My Irascible Mother and My Bullshit Button

Ok.

I understand that your thinking is not rational.

But, your complaints about your nurses are identical. How can it be that four different nurses are UNWORKABLE, RUDE, UNCARING, and UNFIT?

How can I be expected to be attentive and understanding when what I hear every day is like a berating of the measures we have provided to accommodate your wishes to stay home and to be treated with dignity and respect? How can so many caring people be doing such a terrible job? How can it be that even trusted employees and family members who have cared for you have tried to mistreat you and steal from you?

This is insane!

YOU are insane! Clearly!

How can I be expected NOT to ignore your rants and complaints and NOT to detach from you and your crazy assertions? You are irascible!

Is this how you speak about me to others?

This is SO hard!

You make me crazy.

You make me hate you.

You make me envy Kathie Ritchie.

I need a BULLSHIT button that I can press when it is time for me to lie. If I had one, I could say, YES and HUH and UM and REALLY… when I need to so that I can keep my huge mouth, that wants to be truthful, shut.

Mom, you have no idea what is going on. You have no perspective. You do not realize how lucky you are and how bad things could be for you. You do not appreciate the fact that you are home, with your familiar things and your furniture and with people who are attentive  to your needs. If you were to switch places with my mother in law, Marilyn, for ONE day, in her nursing home, with no friends, no things and no visitors, you would go insane.

You do not realize that you have, not one, but TWO terminal illnesses and that you are NOT going to recover from and be able to walk and go wherever you want, whenever you want and to think and talk and function on your own. It’s NOT going to happen. You are in DENIAL and I do not know what to do about it. You don’t remember what we tell you and you don’t understand what professionals have said to you.

I don’t know how to help you.

And the sad thing is that all of these arguments and all of this tension simply detracts from the real business that we should be attending to: speaking honestly about our feelings and how we want our relationship to be at the end of your life. I am willing to bear all and to come clean, but that cannot happen without your willingness and ability to realize where you are and what is happening. And if it’s not possible for you to do that, then the end, for us, has already happened. 

And the rest of this is just bullshit.