Monday FW

This weekend I went to visit with my mom.  At this point I go every other weekend minimum. Yes, there is some residual guilt around that, but mostly that feels like how we patterned our lives before Alzheimers.  My mom would not want me to trade my entire life for her - and frankly I would not survive that either. 

At the start, I spent every other day with her for 10-12 hours all while working full time.  I used 7 weeks of vacation one day at a time.  After we moved her to Memory Care, I spent Wednesday evenings with her and all day Saturday.  We played cards, I did her nails, we went to dinner in the dining room.  I dropped Wednesday night and started back up at Women Writing on that night.  And about the time she moved to skilled care nursing, I started with every other week. 

These past years were hard.  But I am so glad to have done that while it still mattered.  Now it mostly matters to me.  I don't think she knows who I am anymore.  And if I get up, walk away and come back, it's like she's seeing me for the first time.  I have had to get OK with all these changes, because the alternative is to quit on her.  Too many people have done that to her....her priest, her friends, her children.  I lost friends who were absolute in their conviction I was making the wrong choice.  Well, not friends really I guess, because real friends would get it. 

My revelation from this weekend was this:  I have made a lot of mistake in my life - things I regret, things I imagine and re-imagine until it's just so.  There aren't as many things I'm sure I have gotten right in my life - or any.  But this - this is one I am sure of. 

I will not abandon her. 

It's not duty.

Or some deathbed promise I made to my dad.

It's because I love her.

And this is what love looks like. 

30 posts in 30 days

I have let myself fall out of the habit of writing over the past year.  Work has gotten busier, my favorite place to hypercaffeinate and write - the one with the perfect ass to table ratio - closed and I have yet to find a suitable substitute.  Yeah - sounds like excuses to me too.

The same ones I make about losing weight, about cleaning the house, about not  laying down for a 3 hour "nap."  Something is deeply off kilter in my head again.  I'm constantly bitchy and tired and work seems to occupy an ever increasing amount of my time and energy.  WTF!?!???  I mean WTF!!!!

I like work.  I know how to operate there.  But honestly, it isn't worth every ounce of energy I have.  And things at work don't need to be constantly double and triple stacked so every minute of every day and more are busy.

The real question is why?  Why have I allowed it to get this way?  Used to be mom took up more space, but that hasn't been so for over a year.  I just never did anything in the time I reaquired.  No I take that back,  I slept.  Long glorious fit free sleep that my body needed.  And never one to do things in half measures, sleep became a thing of its own.

Because it's the time of year when I make room for what's coming and plan in so much as I ever do, I am working toward the following:

To move out of the apt, out of Ft. Thomas and into a house?  Part of me is a hell yes on this.  Part is still um  FUCK no!  I am afraid that moments after I move I will retire and now be stuck in a house with a 30 year mortgage and no equity.