I don’t know…..other than a total disregard for the entire year that was 2020 and so far, I’m not exactly loving 2021, a mere 22 days into the new year.
I lost a lot of money in’20 and thanks to Premier Biden’s uber socialist puppet masters, I’ll lose even more in ‘21.. My MS is okay, gracing me with fleeting flares that are fairly minor, thank God. My cervical stenosis at the C5 & C6 vertebrae has gotten worse. My nuerologist wants to me to go under the knife, but after 17 major surgeries in my life, I ain’t rushing to no OR anytime soon…..pain be damned.
I’m working on that.
Covid has only made passing glances at my family, even extended members, so other than the damage it’s politicalization has caused, it hasn’t been much of an issuem personally, . But generally speaking, the damage it’s caused has been irreparable, I fear. So many people have lost loved ones and entire livelihoods. Bankruptcy abounds, there’s an uptick in suicides and divorce:, lips that never touched alcohol now covet the stuff. The populace is popping Xanax and Ativan like peanuts out of a bowl at a bar.
Trump is gone and that saddens me more than I thought possible. He was my Obe Wan. I felt safe with Trump in office. Not now, A feeble old crook, surrounded by a huge fence and 35k troops now sits in the Oval Office or on a movie set that looks a lot like it. I pray he’ll be gone soon, not dead, just gone & I hope he takes his Marxist/Lenninst/Stalinist Jr. Goebbelist G-men & women with him. They wreak of the stench of Socialism. Hell, the Capitol rotunda might as well be an onion dome at this point.
This fall, the pre+election news, regardless of channel or political agenda, proved to me that horrendous evil exists in the world to comprise a malevolent masala extremely corrupt Dems, Libs, Republicans & news people from all mediums. I’ve learned to loathe certain people and that’s so unhealthy, but it feels so unavoidable.
I’m working on that.
But I’m saving the worst of 2020 for last.
In November, my 90 year old mother had a hemorrhagic stroke in the rear right side. She can no longer walk or talk without a sentence ending in gibberish. Oh, she’s still tries to verbalize one or two words before the garbling starts. Then she gets flustered and stops. She’s also has dementia which the drug Aracept seems to be keeping her at this level….for now, but we know it’s a degenerative disease and things will only get worse….and worse and the eventually, the adjusted doses or even the new drugs they might try will stop working and so will my mother. When my phone rings, which is rare these days, I steel myself. I know THEE phone call is coming. I’ve imagined time and time again how I might respond when it does. Or what I might feel and I realize that’s folly. I know what to do, who to call, what procedures must be done when it happens, but I don’t know how to feel. There’s a reason for that. Keep reading.
But probably the worst news is that she’s in stage 5 kidney failure, but oddly enough she’s asymptomatic. She continues to fall out of her wheel chair and there are times that I can tell that what wits she still how, allow her the good graces to fake knowing who I am. I can tell there are times when she sees me as just some random person in her room, there to retrieve to her mail and bring her sundries that she forgets she requested. She only periodically recognizes me as the last uterine renter who signed a nine month incubatorial lease back in the early fall of ‘58. Don’t bother looking up “incubatorial”. It’s not a word, though it should be.
My mother is so complex, there’s a simplicity about her. I’m not saying she’s a simple woman, but the simplicity happens to surround her life choices as a woman, a wife and certainly as a mother. She was one of nine children born as the Depression was in full play. Her father was a rancher and owned several large ranches around South Texas. They were a fairly well to do family….big fish in a little pond. My grandfather was liked and well respected. My grandmother was flighty, had a few friends along with the audacity to wear red nail polish year round and her diamond rings and bracelets during the light of day. Quite the scandal. She didn’t care. She had diamonds, furs, the latest cars and I would imagine a fairly decent life overrun with kids. My grandfather was the exact opposite. He wasn’t ostentatious. He despised blatant displays of wealth, yet he “allowed” my grandmother to sparkle mightily while playing gin rummy on Thursdays at 3:00 pm, but the homes he built for her were modest at best. Nice clothes and cars, large family, small homes, with a cook and a housekeeper. Don’t ask; it’s still inexplicable.
The brood was loud and rambunctious….very competitive. They played football, baseball, basketball at home and in school. They were jocks and popular, cheerleaders and twirlers.
My very plain looking, petite mother played the flute in the band and stayed inside to read books when her sibs were outside playing. She had middle child syndrome and to add insult to injury, she was born ten months after her little sister died of an ear infection at only three months of age.. I think my mother always felt like she was a replacement baby. Maybe, but my grandmother probably didn’t help, She didn’t have time to coddle one child when eight others also needed her. Her father was only occasionally fatherly. He left home at dawn and came back after sundown. This was the 1930’s and he was a big time farmer/rancher and sick calves took priority over croupy babies.
Anyway, the kids survived their detached childhoods and all but two went on to major Texas universities and earned degrees. Two uncles got their PhDs. One uncle was a Texas State Representative for years. They were a lot like the Kennedys, minus all that pesky Catholicism, An aunt and my mother didn’t get degrees. Mom went to Baylor for an hour and then married her HS boyfriend. Her only love.. Daddy got his business degree and they moved back to the small town where they were raised; where I was raised, where I was born in an asbestos riddled eight room hospital in 1959, physically removed from my humble uterine abode via C-Section. My two older sisters were also similarly evicted.
I always had a rather tumultuous relationship with my mother. She’s a narcissist with a few Borderline Personality traits and real, by God mental illness which reared its ugly head at various times in her life. I’ve spent a lot of time on the couches of many shrinks throughout Texas trying to figure out if I was culpable for her illness or it’s victim. I can’t remember any official diagnosis, but I’ve always felt that I’m both of those things.
I’m working on that.
While not a delinquent, I was a rebellious child. Her lunacy made me crazy and I acted out. My rebellion made her even nuttier. Things got physical a few times…SWAT was never called, but there was residual damage. We didn’t speak for years. But before I left for college, home was a like mental ward from late 1973 through 1978. My parents divorced and I had no home to go home to. That never bothered me that much. Home was never an ideal place for anyone in the family.
So fast forward to avoid the talking about all the other tribulations between us. I was fortunate to be able to retire at age 51 and of all the places I could have moved, I felt it best to move to the small Texas Hill Country town where my mother had moved 20 years earlier. I called it my “Redemption Tour”. Perhaps it was my Judeo-Catholic guilt, but I made the move in late 2012. Mom was in her 80’s then and I wasn’t getting any younger. Besides, my life was already complicated by too many unresolved relationships. This one, I hoped, I could redeem.
As the years flew by, and her cognitive abilities started waning, she hated the inevitable role reversal. I was becoming the parent, she was the child. It wasn’t pleasant for either of us, but necessary. She’s had minor strokes over the years and one slightly more severe one in the elevator of her building, right before Thanksgiving. So, in the seconds it took falling four feet, nine inches to the floor, her life changed. Everything changed.
In closing, my mother rarely hugged or kissed me. It was virtually impossible for her to tell me she loved me, but she did in her patented passive/aggressive ways. After visits, I’d look in my purse and find articles about finding love in your 50’s…then later in your 60’s. I’d find photos of hairstyles more fitting for my age, or how to lose all that post menopausal weight, making friends with your crows feet….even coupons for $2.00 off age spot removal cremes. Nothing says I love you like pointing at all your flaws, but that was her way. It was the best she could offer.
So, this is where I am..where I’ve been, why I’ve not posted a blog in forever.
I called mother earlier and after the 20th ring, she answered and didn’t recognize my voice or my name. I’ll admit, I cried. There was something so personal about this particular lack of recognition. I’m not sure why, but I felt it more deeply. So, yeah, I started crying, but she never knew it….I pinched my thigh so hard that the tears were silent. It’s got a round black and blue spot now to rival all the varicose veining, but she didn’t have a clue that I was emotional, which is why I asked what I might feel when the end comes with a phone call. If I cry after her not recognizing my voice in a phone call…..if she’s no longer here to remind me of all my many imperfections, how will I react when I no longer recognize myself?
I don’t know, but like everything else, it’ll be something I’ll work on.
