No one needs to read this. Go Away, Lurker.

I rant.
I configure words to explain, but not to excuse my existence.

I am on permanent "grounding" every weekend and every night. I know what a punishment that really is... Almost - but not quite - as bad as knowing that "death is a slow and painful, inexorable process" and that death is imminent. [At least, I don't know the number of days I have on this planet in this existence, but when the time is near, for me, I'll either recognize it and, hopefully,  do something about it, or I will be surprised - and someone else will pick up the pieces.]

I liken our situation to criminals who have been sentenced to "house arrest" for some socially unacceptable minor crime.  I know what our crime really is: We have failed to stay healthy so that we may take care of ourselves and thereby contribute to the welfare of the people whom we love and mean the most to us.  I, although not criminally insane yet, have developed mental aberrations and socially unacceptable coping strategies and habits.

I steal time whenever I can. I get up at 5am, wander into the kitchen and fix breakfast, sit down and eat it in front of the computer while I check the mail. I don't even look at him until I have eaten, brushed my teeth and put on the robe to go down and shower. I used to check several times a night to see if he was breathing, if he was awake, if he needed changed or the catheter bag emptied. Mostly, I remember doing that the first year he was bed fast, when he could talk to me. And he weighed close to his normal weight. I think I slept about 3 hours at a time in those days.

I steal time at school: I stay in my room at lunch and try to keep up with the many parts of the job. I can't do the things I used to do in the time it used to take. I can still do the work; the work just takes more and more time. And I don't have more time. I have to work between 7:45am and 4pm - I steal time from that pattern to buy groceries through the week, to get gas for the car, to check on the house at Park, to buy Rx at Rite Aid. That's usually all I can get done from 3:30 til I have to be home @ 5.

I steal time from my family: the kids come to visit - I say, stay with your Daddy while I go to the store, or go get gas, or go check the mail at Park, or take the car to the car wash... I ask them to give up some of their family time to be here. And that's hard in many ways: hard to watch your Dad deteriorate, hard to get the coin together to get here, hard to help when you are young and this is Mr. Death we are dealing with.

I didn't want to "grow up" or "man up" as the saying goes - but I was already in my late 50's when things started to go south, as they say. It was my turn. I don't want my kids to have to remember us as burdens. I don't consider my Mom and Dad's last years as burdens. They were able to guide me, at least in the beginning. I wanted to help; I was near; we had talked - but not enough and some things just got beyond what I could handle. This is not the way I thought it would be, of course. I thought they would live forever, healthy, right-minded, large and in charge...

My mother-in-law must have been psychic - no, she wasn't the average psycho-mother-in-law... I admire her for many things: she had Faith; she was a savy survivor; she knew I would take care of her son and she said so, many times, when we were just chatting. She saw to it that she was not living with us when she declined. She had gone to a personal care home. We didn't see her prepare to die; she gave away everything but her faith and did not ask anything of us in those last years, but she was appreciative of our visits or at least she appeared to be. She was 97 when she passed. Just thinking about her is a good feeling - not awful and full of tears.
I am so sad. I know that I cannot change the end result of this illness. I have to be here - in this place, at this time and do whatever I can to make this life a bit more bearable. I did not prepare for this part of life; I don't have the strength or the skills to execute the tasks associated with burying both my parents and my husband within the same few years. I just do whatever seems to be appropriate next.

I feel so alone. Abandoned. And I don't blame the loved ones who can't help us. No one can help us. We, of course, pay caretakers to keep daily life moving along.. Bathing, fixing food, giving meds, tending to wounds, changing bed linens, dealing with Hospice workers, entertaining, being companions for a while...

But, I miss our old life. It was gone in an instant, but I didn't recognize that. I was looking the other way.

Dad knew: "We are in Big Trouble," he said to me, as he got the news he had colon cancer. When Dad's operation left him with a colostomy, then dialysis, then  food absorption problems (and all these terrible conditions for an independent, proud person who was used to taking charge and taking care of others, I couldn't handle him at home - the place he wanted to be - and so I put him in a nursing home.)

Although we had driven to Cleveland several times, it was just one instant when the doctor at the Cleveland Clinic said: "I'm sorry. You have Parkinson's." He really meant it. And he meant it for both of us. We have Parkinson's - or some form of it... and everything that goes with it (and more...)

Mom's heart surgery, pacemaker, (things change in an instant: the stroke) and the miserable time in the hospital that made up her last crazy days... God. How can I ever stop feeling guilty that I didn't do enough, fast enough.

Enough of the pitty pot. I told you not to read this. This is a rant. Just to blow off steam. Better here than infront of people who will then KNOW I'm a psycho-insane person full of grief and raging guilt, anger and Ding-Dongs and Ho-Ho's. Thank you Hostess, for stress relief opportunities.

And, I will not re-read this blog for a long long time, so don't comment. I can't hear you.