It is where she needs to be to keep her safe. Her dementia has progressed to where she is now wandering and that endangers her life. Police has to bring her home one cold night this winter.
This isn't how she planned her life to go. She had other plans on how she was going to spend her "golden years." She wanted to go to Italy and see all the museums. She wanted a motorhome and to travel around visiting each of her children and grand kids. She dreamed of writing again.
Now her mind as been so damaged by the strokes, she is at the mercy of others for basic care.
I have had to distance myself as it's a huge trigger for me.
She is a huge trigger.
Part of me, the little girl that desperately wants and needs a mama, who cries endlessly for her, wants to reach out and embrace this frail old woman who is lost in the chaotic sea of dementia. Wants to comfort her and at last have a tiny chance at a sliver of a relationship with her.
But I know its a trap. To do that is to open that door and allow her to hurt again. She didn't want me to love her when she was in her right mind. I'm reasonably sure she wouldn't want it now either.
All this makes me a horrible daughter. I am damned if I do and damned if I don't.
I will be haunted for the rest of life, because I stepped back and protected my self. What am I saying?! I AM haunted.
My sister showed me a movie clip of Mama this week, and the care giver in me with 36 years of experience of working with dementia/the elderly, heart got pinged.
Pinged in the way I am when I am greeted by a new client and it's a oh lets help this soul get comfortable and make sure there needs are met. I greet all new clients with a open heart and blank slate. There are no grudges or past issues that cloud my heart, I love them for what ever time they are in my care.
Why can't I do that for her?
Again, it makes me a horrible daughter...human being.
I am simply so sacred her hurting me again, that I can't let my guard down.
I'm broken.
She broke me.
She laid the foundation for our relationship and when I deviated from her plan she shut me out. Yet her I am 53 years later STILL agonizing over it.
the mama who hurt you is gone, this shell of woman is not her any longer. I know this.
I understand her better once I had my own family. But by then she was slipping away, the strokes taking away any chance of me getting answers or fixing our relationship.
See the guilt there? any chance of me getting answers or fixing our relationship.
I'm not the one who broke the relationship. She did and I am left with legacy that somehow IT'S MY FAULT.
She's winning, STILL. Haunting me in my soul and I wrestle with all of this.
I do better distancing my self from her. Ignoring that I am a passenger on a train that is barreling toward a hell of a wreck.
She is still manipulating my mind and emotions. She raised us without sympathy because she felt it was a sick emotion....and GAWD DAMN IT I feel sympathy toward this fail old woman.
She won't let anyone love her.
I lose at the very game she created. I have and give people sympathy including her, and I wanted to love her.
gahhh. Mama I can't play by your rules...that is why I stay away.
Broken daughter.
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