Broken. Again.

If you want to see what a person with a broken spirit looks like, visit my mom.  As a child I was corrected many, many times on how wrong it is to use the word "hate".  You can dislike someone, but you must never hate them.  My mom is a good Christian woman who is generous and kind.  This is not to paint her as a saint of any sort.  By no means is she a saint.  But her faith has always been very strong, unquestioning.  She has short patience and curses now & then, though I've never once ever heard the F bomb come from her mouth.  She is very sweet, almost to a fault, in the sense that I've offered to take up the slack and stand up for her.

With that said, this whole experience has changed her.  She's very tired, you must understand.  She's worn and broken.  The last of her family, the very profile of her father lies on the couch, withering away, confused and anxious.  She watches as the only proof she had a family deteriorates before her eyes.  She questioned God when she watched her mother die slowly over a year's time.  She became angry with God but slowly, her anger faded and her faith was renewed.

"I hate them.  I even told the chaplain that; I hate them!" she said to me last night.  I don't blame her.  Darrell's ahem, wife, called early that morning and placed my mom in a foul mood.  "She always calls at the worst possible time.  It's like she knows!"  The wife, Betty, abandoned Darrell, almost quite literally some years ago.  He stayed with a bit after he became sick and she did not care for him, in a loving sense and also in a caregiver's meaning.  She did not cook or wake him in the morning.  She set the alarm clock and on more than one occasion told him to "pack your shit and go".

Betty's mood shifts around the third of each month as Darrell collects disability.  She has squeezed money from him like sap from a tree and has placed it promptly into a meth pipe.  "What has she got to do?" mom asked, exasperated.  "Nothing!  She goes to bed when she wants to, she does whatever she wants to!  And the rest of them (Mom referring to Darrell's two sons) what have they done?  No one, not one of them has ever offered me a hand.  Nikki (a daughter-in-law of Darrell's) once offered to have me go take a nap--like that's gonna happen!--but she's the only one!"

We have scantly heard from either of Darrell's sons through this whole process.  The eldest, has become great friends with Betty when he passes through.  He once hated her until recent years when they figured out they had much more in common.  The younger brother has had his ups and downs with substances but remains clean fro the moment, yet always has a habit of behaving childishly and following the route of peer pressure.  Although the sons live a two hours' drive away, the phone rarely, rarely rings.  And on that rare occasion they do show up, they avoid the inside of the house as though a plague were upon it.

Mom is quick to point out to me that she does not mean that Shawn or I haven't helped.  She only refers to Darrell's family.  I tell her I know.  We thought the younger son might have a common sense of decency when we saw him crying so badly one day.  He does what your supposed to do int his sort of situation as long as his brother or Betty aren't around.  Otherwise, I've never seen family members behave in such a way when a close member lay dying.  It's so odd.

The Chaplain stopped by, a measure of hospice services and he's a really nice man.  He was a bit suprised to hear Mom say she hated everyone.  I wasn't, so much.  This has been building up for more than a year.  Everyone's fake attitudes is beginning to wear on me.  Their show of unconcern more than grates on me as they go about their own lives as though nothing were wrong.  The younger brother shocked me when he once thanked me for picking up Darrell's apple juice and cigarettes.  "It's the least I could do," I replied, thinking, YOU could show some concern & that would be the least you could do!

Any time everyone shows up and I happen to show up at the same time Mom reminds me gently to keep my mouth shut, "For Darrell's sake."  Of course, I keep my mouth shut and I just as gently remind Mom that I'm a grown up and I'm not going to tell everyone exactly what I think of them until after Darrell has passed.  I do have some control over my mouth, you know.

So Betty has Darell's cash card, a good thriteen or fourteen hundred she can smoke up in a week or two.  That irritates me because Mom has taken care of Darrell and Betty has done nothing.  They never asked for money but they've sure as hell spent a ton of it on food, water, electricity because Darrell's always hot, hot, hot and their whole house is like an ice box.  While he was doling out cash at they end, before he went a little crazy, I feel as though he could have at least pushed a small stack towards my parents.  But I don't say anything because I'm a  grown up.

The night beofre last, Dad had taken yet another night off work and he dozed on one oend of the couch, my mom on the other.  Eventually Darrell needed to be taken tot he bathroom and I'm unsure of the entire story, but he somehow managed to get piss all other bathroom from one end to the other, in the middle of the night.  "He refuses to use that urinal--refuses!" Mom states.  She also said he had one pillow that had soaked so thoroughly with blood, she simply threw it out.  His ear continues to drain and it's mostly blood, rather than fluids and pus.  I offered to clean it up for her.  "I'd rather not look at it," she replied.

I mentioned the piss covered bathroom to Shawn in a tired sigh.  "One day this will be funny," I said, dryly with not a hint of a smile to my expression.  Even I'm not sure if I meant it or if I meant it to be sarcasm.  I have a feeling none of this will be funny, even further down the road.  And that's a shame, to be unable to laugh after all this.  We've always had a knack for finding some way to laugh, even in dark humor, as time passes.  I don't really see that happening.