2014-12/30
I called my mom today. I have just had this gut feeling lately that I need to get in touch with her, like something is really wrong. So I called, got the machine, started leaving a message to tell her I was concerned, tell her that if she was mad at me for something or did not want to hear from me to just at least let me know, if she didn’t want to talk to me to please just have someone else get in touch with me to let me know she’s all right, and as I was talking she shut the message down on her machine. Then I tried calling back and she had actually changed the machine over to not take messages. It broke my heart and I had a little meltdown over it. Cursed myself for putting myself through it by calling in the first place. But that feeling remained that something is just not right. My mother has not answered a phone call from me in probably close to a year now. I’ve only seen her once in the past year and a half or more and that was because I camped out on her doorstep and called repeatedly for two and a half hours back in May.
So I messaged my godmother, asking if she had heard from her, if she still communicates, etc. I told her how worried I am. She hadn’t heard from her but said she would try to get in touch with her and would let me know if/when she does. This didn’t put my mind at ease much, but at least I thought maybe my mom would answer the phone for her cousin even if she didn’t answer for me.
I couldn’t let it lie though. I tried calling multiple times, no luck. I did some research online and found what I hoped was my aunt and uncle. I called, got no answer but it sounded like my aunt on the machine so I left a message, hoping I would get a call back. I did. Within minutes. It was my aunt (my mom’s sister). The first words after hello were “Tell me you are not calling with bad news about my sister.” So the tears started all over again. And we talked about the changes in my mom, and how worried we both are. She told me about a dream she had two nights ago about my mom, and how she has been on edge and worried about her ever since. She got no cards this year either, which is unlike my mom, no package either, even though they always send stuff to each other. She saw my mom in September in Vegas and said she looked way too gaunt and skinny, emaciated looking, not well, but seemed relatively ok. She called my mom the day after christmas and got hung up on in the middle of the conversation. She feels like my mom’s brain is failing too. So we had quite a conversation, I found out how little she knew about anything that has happened over the years, how much my mother kept from her, and all that. I told her how my mother had kept me from keeping in touch with her, told her about the lack of contact with my mom. She had thought I just didn’t care, and never knew it was my mom who forbade me to drop by and say hello. It was a very emotionally draining conversation.
And she is going to wait till new years day to call my mom, so it doesn’t appears that i called her after my earlier calls to my mom. She is trying to prevent my mom from alienating her too. She promised to let me know as soon as she calls her. She also said that when my mom and her talked after christmas my mom had mentioned that Pat (my mom’s boyfriend’s son) wanted my aunt’s address “to send her a christmas card”. My aunt and I both had the same thought about that, that maybe Pat wants to tell my aunt that my mom is not well.
My mom is a very stubborn woman, refuses to see doctors, and can be extremely difficult (obviously, right?) … if we need to get her into a hospital it is going to be a big major task and is going to get very ugly very fast. I am just a big mess over it, it has weighed me down emotionally all day. It breaks my heart, and it kills me the way she has shut me out, when I have been the one who has made the effort all these years. My mom doesn’t like me. I am too much like my aunt, and that bothers her. She always envied my aunt, still calls her ‘the prodigal daughter’ when talking about her sometimes. And I have always been very much like my aunt personality-wise. I tried over the years multiple times to have a relationship with my aunt but my mom stomped on it every time. Today my aunt told me that over the past year or two my mom has called her Angela multiple times.
I am really worried that dementia is setting in or has completely settled in to my mom. Her boyfriend is 80 something years old and has health problems, probably wouldn’t know if she was well in the head or not. So that leaves me feeling even more worried, especially after talking to my aunt today. I don’t know what I am going to have to do but I have a feeling that there will be something that needs to be done to get my mom some help. She is going to fight me tooth and nail. This is not me thinking negative, this is me being realistic.
It’s been rough on me for a long time now, and today it got a lot worse because things were different with the phone call.