It is only something I had heard of lately but now my mother-in-law had it, and had for years without us knowing, but on one visit home from another state I am sitting alone with her talking and we say all the niceties, when I notice she keeps looking at me strangely like she isn’t sure who I am and she repeats the same questions to me several times. We are sounding like a stuck record and she actually is being friendlier to me than she has been in many years, and I feel something is just not right. She looks very uncomfortable and slightly panicked, as I am also becoming, so I find an excuse to leave the room and tell my husband about it. Why had no one told us or did anyone even know?

The family never said they noticed anything but no one went around to visit more than they had to since both my husband’s parents were in a constant battle and wanted each of us to take their side, therefore any visits we made were very quick and we tried talking to them separately because together it would always end up bad. My husband went to his dad’s room where he could be found in his rocker watching TV or napping, but if it was summer this 86 year old would be out mowing or working in his garden that he gave most of away. He had almost died from a heart attack at 65 and was still breaking sweat almost every day twenty years later. But only he could do it right, he wouldn’t pay anyone to do what he could do although he was overly generous with his giving so money was certainly not the issue but he was nearly deaf and nearly blind with glaucoma.

One day while he was out working, he somehow managed to fall in a large deep ditch dividing his property in back with a rock walk-across bridge. No one knew he was there and he had been struggling for hours to get out with no luck, one can only imagine what that must have been like but luckily his son that lived just past him stopped for some reason and when his mother had no idea where her husband was and didn’t really care, and the car is in the garage, the son goes around the house searching and finds his dad and gets him out. He seems alright by the time his son leaves but the next few days he stumbles and almost falls so often he makes an appointment to see his doctor who says he should have a pacemaker and so he gets one and they send him home barely able to walk so his son that lives near him spends the night and calls an ambulance the very next morning because his father is completely paralyzed from the waist down by now and his speech shows he has probably had a stroke even before leaving the hospital. Why would they let a man leave who walked in the hospital but cannot walk out?

This family is the biggest puzzle to me, what could have happened to him at the hospital or what connection if any did this have to do with getting a pace maker? I will not give up without an answer myself, or a fight. No one in this family ever got an answer about their father and I couldn’t swear they even asked. He ends up in a nursing home where he dies a few months later. He is refusing to eat and they are force feeding him trying to encourage the family to agree to a tube which they won’t and then the nursing home talks the family into just stop feeding him, and let him die. It all is just a horror to me. He died the first day, and I thanked God. We can’t help people die peaceably or painlessly that are without a doubt going to die but we can starve them to death? Whatever happened will forever remain a mystery. Who’s to even say they didn’t starve him anyway, he sure looked as if they could have. After going through what I have with my own mother it would be my opinion they did just what they wanted to, nursing homes do that and no one stops them. The only ones safe in a nursing home has a family member there with them 24-7. That is my honest opinion, but I have much more about this in another hub.

My husband had been recruited to stay at his dads a few days after his pacemaker was put in, not knowing he had been taken back to the hospital also and that he would then be the automatic choice since his dad was not there, to oversee the care of his mother now, who had pins in both hips, one broke in hospital, I don’t remember how and one in a nursing home being left tied and forgotten in a chair all night which she eventually managed to turn over trying to get out of in the wee hours of the night. This meant most of her care would fall on me; until they could get help in, to bathe her and all personal things her sons couldn’t or wouldn’t do. She looks pitiful and now thinks she is staying with us in our house and she is so sorry, they (her and her son Timmy) will go back home as soon as they can she says.

Timmy is a handicapped son, living there too, my husband’s youngest brother who did much for his mother but his skills were limited, he did not drive and of course he could not do the personal things for his mother. He fixed their meals though, frozen dinners or mixes or fast food any time he could get a ride. He had teachers at home as a child and never went to school but did go to church so was not totally isolated to having just his mother as a companion but he of all the seven children made it plain he was for his mom and against his dad. According to my husband this younger brother who was only a couple of years younger than me watched the soaps with his mom from as far back as he could remember and they took them very seriously. I would hear them talking so seriously about something someone had done that was shocking because I thought they were talking about people they knew, it sure sounded like it, just to find out it was the something happening on “All My Children.” My mother-in-law practically hissed at me one day how much she hated Erica Kane. I couldn’t believe my ears and before I had time to think I said, “You know she’s not real, don’t you? She is just an actor.” I can’t help but smile. She had a sudden timid look but still stuck to her words, she didn’t care, and she still hated her guts. Also there would be times when I was there visiting when my children would be in school and I had by then given up all soaps completely because of the sexual content growing in so many of them and not wanting my children watching them learning about sex in this manner; and my mother-in-law and her son who would never marry nor experience a sexual relationship would be watching love scenes that would have been embarrassing just watching with my mother-in-law much less her and her son. I admit I am more serious about these things than most people. I know it’s just who I am and how I personally believe, they eventually learned it all I am sure, probably much more than me, if truth be known. I did find it somewhat comical when I found out my husband must have got into the soaps somewhat as a kid too, since that was his moms whole live, she recorded some while watching others, I don’t think they missed many if any because I remember him telling me about one soap he had a crush on a certain girl because she was so pretty and he was watching one day and found out she was going to have a baby and told his mother that wasn’t possible and when she asked why not he said because she wasn’t even married, and he was serious. She told him to shut up and get out. I guess Timmy was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

Now we were kind of caught in a trap until something could be worked out and my dad had passed away and my mom needed me too but mentally she seemed alright although naturally a little depressed but my brother took her home with him to watch after his son, give her something to do I suppose and usually someone else was there too, a niece or another family member near by so I would help as long as I could for my husbands sake but trying to take over where someone else has made himself master is not so easy. Even when Timmy’s mother was past seeing what was in front of her face he made her get up at a certain time every day and sit where she had all those years watching those soaps, he didn’t allow change, although she sat there staring into space or now and then would roll out a long curse word being made to do what she no longer had a desire for, all she wanted was to rest. He would say, “Now Mother.” She would roll her eyes and shut up until her time was up, then he would let her go back to bed.

She would call up the stairs to him many times to his room, although now he had put a twin bed in the corner of her room where he slept, where the room had a cubby just big enough for that where a bathroom had been put in another room shaping it that way, to make sure she wouldn’t go out the front door she checked constantly to be sure it was locked or maybe because she yelled all night at him as she did now many times so I don’t think she was aware he was there, his room had always been upstairs and she remembered a much younger Timmy.

“Timmy….Timmy Thompson… are you up there?” and he (standing beside her) would say, “Here I am Mother. I’m Timmy Thompson.” (not his real name) She would say no, I mean that other Timmy Thompson. This happened so very many times but strangely enough if that one (Timmy Thompson) downstairs was there she would stay calm but if he left the house and was nowhere in the house she would have near panic attacks until he got back home and for some reason we could not get him to sneak away, he always had to let her know he was leaving and it would be hell for whoever was left with her which was usually me or my husband and at first, until my mother started needing me to take care of her it was mostly me. It was like watching a mad dog, honestly. There were no words to calm her and if Timmy had only been smart enough to figure out he could have had more freedom away from his mother who was on constant watch for him to make sure he didn’t leave her, but there was no better luck reasoning with him, than her..

Arrangement’s now have to be made to get help in and the eldest daughter who is executor of the will has to do all legal things needing done and making sure the house would not be taken from Timmy once his mother died and she was now around 85. She asks us to look through all her things and this has to be done while Timmy is gone, he is possessive of his mother, her room, her things and we don’t feel right doing this so my husband will only agree to it with another one of his siblings with him so one of his sisters comes over and helps him while Timmy is out with his Mom on an appointment and I think at this time she was taken by ambulance to all appointments. I can’t remember the money that was found in envelopes, over $1000 I’m sure, which whatever part of the government it is I don’t know, but they have to know every dime she has and insurance policies, of which there is a small one on my husband that he signs over on her funeral. The saddest of all the finding though is all the notes to herself and her name written over and over so she wont forget who she is…but she did.

She has been this way for possibly a couple of years or more according to the dates on the notes and envelopes. She now thinks I am her daughter and her son is her son-in-law. Every time she calls him Polly’s husband I feel so bad for him, but he claims he isn’t bothered by it. It’s really a shock to see someone you have known for so many years so confused. Like the twilight zone and not a good feeling. She has not been nice to me over the last few years and hurt my feelings often but I forgave her years ago, I learned to forgive because of her, knowing everyone is who they are for a reason, you can try to change them but you can never make then change. Now I am doing all I can to help her and spying on aids that come in to bathe her and do for her when I can’t be there any longer and we go through quite a few. You would be surprised at the ones who don’t know which parts of the body to wash first, confirming my suspicions on why she developed so many urinary tract infections. I would call their employer as soon as they left, tell them not to send them back and why, but that should be the very first thing these workers learn, with me telling them the problem they wouldn’t warn the rest? But no. Surely with them all being women they would have the general idea anyway and it almost seems like meanness, like you find in so many of the workers in nursing homes. I would personally bathe her again as soon as they had gone and thought of the irony of all the special care I was giving this woman who had said such insulting things to me. Just her knowing it was me bathing and pampering her would have mortified her, but now she was so thankful and apologetic. I fixed things I knew she use to love and many she would ask what that is, like it was so nasty and refuse to eat but most she ate pretty well as long as we weren’t watching her eat. Her doctor had given orders she eat at the kitchen table, be as normal as possible, but she acted nervous and after only a few bites she would complain she couldn’t eat any more but when she ate in her room alone she would usually eat almost every bite. It was a few days convincing Timmy but he finally gives in and admits we are right, he couldn’t deny the results so gave in to that one. There were many battles with him, such as him giving her medicine and although I did it up by the weeks, morning, noon and night, he just took her the medicine, some water and left the room. I found pills under and behind her bed, in her sheets, in her bra. So my husband or I would give her medicine to her and then we still had to make her show us in her mouth where she would sometimes hide it in a cheek or under her tongue. Who knows why? Possibly because of all the pain and these pills did not help her like the codeine she had been on for years. Her arthritis and osteoporosis hurt her so bad, and you could see the large hump on her back and her arthritic fingers and bones. Her doctor talked real smart to her in front of the whole family saying she was no different than an addict on the street. I wasn’t there and it wasn’t my mom, but I’d have said, “No these have been prescribed by a doctor all these years and if I was a doctor I would give all old people in pain all the pain killers I could that wouldn’t kill them.” Apparently it hadn’t hurt her but it was now. She didn’t want any of that medicine she was on, she wanted to die and be pain free. I think the most stupid thing I have ever heard is a doctor acting worried about someone almost 90 getting hooked on something. Please.

Well my husband and Timmy are getting pretty tired of me firing the aids. I can’t explain it at all to Timmy and there’s lots of them he really likes, he makes them candy and talks some into playing yatzee, what could be wrong with her? I can tell my husband but he doesn’t really understand what I mean. I’m too disgusted to get too technical about it. Eventually it is done though and we get one everyone likes. She does a good bath, eats Timmy’s candy and plays yatzee whenever he wants. They can even leave her with their mom alone and not worry. They have a few hours freedom several days a week I can leave now to turn my loyalty back to my own mom. Their mom lives almost another year and my last memory of her is a hospital visit, she looks better than I have seen her in years. Her hair still looked real pretty and fluffy where I had rolled it and it looked like she had just got a fresh perm; the family did say she always liked me to fix her hair more than anyone. I tell her how nice she looks and as I’m leaving the room I look back at her wearing pink and looking pink and this woman who doesn’t hug or use words of endearment even to her own children says, “I love you Polly.” I am so shocked I can hardly get the words out without crying, so I have to hurry, “I love you too.”

That will forever be my last memory of her.