all the fixings very well. I like his girlfriend. She's a grown up and brave enough not to be scared off by Sybil (although Sybil did call her boss(es) and says she was having an affair with a married man). Has two kids of her own, both alive and well, son is in the navy and was here for Christmas - nice boy mentally stable with no visible addictions - there were board games. Her daughter just got married so they went there for Christmas Eve.
I joined WeightWatchers in July and have lost around 40 pounds. I feel much more health conscious - I think I'll be able to manage and maintain better on this than some of the previous diets I've tried. I'm just getting too old to carry all that extra weight, I was feeling it in my knees and I don't want to have dad's mobility problems when I get older - I am so out living him - if he can make 82 with all the smoking and bad habits he had I have my eye on 125 - after all there will be medical advances and all I really need is a room with a computer. Thank God my addictions will at least keep my mind working.
I wonder if anyone will still be slashing BtVS in 2075? I'm kind of in a deadzone - like a sailboat without wind - all my fandoms are from shows not on any more. Fewer and fewer people are writing my OTP Xander/Spike - the AresJoxerCupidStrife list still has some talent working for it - thank God for syndication. The only Brokeback I've been following religiously is MadLori at http://community.livejournal.com/humaninterest/ . Scribe has a masterful original work based on Dracula called 'Child of the Night' at http://www.angelfire.com/grrl/scribescribbles/ which is long and lovely and a WIP up to about 117 chapters. Am I showing my age? I miss non-reality TV - it slashes better. The only new shows I've see are Heroes, Jake 2.0 and The Dresden Files. Although I'm thinking slash could do a lot with nanite technology.
Well back to working on chapter 32 of 'Reconciliation' - I really will have to get what I have bete'd - its not enough just having people point out the glaring errors in grammar as feedback - I need it read and some of the gaping holes in the timeline/plot plugged up. I wonder if my favorite beta has recovered from her big move yet and has time to read over something with so may OCs? Have to remember to send and email on that since I don't remember how to post anything on my site being a backwards child.