intermittent reality in Side Effects

As the days go by, some days I’m so mature, and I can say without breaking down and crying, that this is it for mom. Other days I cry with EVERYTHING. Practically everything in my home, in her home, brings me a memory. I hired a nurse one week after her episode, and she comes at intervals throughout the day. My father was against this. He is opposed to paying people for things one can do for themselves. Except that, we can’t do this- He expects me to be there evry day, all day: Not that I don’t want to be with mom everyday. But I have work, my own house to tend to, a husband and two kids. My laundry piles up, the house is a mess, the girls have homework, they eat 3 hearty meals a day. It seems everyone is trying to make me feel bad for not being there all the time. Or maybe the guilt is all my own.

In this very diary, I can go back 18 years and see all the times my life was centered around school, jobs that I don’t have anymore, kids that aren’t mine anymore, guys that never cared about me, a husband that never cared. So much wasted time, I could have spent all that time with her. Asked her more questions, made more memories, reconcile, take more pictures, take all those trips she wanted to take and I never wanted to go to. She made this simple but delicious potato soup, and it was only when I was sick. It was red, and had oregano in it. Looking back, it was a treat to get sick, because that was the only time she’d ever make it. My mouth waters for that soup now. I’ll never be able to make it for my daughters, give them that warmth inside.

Tuesday I couldn’t help crawling into bed with her, crying. The pains that night were horrible. She screamed so terribly, in a voice and tone I’d never heard before, as if she were posessed. My family has been so understanding. My husband puts the girls down for sleep, drives me over to mom’s, and hurries back home, so I can sleep next to her. The fact that she is dying, doesn’t hurt as much as knowing she is pain. Mom had ulcers and would down a coffee or a meal with chile without an complaint. To hear her moan made me feel so impotent. I called her oncologist Wednesday morning and she said she could give me injections for the pain, and help me do the paperwork for the hospital to pay for her oxygen. Walking into that office without mom, it was dreadful. Dr Erika wouldn’t look me in the eye, and I could see she had tears in her eyes herself. She was scared to tell me what I already knew. No problem with the injections, got those. As for the oxygen, after a shitload of paperwork, I was informed the hospital would cover for October. September I had already paid for, nearly $8,000 for deposit and rental of the oxygen machine and tank. The catch? Each posterior month mom needs oxygen, I have to physically take her to the hospital so it can be approved. Really????? Screw them.

Once mom recieved the pain medication, she was all smiles. She talks more, but she is not herself. Her speech is a little slurred, and her emotions are blocked. Mom typically cries sentimentally over anything. But no matter how much I ball my eyes out to her and tell her how much I love her, she just squeezes my hand and tells me to be strong.

Chelsea needed to do a group assignment with her new middle school classmates. The controlling mom I am, I wanted them to do it with me present. I don’t know these kids, don’t know their parents, and I’m not letting Chelsea wander off with them. My house is a complete mess, worthy of an episode of Hoarders, so I suggested she invite them over to mom’s house. I spent the morning trying to clean up my own, but that’s nearly impossible. I’m drowning trying to manage two households at the same time. All morning I reminisced friends coming over to that house over the course of the years since high school and college. Mom always let me freely do homework at the house, and loved my friends so much. I look at that dining room table, and remember the years when we made so much noise, and probably a mess. Mom never complained, was so supportive. IN a blink of an eye, I don’t live their anymore, and it’s my daughter who is at the table, being a brat, a flirt, changing the way she talks in front of friends than when she talks with us.

Saturday night was independance day. Ever since Calderon was President, I stopped going to the downtown festivities for Independance Day, or to clubs. The violence truly scared me, because I lived so many close encounters during his Presidency. My small town that wasn’t even on most maps, turned into a regular mention on the Homeland Security list of cities NOT to visit in Mexico. That too makes me nostalgic. I barely remember Indpendance Day 1998, my parents and I went downtown in front of Palacio de Gobierno, Rigoberto Ochoa was still governor. 2 years later mom had surgery during Independance weekend, and instead of being with her after the surgery, https://www.opendiary.com/m/alisvolatpropriis/se-hizo-ii-1888890/I went out with Mauricio all night, I guy I’d met online a year before and was finally meeting in person. We went from bar to bar, talking all night, fascinated that I was finally with him in person. No cell phones, I didn’t let my parents know where I was. Mom was bedridden from surgery, and was worried about me. My father was so mad I’d been so inconsiderate. Mauricio left and I never saw him again. We sent emails, chatted, talked on the phone, but we drifted. That night, was an adventure for me, but I regret it now, on so many levels.

My husband Adrian went out with a friend from when he lived in Ciudad Juarez who was passing through town. I stayed by mom’s side, watching the boxing matches. I asked mom what she wanted for dinner, and she rolled her eyes and threw me a look. I prepare the same liquid diet every day and feed her through a nasogastric tube. But I told her to imagine we were eating a nice big warm bowl of pozole, with lots of lettuce and cabbage. Mom was always up for a party. She liked to through parties on Independance day, and invited family and neighbors, we’d eat a lot, have drinks, watch the typical boxing match. She sure is a character.

After the match I received a message from a neighbor. The mother of a dear friend and neighbor died. We knew her for years, she sold my father a property where he built apartments. And her son built the home I bought. Her grandson, was the one that sold me the plot of land, and he was among the aquaintances of my high school friends. That scared me. To see Ivan acknowledge on Facebook that she died, made me terrified of what could be approaching.

Adrian picked me up a little after midnight. The girls were tired and went to bed right away. He stayed up drinking, blasting music, and he made me dance with him. I don’t dance, but it was just to let it all out. And we cried, we cried so much, until we couldn’t anymore.