Alzheimer's is a shitty disease for most and a blessing for others...
If you are a miserable fuck throughout your life it can turn you into a pleasant comedian or even an exhibitionist...it's funny like that. I have seen both sides of the spectrum of how it affects the "host" and both sides of how it affects the family of that person...
I took care of my grandmother, dad's mom. I took care of her and her ailing husband. And I have seen things no teenager should have. The future, things that happen to the body and mind. And it was awful. Alzheimer's hasn't "set in" yet with gramma and while grandpa was a man of few words...what he said was law. Remarkably, my affection for him is still strong. He hit me once when I was kid...it was dinnertime, a holiday and he was losing his hearing then and thought he heard me say a curse word and backhanded me leaving a bloody lip. I was mortified. I idolized him, just as I did my parents. He didn't apologize. He didn't understand what was wrong with him and that he was wrong. It would be quite some time before he would say it. Gramma was different. She was slipping. Grandpa was capable of correcting his mistakes and apologizing when he acquired all the facts and realized his mistake. She wasn't. She was insane. I can't recall a time when she wasn't overbearing, and when Alzheimer's took her she became pleasant. She was even a little dirty and it was lovely to see this prim and uptight witch behave so. And way better than her beating on me or taking a strap to me because she "thinks" I was fucking around with boys when I was at work...mind you I was an A-D-U-L-T when she did this! But I still loved her, misplaced family loyalty and such...
Gramma had gotten real forgetful after Pop Pop died. She and he hated one another but also were so codependent upon each other that they were lost...I remember going to the hospital when he took ill the last time (heart problems) and would smuggle in food and such. He was dying. He knew and even as young as I was I knew it. I wanted him to be content and happy. And he was so thankful. "Timberly, you were always the good one. You love your grampa..." He could never pronounce my name correctly because of some bar fight decades ago where he lost one of his sets of teeth and my grandmother made him go without as a punishment for "falling off the wagon." Bitch. He had just the uppers for 40years not wanting to accrue more wrath from the hag...But back to her. I really grew to like her those last 5 or so years. It was the moments when she was completely coherent that I dreaded...She would call me a whore if I stayed late at work to close the facility not understanding that we had to wait for the customers to leave not force them out sharply at closing time. She'd lock me out of the house shouting "Pig! Harlot!" and mind you I was still a virgin at this time. She once told me she would never love me as much as my siblings because she believed I wasn't her son's. Nice gal? I was tore down. I lost two of my best friends, my grampa and my Uncle Al and was left with her. And she tore me down faster than a car off of a cliff.
There have been people in nursing homes who are struck with this disease that are miserable. They had stellar lives and loving families and communities and when it all started slipping away they became aggressive and miserable and combative trying everything they can to cling to the good times. Charlotte didn't have that. She was miserable her whole life because of some things horrid that happened to her in her youth and young adult lives. She forgot all the pain and torture and forgot how worthless she felt she was and became this hilarious and macabre seductress trying to get my dad to bed her (big mistake naming your kids "juniors") and would mistake me for her long lost dead sister. With me she wanted to play and with my dad and his wife she wanted to be disobedient but she was cute about it. I am thankful she went peacefully. We all were and I lament for those who had to sit and watch their kin fall apart.
...no one sees what this does to the family. We see the sad commercials but not the abuse the family goes through. Whether abuse from a parent losing it and being combative or the abuse from a parent retaining their natural ill-nature. We suffer, immensely. I felt torn down. I was torn down by the shrew long before she lost it and that memory of her is still stronger than the last few years of comic relief...*sitting at the breakfast table and she decides to do a one-woman venue with a banana, rubbing it between her breasts and performing fellatio for whoever's benefit and then sliding it under the table...we all got up and left. Laughing...no one stopped her because we figured if anyone needed some action it was gramma...
And now...
I am faced with the possibility of doing this all over again. I got "the" call. My father's older half sister is bonkers. Her and I haven't spoke since Lobo was one and Lobo is almost 18 now...She's just like her mother *shakes violently at the thought...nothing is good enough for her. Nothing ever was. Her own single child, a son, doesn't want shit to do with her. And Dad calls and says he can't trust anyone else. I was flattered but at the same time annoyed. The fact that her own son and my other 3 siblings aren't valid candidates either by their own choice or my father's? I agree Kathy is a train wreck (my older sister...on more head-meds than Hugh Hefner is on Viagra and Cialis) but surely my younger sister and brother (both nurse/companions? would be better-suited? And her own son, Addy (Addison), what beef does he have with his mom that he would let her rot in an old-folks home?? My mind is reeling. I am going back to that frightened little child place with misplaced family loyalties and fear that if she doesn't die soon, I will...from a well placed rope in the rafters of her garage...and STILL thinking on doing this for her.
Our falling out was stupendous. Over trivial shit I don't even recall. She said something about me breaking her heart because I chose my hubby (1st hubby-Lobo's dad) over her. She said I was the daughter she never had and that I broke her heart because I didn't always agree with her and give her her own way. I never "fought" with her...I was passive aggressive, learned that early on as a type of self-defense...Like my mom and my father's mother she was the pushy type. If you didn't use the same foods and the same insurance and the same gas and drive the same car and go to the same movies or listen to the same music...you get the picture...and they (mom and gramma) would set me up for finding abusive men who expected things always to be their way...(my weak male role models would lead me to teetering back and forth between an overly assertive and abusive fuck and some weak-willed simpleton who can't do shit for themselves...)...I did miss her and didn't hate her. I just let the ties dangle. I never called and never spoke. She was one of many reasons I didn't celebrate (and still don't) the Easter/Christmas/Thankgiving/New Year's holidays with...I do my own thing. I made my own traditions free from violence and abuse and arguments and shit...(or tried to)..
...so now, I am faced with uprooting Lobo from her school, packing my shit (yet again) and the expenditures of moving that I don't have the monies for, to a home I haven't set foot on in over decade and don't know what condition it is in, to care for a woman who could care less about me, who may die leaving me homeless again and unable to move...and having to put up with a fair amount of her shit...I think I have that right...lols...I'm overwhelmed and pissed off and frustrated...~mobe's love to her all and her all to her loves.
