A co-worker is out this week because his dad died over the weekend. I helped with the ordering of the flowers for the service and it touched me. A friend’s dad died last week. I have been wanting to say something, let him know I care, but I am hiding. Life has been overbooked and I haven’t been able to connect with him when he is home. It is easier to hide and I feel badly about that.
I am sure I am quoting this not quite right but something that is ringing in my head is: Enjoy your mortality why you have it, you have it for a limited time.
My mom is hitting town sometime in the next couple of days. The plan is for me to visit as she does a layover at the airport on her way to Colorado. I don’t want to see her. I do but I don’t. I have issues. I realize I have issues and I don’t know how to deal with them. Last time when she was coming into town, another friend’s dad died. I really didn’t want to see her then. I was fighting with her.
I think I am scared. She is getting older and doesn’t have a lot of money. She keeps making what looks like good decisions that are really bad and losing yet even more of the money she has left. I DO NOT want to have to take care of her. I have know this for all my adult life. But I am learning that I will if I have to. I will resent it, I will hate it but I will do it. I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to have to live the life my mother did when her parents got too old. I don’t what to have to clean up after the messes she is making and know that I will have to do it all over again. Her decisions in her life are fine for her life. I don’t like them, but they are not my life. If I end up needing to take care of her, they become my problems. My life is hard enough as is without her stuff added to it.
Yes, I know she did all this for me when I was growing up and I should be grateful and willing to return the favor. But… I was never appreciative. I have never appreciated the fact that my parents gave me life. I actually rather resent them for it. This is the closest I get to blaming my parents over anything bad. It was their choice and whatever they did was because of that choice. Now I am faced with the fact that I love them and I don’t have a choice. I don’t understand my connection to them. I don’t choose it like I choose caring for a friend. I don’t like it because it feels beyond my control. One of the reasons I planned to never have kids is because I understood that I would love them no matter what and I didn’t want that connection. I didn’t want not to have control.
This is not the post I was planning on making. My life is not going well. My phone is out again and the phone company has already been there to repair it and it is my landlord’s issue. My PDA is on the fritz so much data is randomly available to me or not. Things that just barely fit into my schedule so I could take care of them are being moved by others out of my control. Things that should make me feel better and loved are not. I go back and forth between feeling like I am just busy and can take care of it and feeling overwhelmed and ready to come apart at the seams. I don’t know what to do, or not do, to make it better. I don’t know if is to a point to cry out for help or even what type of help is what I need. If I get the wrong kind, my most likely response is to be really annoyed and caustic which is not good when someone is offering to help.
This is not something I would normally put out in a public forum but a step I am trying to make it to admit when I hit these points and to learn to ask for help and to accept help. If nothing else, it will be a record so when I am next bright and cheery, I will have an insight of what it is like to be at this place.
*hug*
- Mark
agreement
Nothing useful, except for I understand where you’re coming from WRT taking care of parents… I am scared of/worried about that point too.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any useful advice to give, but you definitely have my support if you need it. *hugs*
[Risking it being the wrong kind of help, I will add my sympathies.]
Although sounding like a much more difficult situation than my own, I have similar fears about my mother. I have been posting regularly about my mom, and had been thinking of adding more thoughts, so I will put them there instead of here. Suffice to say, the idea of having to care for my mom, and “clean up the messes she is making” is a burden I am afraid will be very trying on my relationships with both my mom and my brother.
I hope for both our sakes, that these parental care burdens are not as bad as we each fear.
I’m telling everyone I know to not let their parents get older. It really sucks.
*hugs* I’m thinking of you, and I’m there if you need me. (Or not, if that’s what you need.)
*hug*
My sister and I go back and forth between what we think we’ll need to do and what we fear we’ll have to. My parents have saved nothing toward future care or life, and my sister is currently building an in-law unit on her husband-to-be’s property with the idea that my niece will live there until she’s ready to go out on her own, but that it’s really for my parents in another five or ten years. I respect her more than I can express for being willing and able to take that step. I’m not sure I could do it.
*hugs*
Now, just breathe deeply and calmly.
Is there any way you can help your mom while she’s here to talk to a financial advisor or something where her money can be safely invested in good safe bonds/savings/mutual funds/etc?
I know that you might not feel that you have a choice, but taking matters into your own hands regarding some of this stuff is making a choice, and one that will help you get more in control of what’s going on. Helping her to get her future planned out might alleviate some of your fears.
I understand that the financial stuff is *her* decision, but if it’s going to be impacting *your* life down the line, then it might be best for you to take an “active” role, in those decisions, even if it adds a little bit more to your plate now, versus a LOT to your plate later.
Love is something beyond our control, and it can be worrisome at times. I surely never “planned” on being with the Boy for this extended amount of time, but these things happen. I know that sometimes it feels like its beyond our control, but we can try to make the best of it or we can simply feel just trapped.
Just remember, there is always a choice out there, even when you don’t feel like there is, because you’re in the middle of it. And sometimes, it just takes a disinterested 3rd party to help you figure stuff out.
If you need anything, ya know where I am.
*hugs*
No good advice, just…*hugs*.
I wish I had something useful to offer, but no wisdom is coming right now.
Add another *hug* to the queue/group. Love you.