LAND OF THE LIVING

As you've probably gathered from the last few entries I kind of crashed last week - emotionally and physically. While there was a building sense of desperation I felt I had more or less kept it in check until Thursday

THURSDAY

On Thursday night some old friends came to visit. I met them from the station and had one drink with them, then came back here. I didn't mean to stop here long with them, just check up on Mum - the plan was to go out for a meal or a drink. But as the strength drained from me the thought of going out in the torrential rain seemed more and more impossible, and as my mood darkened they seemed more and more like strangers.

Mum had been in a funny mood all day and wasn't respondng well to our dropping in. Throughout the day she'd been very conscious of her disappearing faculties, as evidenced by all the things that keep disappearing. This climaxed while my friends were here, and I spent more time with Mum during their visit than I did talking to them - cooking dinner etc, but mainly looking for the special remote.

Earlier, when she went down this route,  I had tried to change the subject - but she had been too lucid and dogmatic, insistently carrying on and on about how she was learning from her mistakes and was going to try harder. Perhaps it would have been easier if I had just agreed, but I didn't want to encourage her to be less forgiving of her symptoms. I didn't contradict her, but tried to reassure that it didn't really matter if we lost things occasonally - 'they always turn up' etc. (which they do). Now the remote was missing there was no point trying to change the subject - as soon as it was forgotten the desire to watch telly would make its absence keenly felt again.

While all this was going on I was bottling up a lot of feelings, my memories of how Mum was and what she meant to me as a child were much fresher and rawer than usual, for the more ambling & introspective style of this blog had leaked into my writing & thought, leading me to engage more deeply than usual with the past (I am still most comfortable living in the present moment).

The remote eventually turned up in Mum's bedroom and she made me give her a hug for finding it (though it was me who spotted it really). This was a good hug for me too, while Mum needs and craves physical confirmation now in a way that the more ascetic and catholic (and frigid) Mum of the past did not demand, she often still finds it hard to ask for what she needs, which can be frustrating, particularly when I am not really in the same kind of denial as to my need for pyhysical affirmation, and right now my Mother's hug was exactly what I needed, and it was nice that she was the one directly asking for it.

\the hug made us both feel better, but back in the sitting room she was carrying on again about how she was going to make more of an effort and how she was learning. Now the remote was back I just said 'yes' and helped her find a programme sufficently engaging to distract her. I sent my friends back to London and went to bed - for a very long time.

FRIDAY

When I did raise my head on Friday Local-sister descended on me first thing (first thing in the late afternoon, that is). I think she was trying to be supportive but I was in too much of a state to pretend to respond positively - her criticisms, however contructive they were intended to be, just made me feel significantly more useless, hopeless and pathological, as did her helpful suggestions. I was  perfectly aware that these were good ideas - but the good ideas of the past had already become burdens, my to-do list weighed down with practical strategies for my holistic well-being, each bullet-point a weary reminder that in reality I currently possess neither the inclination nor the stomache to voluntarily enter situations requring social engagement - even when I am not bound up in the business of crying from a seemingly bottomless well of tears.

As I lay there bawling Local-sister encouraged me to go the pub tonight, in the same breath telling me that I was the saddest person she knows. Suicide is not an option to me, for I have long a long-held, deep-set sense of a greater purpose that makes it impossible, and a new-found sense of responsibility to my Mother - if it were not for these factors I would certainly describe myself as suicidal upon her departure.

I arranged (begged) for Sarah (my ex) to come and see me on the late train. That she agreed to heed my distress signal/ This made me feel a degree better in itself and I managed to collect myself sufficently to help put Mum at ease, warn her that Sarah was coming, and put her to bed. I collected Sarah from the station and we went to sleep.

SATURDAY

Mum was pleased to see Sarah too, or she did a very good job of pretending. In the afternoon me and Sarah went shopping in Bishops Stortford for some tights. I persuaded her not to go back to London in the evening (a sacrifice, she intended to go to a good friend's birthday drinks, another event that I really could not face) on the grounds that I needed her to make sure I got to a music thing on Sunday (an event that I decided I could face, with Sarah's company, not being primarily social in its function). In the evening Sarah cooked a lovely vegetable soup with Mum. I felt better, but in the evening I just wanted to watch telly and cry - I was not yet ready for another barrowload of practical suggestions and criticisms, and I had to spell this out to Sarah, which was quite hard.

SUNDAY

The music thing was distracting and we went back to Sarah's afterwards and watched endless bad telly and played with our cat - I finally felt some comfort and nurture.

I spoke to Mum in the evening, she had had a minor incident with her dinner - when she couldn't remember how to open a tin-can she had taken it to a neighbour to open. That was it. It took her a lot longer to explain than this.

MONDAY

When we awoke on Monday morning I had calmed down enough to talk things through with Sarah.

It was lovely to discover that someone had been reading this blog, even waiting for my entries in it. While the writing of it was in itself therapeutic - for a time - there came a point where it began to feel like pissing in the wind. I did not intend this particular confessional to go unread and it was a relief to find that someone else had been through the past few weeks with me, feeling what I felt as I felt it - for this is where the therapy lay, in the opening up and sharing of my feelings - in the absence of any readership I had increasingly felt that I was opening up my dressings and scratching my wounds alone as they became increasingly septic. To know that I had not been alone after all? This made me feel very much less isolated and I felt able to talk. When I got back Mum was pleased to see that I was feeling better and it was good to be home.

TUESDAY

After her visitor left in the afternoon (they went to the zoo) me and Mum walked to the butcher to get some chicken to breathe new life into Sarah's vegetable soup. It was an invigorating walk and we had fun cutting up the chicken together and cooking it, the meal gave a focal point to the evening.

WEDNESDAY (Today)

I am still sleeping too much. Yesterday I went to bed at 7, when Mum did, but didn't sleep 'til 10. It was a broken sleep and I didn't wake up until 9.30am. Mum arrived back from the shops shortly after- not that she had actually bought anything. When she realised she had no money with her she had borrowed some from Local-sister, who works in Local-cafe in the mornings - but apparently had decided not to return to the shops anyway. I am sleeping too much - but I am not conflating my weariness with emotional factors. While my stress and procrastination are at the root of my exhaustion, having let myself off the hook, for the moment, I am left with a residual physical fatigue.

After cleaning up a large sheet of plastic she had found, Mum spent the rest of the morning delightedly drawing. She is doing a free-hand enlargement of the teddy bears she traced two weeks back with the guy from Crossroads, it was lovely to see her doing this off her own back and finding such pleasure in it.

I've not done much practical this week, apart from tying up a few financial loose ends yesterday and enquiring about therapy - but, as I said, I've 'let myself off the hook'. I know I can't just bottle out of engineering any changes to my situation forever, but you cannot imagine what a relief it is not to be burdened with the expectations I have been placing on myself. I have gained a certain weightlessness in my decision to just ignore the proliferation of endless ever-growing lists - for the time-being.

Until now I hadn't really felt like re-engaging with my work, either, so I ended up spending most of the day hiding from Mum's visitors in my room, trying to focus on Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library #18 and listening to music. I fell asleep again doing this in the afternoon, while Mum's visitor from Crossroads was here, and was woken by Local-sister. She's putting in extra effort this week, but its making it difficult for me to get out of my room, as I don't really want to see her at the moment (I know she wasn't trying to get at me, but I was very vulnerable on Friday. I feel accused, belittled and misunderstood - while the hurt might not be reasonable it remains very raw).

When I was sure that my sister had gone I came out, it was only six'o'clock, but Mum had already turned the television off and was getting ready for bed. Like every night we spent a little while looking for Mum's blue hot water bottle. Some nights we find it, others we don't. When we can't find it I show her where she keeps her spares, and offer to lend her the pink fluffy hot water bottle cover to use with it. Sometimes she takes it, but usually she declares that it is 'too much' - so I show her where the string and tea-cloths are and she assembles the kind of make-shift hot-water-bottle cover she prefers.

I let the search go on a little longer than usual tonight, as I had not seen her this evening, and I was half hoping that her bag and purse would turn up in the search. She didn't leave them with the visitor who took her to the zoo on Tuesday, as we first thought, and they are still missing - as I can't lay them all out ready it is doubly important that I go to sleep now and set my alarm, so that Mum doesn't end up going to the shops unequipped in the morning - again.

She was all set for bed when I left her, but she came in a few minutes ago with a tea-towel with its corners tied - tied in such a way that it was clear that this had been one of her home-made hot-water bottle covers on a previous night. I said as much to her, and she became  flustered, explaining that while the tea-towel was admittedly tied in exactly the way she did it that it was definitely not her who had done it - the tea towel was being presented to me as evidence that someone else had used and then lost her hot-water bottle. For an easy life I managed to agree that this was possible, but couldn't help but add that I didn't think anyone else tied tea towels to their hot water bottles quite the way she did. The strategy of 'just agreeing' falls apart a bit when it comes to her blaming people for things - if I just agree with something like this and then change the subject it is fine for a minute, but - while so many important things refuse to stick at all - she fixates on certain irrelevant things, & would in all likelihood return in ten minutes with a list of specific allegations as to who might have stolen her hot-water bottle. It is easy to agree that my sister's partners are 'husbands', for it is a cosmetic detail that neither sister is married to their partners. While this was a borderline case, agreeing that local sister has stolen or moved her money or making a false confession that I have, for example, is clearly not such a black and white issue - as these are exactly the kind of things that she doesn't forget and will make our lives difficult if not resolved correctly.

Anyway, goodnight.

In my dreams
I forget
what baffled me