ARGGGGGGGGGGG

What a night-maybe it is because I do not feel well or the two huge projects I have looming over my head or maybe it is because of the deteriorating status of my mother.  Whatever it is, I am feeling such sadness for my Dad.  Let me vent and then I will touch upon why I feel so bad for my father.  Today after three days of my mother disliking me for whatever reason, she is my friend again and needs me to come over to check her eye.  I decide to head up there early so that I can get home early so that I can finish my work for school.  I have a mid term exam that will take quite a bit of time to write, analyze, and include a PowerPoint.  On top of that, I have another observatory report for the other class.  Well that did not go according to my plan.  I did not get up there early and I did not get out early.  When I got there, my mother was a disorganized mess.  She was half naked and trying to figure out what clothing she needed me to wash. 

 She ends up taking off all her clothes and adds it to the pile I had gathered.  I gather the clothes and bedding and off to do some wash.  She then sits on the bed and asks me to look in her eye.  I remind her about getting dressed by asking her what danties she would like to put on.  She picks a pair and decides to go get some ice tea.  She comes back and asks me to do her eye.  I remind her about her danties and she lets me put them on her.  I get her a house dress to put on.  From there it was a constant barrage of questions and trying to figure out what she wanted or what she was trying to tell me.  She asks me to read the Bible before I leave so I make a quick mental note.  She wanted to call her friend and we did so.  She stayed on the phone for about twenty minutes which gave me a bit of time with my father.  Man, the one thing I miss most is spending time alone with my father or brother.  We are all so busy taking care of Mom that none of us get to be with just each other.  We have to spend all our time with her.  

But I digress. She gets off the phone and she wants to go out to eat with her friend.  What she does not know is that her friend is too afraid to take her out.  I tell my mom that her friend does not like to eat out anymore because of the noise so she would like to bring the food to her house. Mom thinks that is a great idea and asks me to call her back.  Then she freaks out because her dog will bark non stop while her friend is there.  She has a melt down trying to figure out what to do.  I suggest to both my mom and her friend to have dinner at her friends house.  That solves that problem.  My mom mentions that she can no longer answer the phone.  I reprogram her phone to answer as soon as it is lifted from the base.  I decide to have her test it out and this broke my heart.  As the phone rings, she yells at it and tells it to talk.  Finally she picks it up and tells me it is not working it is not working.  She is looking at the phone and I tell her she has to put it to her ear.  She puts her hand on her ear and tries to talk.  Again she tells me it is not working.  I try to get the phone up to her ear and she is completely confused.  She puts the phone down and tries to talk to my ear.  Yikes.  During this time, I have to cough and I know it is only a matter of time before my mother notices it.  She does and you will love this excuse.  Mom I am coughing because I went to a football game and injured my vocal cords by cheering (I hate football and my mom used to know that).  She does not even question it. 

After the phone we go back to her room and she wants to show me how she puts movies in her closet.  The only problem is she needs to use a step stool to see them up on her shelf.  It is a rather scary thing to witness as she attempts to step up.  I go to the garage and grab a cardboard display case and put it on the floor of the closet.  She loves it but now we have to organize the closet.  She has me move all the shirts to one side-nah do not like it.  She has me move the pants to one side-nope hate it (each time she starts freaking out because it is not right).  I move everything back and just push the clothing aside and now she is happy.  She decides that she wants to go through her shoes because she does not like them all.  We go through all her shoes which is a very good thing since some have rather high heels.  First load of wash is complete and I remake her bed.  She starts complaining how she wants her home video's.  I show her the videos that I made a year ago and she wants to see them. We start watching movie after movie to find ones of her mom.  We find one with her old dog Middy and she starts to cry.  Then her mom comes on the screen and she gets even sadder.  I distract her and turn off the movie.  By this time, the clothes are finished and I go to get them.  She gets changed which takes over 15 minutes now and it is 9:45.  She starts freaking out about her socks not being washed until she realized that they were washed.  10:00 and we start the movie.  Throughout the entire movie, she rambles and cannot focus at all.  She gets agitated that my dad is still up at 11:00.  The movie finishes and I am about to leave. As I am about to enter my car. 

She reminds me that we did not read the Bible.  Tell me anyone how is this possible.  How can she remember to read the Bible but not remember how to answer a phone. It is like her processing memory is shot but her ability to remember important details (those that are important to her) is still there.  We read the Bible and I head home.  She asked me to call her when I got home which is ironic because she does not know how to answer the phone.  I call anyway and she does not answer.  She figures out how to call me back and is upset because the light is red on the phone.  In my trial and error period with programing the phone, I forgot to delete the message.  It is 12:45 in the morning and I cannot possibly drive back up there.  I am way too tired and feeling sick (hacking up a lung at this point) to go up there just for a red light.  I tell her to let me wake up dad to let him fix it because I cannot do it from here.  She agrees and I wake my poor Dad up.  He gets up to go help and I will try to describe what ensues as clearly as I can.  She starts screaming GET OUT GET OUT NOOOOOOOOO AHHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAA HELP ME GET OUTNOOOOOO.

 Then what follows is similar to the scream in that movie splash where the mermaid breaks every t.v.  It was so deafening and so high pitched I cannot believe nothing blew.  She just starts screaming and screaming.  At one point Dad tries to explain and has to raise his voice to be heard which I yell back Dad, she cannot hear you-Stop trying to explain to her. I am frazzled and I am not even in the same room as he is.   I call mom and try to calm her down but only end up making her very mad at me.  I try to tell her that I did not want to have to go up there and she was ok with him. She replies with he is the Devil he is evil and a liar and I HATE HIM I HATE HIM I HATE HIM AND WISH I NEVER MARRIED HIM HE IS EVIL AND MEAN AND YELLS.  At this point I know I should say good night but I never learn. I said he was trying to help you and fix it and you freaked on him. This is why your throat is so sore-you cannot yell like that and not hurt yourself.  Can anyone guess what happened next.  A)  My mom agrees and says oh good you solved my problem about the sore throat

B).  My mom screams "You are not a Christian and you think you are nice and kind but you are a bit** and a thing, You pretend to be nice but you just want people to think you are so good and so helpful but you are evil instead and a horrible horrible girl

C)  My mom realizes she was mean to my dad and goes apologizes to him.  If you guess B, you are correct!  She hangs up the phone and then calls me back to say she fixed the phone (what seriously she cannot answer the phone but figured out which buttons to push to play the message and delete it) I congratulate her and think this is the end and I can unwind before bed.  Some how and I am too tired to rethink what was said but somehow, I anger her again and she starts screaming and yelling at me once again.  ARGGGGGGGGGG.

What I realized today is that no matter how much Kevin or I do for my mother or how hard we have it with her, at the end of the day we can leave.  With my Dad, no such luck.  He cannot escape.  Once home, the jail bars go down and he is in his cell until the sun comes up.  I must admit there have been times when I thought well Dad does not realize how hard we have it with mom and that we equally share his burden or sometimes have more of a burden in caring for her.  I bath her, Kevin is with her all day Monday-Thursday I have her for ten hours Tuesday or Wednesday nights and Friday nights and sometimes take her to my house to give Dad time in his house.  We all share Doctor and feeding duties and now with Kevin's sweet ride, he can do more of the outings. Dad is free from her until 5 or 6 at night Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday and full time Saturday and Sunday.  But here is what I finally realized.  Despite the fact that he may have plenty time away from her, he is a prisoner in his home with a crazy deranged lunatic for a cell mate. 

I do not know how he actually can have a sound nights sleep, I would be terrified that one night I would awaken to her standing over me with this evil grin cackling an insane laugh while lightening flashed in the background and the deafening sound of thunder clapped around me.  He can never just relax-there is always a fear of what might set her off or what task will he be awoken for during the night.  Even worse is the fact that despite all he does, he will always be unappreciated by her and insulted beyond belief.  As he cooks her dinner, she may spit in it or throw it.  As he fixes a broken light, she will scream at him and call him a Fu**ing Bast***, or shout you did it on purpose you are evil and mean I hate you I hate you. There is no more thank you no I love you no hug or kiss no affection of any type.  Only bitter angry malicious spiteful words aimed directly at him.  And while my life, in my opinion, is much more demanding, I have two precious smiling children that do say thank you and I love you.  I may get less sleep, but I have a husband that I can bounce things off

of.  My dad has the insane ravings of a Alzheimer's woman that has eaten away at my mothers personality leaving only the negative miserable person and removing all traces of the sweetness and humorous person she once was.  In fact, as I looked at the home videos with my mother she actually asked me who my mom was in the video.  She did not recognize herself.  It was hard to watch those movies because I heard her laughter and beautiful voice and then look over and see this emaciated hollow woman with a permanent scowl on her face. I just want to reach over and hold her and kiss her but know that if I do she will scream and cry at the touch of me. 

And I will end with this.  It is 2:15 am and my phone just rang with my mother apologizing for her behavior.  She is very sorry and when Dad wakes up, she wants to apologize to him. She actually said I do love my husband but I do not like the way he treats me....So Dad if you wake up and read this before mom wakes up, remember to act surprised and maybe just maybe you can get that hug that we all wish we could have.  I will say that I am blessed to have my brother and father in caring for my mother and we are the Three musketeers or maybe the three stooges....Not so sure.  And considering how late it is, please excuse me for not proofreading.  I just wanted to vent a bit to relax and head off to bed since tomorrow does not have a pause button. 

One final thing.  My old school had a posting for a reading resource teaching position.  I applied for it today so please keep me in your prayers that I get it.  Working will give us so much more financial reources to help so many more people out!!!