Snap Out of It

Where to begin ... I've been back from my holiday home in Mexico for a little more than one week. Since returning we've been having a cold snap. My mom's best friend who is awaiting a double lung transplant, her mother-in-law just passed a short while after suffering a stroke. We put my mom's Idaho house on the market and began the daunting task of trying to find her something here that's somewhat affordable. In the meantime, it has also been agreed that my mom and her "partner" are coming to live with my husband and I until we can find and move them into housing.

I've spent the last four days with my mom. She's so incredibly fragile, emotionally and physically. At 5'8" she's barely 120 lbs., thankfully her weight is up from a low of 113 lbs. Even at the apex of summer she is cold when it's about 90 degrees outside.

For the past month and a half, my mom's so-called partner has been holed up a state away at her house in Idaho. For the past 18 years, my mom has waited on him hand and foot. In fact, I'm surprised he's lasted as long as he has without her feeding him and cleaning up after him. Al was her first phone call following her oncology appointment today. He didn't answer at the house nor his mobile phone. Guess he was busy doing something more important than being available to speak with her about the status of her stage four lung cancer. One would think he would be anxiously awaiting her call. Nope. Guess not.

Then there's the how my mom is handling everything, or finding every way not to. It's Saturday nearing the middle of the day. I made it public knowledge I had a client appointment in the early afternoon. While I was getting ready for it and having a quick bite before leaving the house, she decides that's the perfect time to bust out her weeks worth of insurance explanations of benefits and billing statements.

"I don't understand any of this stuff," she said.

I picked up the letter closest to me and gave it a five second look over.

"This one is just asking for proof of previous insurance. You can request this from your previous provider. What do you not understand about that?" I said.

"What about all these?" she inquired, looking around the moat of pages encircling her.

"Have you read through them?"

"I don't understand any of it, I need Mike to help me, he arranged all of this for me."

So Mike is my mom's "partner's" son. He lives in the region, and has been so incredibly helpful to my mom and subsequently to me by alleviating some of the responsibility from my shoulders as well as hers. From his perspective, he has little if any faith my 71 year old mom and his 76 year old dad are capable of doing much if anything for themselves. My sense is, if you allow someone to occur that way, and if they want to be helpless, then the situation will only further deteriorate.

My mom had an epiphany a few weeks ago. She confided in me her new-found frustrations with her "partner." Yes, the quotation marks are to overemphasize how loosely I'm using that term in relation to my mom's boyfriend Al. They're not married because if they married she would be saddled with all of his debts (we'll get to that in a moment), and she would lose her ex husband's portion of her social security benefits.

For the past several years, my mom's boyfriend has been avoiding settling a six figure IRS tax debt. Therefore the IRS has been garnishing his social security benefit by more than half. All Al has to do is go into the local IRS office and prove his inability to repay the debt. My mom did this some time ago, and they granted her forgiveness. Incidentally, they both now solely rely on social security as their exclusive source of income. They also both identify as Republican, yet I can think of no other two people who are more in need of social programs than they are (a very non-Republican position to be in). I digress ...

So my mom and I are sitting in my living room. She had just ended a call with Al, her "partner." It clearly didn't go well.

"He asks me where all the paperwork and bills are that I need him to bring over to me when he comes back," she said. "I tell him, repeatedly, write him texts explaining where everything is, and he doesn't remember. He can't remember anything. I've done everything for him - maybe I've done too much."

At this point she falls apart into a sobbing, blubbering mess. Mind you, I've been watching this co-dependency dance of theirs for the last 18 years. It's to the point Al in many ways has become like a child. We made tacos at my house one night, and my mom had to help him place the meat onto his. Then he tried to put a second soft corn tortilla on top of the tostada-esque looking taco on his plate and to eat it like a sandwich. That didn't go well. Actually, it went completely down the front of him.

I need to make this perfectly clear. I love my mom. I really, truly love her. She raised me with utmost devotion, tenderness and affectionate care. It's important I make this distinction because I am now going to vent my frustrations with her.

After the third time I explained to my mom the difference between billing statements and explanations of benefits, and that each of these organizations has an army of paid staff in their customer service departments waiting for the opportunity to answer her questions and make clear to her what's what, she says: "I just don't understand any of it."

In my head I'm wondering, does she just not want to understand? To me she's occurring as being dismissive. I explain to my mom that she would be most empowered as a patient to wrap her head around these things so she can make wise choices. No, insurance and medical expenses certainly aren't fun, uplifting and inspiring. The reality is, she is not working, has nothing but time on her hands and whatever she lets fall to the wayside someone else invariably will have to pick up. Like dear Mike, for example, who spent hours upon hours learning about the insurance system, and its numerous holes.

So my concern for her is her avoidance will soften her mind and wits. Additionally, becoming so reliant on others also has its pitfalls. I pointed out to her how this has impacted Al, and shared my worry about her following a similar path. I guess I expected her to hear this and take it to heart constructively. She just teared up and became visibly upset.

Actually, she seems to cry a lot. There is nothing at all wrong with crying. It's just from my vantage point she's been depressed for the past couple decades, ever since the divorce. She squandered 10 years of spousal support and settlement funds, and then found herself in the poor house at retirement age. Not only in the poor house, but working the concierge desk at a resort where on a daily basis she watched people living her old life. That made her wistful and full of regret. Now she's in dire health and her life is dramatically changing yet again. So she constantly asks, "Why is this happening to me?" Of course I can empathize with her losses. Like many, I too have known great loss. In more recent months, I have been learning about human attachment to impermanence as an all too common cause of suffering.

As I watch my mom's head spin with thoughts of how her life, how even she, continues to unravel, hear her comment repeatedly on what's wrong, what's not working, what she's upset about, I cannot help but ponder this. Can it all be bad? Can there be no good at all? I have to know, I want to hear it from her.

"So, mom, I hear everything you've said about what's not working in your life right now. Is there anything in your life that is working or even working well?" I asked.

After a few moments of pondering she said, "Well, when I went in for that CT scan they didn't keep me overnight in the hospital for a trapped lung."

"Anything else?" I asked.

"No."

"Um, what about your wealthy friends who have taken you into their home since July? Or your son and his husband who have been supportive since the beginning and have offered to take you and Al in?"

Then she gets "cross" with me and says abruptly, "Well I'm sorry I didn't say the right thing." Then she jumps to asking me whether she's supposed to be happy about everything she's going through. And then she cries, again.

My concern here is that my mom is solely focused on all that's negative. Additionally, what one focuses on expands, get's bigger. I gave her a gratitude journal shortly after her initial cancer diagnosis. She says she's written in it a few times. I gave her a wonderful book titled Mind Over Medicine. She started reading it. I've shared nutritional insights based on my own two year path of finding resolution to my chronic illness. She grabs onto none of it. Ultimately I'm left with the sense my mom doesn't really want to get better. Maybe she wants to die?

In the very beginning I asked her that very taboo and uber personal question, whether she wants to die. She said she wants to fight and be here with her loved ones. For me, especially since I have been an adult, actions are so much more impactful than words. Her actions occur for me as she's giving up and just resigned to being in a continual state of upset and fear about what she is going to face next.

Allow me to temper that statement by acknowledging the extreme amount of anxiety my mom must completely and totally understandably be experiencing as a result of her cancer diagnosis. I can only imagine how I would feel in her shoes. Even with my chronic illness there are some aspects of her cancer I can relate to. For one thing, I don't know what the underlying cause of my autoimmune disorder is, therefore there hasn't been any targeted course of treatment. Ultimately I don't know whether I may recover my health or ... There are times my body has experienced some awful moments and mind has thought the worst. Also, I know my husband would love for me to someday magically turn back into the person he fell in love with. My mom also has remarked similar about Al, that all he wants is for her to be the person she used to be. The person I was, the person my mom was, those people died. Our lives are forever altered.

Last Friday I sat down with my mom and carefully went through all the listing paperwork with her. At the end of it she remarks that her ex husband always took care of these things, then asks me if she's making the right decision. As I rationalize the scenario, spending 7.5 percent of her home's market value on closing costs to sell and another nearly three percent on loan closing costs and prepaids to purchase another home plus moving expenses and ultimately a higher monthly payment doesn't make much sense for someone who barely has two nickels to rub together. Combined, she and Al still exist on barely 35 percent of median household income. My response to her was simply, "I don't know. I cannot answer that question. Only time will tell ..." That is the truth.

So my husband and I are now attempting to make a new bedroom for ourselves in our mostly finished basement with money we don't have to be spending right now going into the holiday season. Our house is more than 52 years old with lots of big, single pane aluminum windows, not very well insulated and on oil heat, which is very expensive to run. No sooner had I dropped my mom off at her friends' and explained the current update post oncology visit, her bestie turns to me and asks, "Are you going to turn your heat on?"

It's no secret my mom runs cold. As mentioned she has gotten rather frail. So now I'm being questioned about the temperature at which I heat my home? It's 68, except at night we run it colder, just in case you were wondering. I wonder what her bestie would say if I had responded with, "You know what's really cold? Sleeping in a refrigerator box under a bridge in the dead of winter."

Again, instead of my mom simply being grateful she has a place to lay her head, she complains. She's also turning into her mother, God rest her soul, who instead of articulating her upset, would just scoff around hymming and hawwing. My mom is getting to be fussy like her mom was, too. The thing is, my mom really left the heavy lifting of my grandma's late life care to her sister and a hospice nurse. So I'm not sure if my mom is really present to what she's asking of others with regard to her own care. It's as though she has little to no self awareness.

Last week my brother reached out to me via FBPM (that's Facebook private message to those who don't read modern acronym) with the following:

"Hey hope you and mom are fine. I am in deep shit and need your advice. I think at some point in your life you have got a DUI. I got one about a year ago. I didn't realize it could affect me getting a job. I have been applying for jobs daily, even as a TAXI DRIVER and I was DENIED because i have had a DUI with in the last 3 years! So it is what it is. However, when you get  DUI in Las Vegas at least, you MUST pay auto-insurance, a special auto-insurance called "SR-22" which I have been paying the last year. But if I dont pay it by tomorrow or the 12th actually is the VERY last date, it automatically gets reported to my DMV and my car gets impounded and licence revoked. My car payment is already 2 months behind. But my insurance is what I am most concerned about. I have not been able to pay rent, my car insurance, or my car payment. I continue to apply to jobs daily and is just a matter of time before I get one. I am freaking out about the insurance issue and they said if I miss it the 3 years STARTS OVER on my record meaning I need to carry the special SR-22 for 3 more years. eeek! Any suggestions?? I really dont want to bother mom with this stuff but I dont know what to do or say when I am in this situation. Yes, I have already asked dad for help he flat out said no, he can't."

Someday soon I will devote an entry all to my brother who is 43. Also a point of clarification, he and I were both adopted, from different families entirely. Even though we were raised by the same parents under the same roof, we could not be more different as people. I repeat, we do not share a bloodline.

Think I may just need to craft a part two of this post. It has been a long four days of pressing pause on my life to take on my mom's. It's after 10:30 p.m. and my eyes are burning. Good night.