Since a week ago Monday, this thought has crossed my mind on many occasions. Time is not always on our side or the side of someone we love. We are selfish. We want someone we love deeply to be there, to have life. But what if that life is limited or even hard?
I think about all my husband's mom, my mother-in-law (MIL), has been through. She has COPD, PKD (Polycystic Kidney Disease) which also affects her liver, she is on dialysis three days a week and just this week they've added Pulmonary Fibrosis to the list. Wow. Doesn't that hit home? My Dad has the same thing. I wasn't even sure what to say after we found out. Not only does she have trouble exhaling, but now inhaling as well. Gee.
At one time she lived with us and that was definitely a "God thing." She asked to live with us and she lived at our house for less than a year's time. God had a plan in it. While she lived with us, my husband received his life-gaining kidney transplant. She was able to manage our household (to the best of her ability and despite an on-going control battle with my eldest stepson), cook for our kids (and me when I came back home), and rearrange our kitchen. That last part is definitely still a little touchy subject with my husband. He did not like his kitchen being rearranged. He is the cook and I can understand that. The kids and I had no idea where anything was. Plus, one night, a night the kids will never let their Nanny live down, is when she served them spaghetti with vegetables. After that night I think they thought she had really lost it, gone off the deep end. They were convinced she had really lost her marbles! Or her meatballs...
I kept reminding them to consider that she was under a great deal of stress and if she requested anything that seemed odd to them just to go with it. I reminded them, time and again, that she had not been in a role with such responsibility in a L-O-N-G time. Of course, as kids (teens) often do, they tried to take advantage of her on several occasions mainly because they thought she "hadn't a clue." Oh, but she was much smarter than they gave her credit for. I applaud her for that!
For example, she told them not to go out of the yard because she wanted to be able to see them (and I can't blame her for that). She doesn't drive and she couldn't of found them if they didn't show back up for dinner. Although she was known to feed them at 5 or so as opposed to our regular dinner time of around 7:30. They were not hungry at 5 and they let her know. Obviously, it didn't phase her. She kept right on feeding them early. I think the control might of gone to her head just a bit.
There was also something strange going on with the boys' mom. She called A LOT during that time. She text me repeatedly telling me how much easier this would be if the eldest had a driver's license. After about five or six of these text, I replied to her that I didn't know why she kept telling me about it because I had no control over when he got his license. This was something she needed to discuss with my husband, but not at this time since he was trying to recover from a kidney transplant. I swear that woman is blonde sometimes...she jumped my case about that saying I was "difficult to work with" and basically she didn't know why she even bothered. Well, whatever. Quit texting me.
Then the one time I needed their mom to be helpful, oh no, she was over the top difficult. I had to drive back from Birmingham to our town, run several places to pick up/drop off this or that, wait for the kids to get home from school and pack so they could spend their weekend with her, and drive them back to Birmingham because they hadn't seen their Dad since the transplant earlier that week. I asked her if she could meet me closer to Birmingham and she kept saying she could only meet me at the appointed time in the appointed place which was an impossibility for me. I told her I couldn't do that because there was no way for me to drive 1.5 hours back just to meet her at our regular spot. How lame. That wasn't even logical. So, after some rearranging with her eldest son, she agreed to meet me at another place in Alabama...little did I know it was right up the road from her house, but I STILL had to drive OVER an hour to meet her. Yeah, thanks for meeting me closer to Birmingham. Not. I appreciate your willingness to work with me. Not. I do have to respect my eldest stepson, who for the most part I have a VERY strained relationship with, he was mad at his mom because he knew I had spent lots of hours on the road already and she was just not being nice about the whole thing and he did not like that. I appreciated his support. When I finally met her she said to me, "I appreciate your willingness to work with me." Really? It probably would've just been better if she hadn't said a dang word. I was so mad at her I thought I'd never get over it. I really wanted to get out of my car and tell her how I really felt, it took all that was within me to just drive away. I mean really? Don't ever call me out for not working with you. Humph!
So, anyway, my MIL lived with us until just after my husband returned home about a month after his transplant. I really think she wore herself down and ended up with pneumonia. Our next door neighbor had died, a man who was our next door neighbor twice, sweet, kind man who was often run-over by his family. I felt for him. Anyway, earlier that day and days before we had asked Nanny if she needed to go to the doctor, ER, etc. No, she was okay. Well, she wasn't okay. The night of the funeral, we live in a cul-de-sac and people were parked in front of our driveway (which I never understand at ANY time why people think it's okay to block someone's driveway), she had called and left a message on my cell phone while we were at dinner saying she wanted us to take her to the ER after we got back from dinner. Of course, that sent us into somewhat of a panic. So, once we got home to our blocked driveway, after we managed to find the person who was blocking said driveway and ask them to leave, we loaded her up and took her to the ER. This would be the first in a series of hospital visits which are still occurring. She would come back to our house one time after that. There was a lot of strain between us (my hubs, myself and his mom), I can't really remember why, but there was. We brought her home after a couple of weeks in the hospital and she couldn't climb the front stairs. We literally had to carry her up the stairs. We asked her to call her doctor and TELL him she NEEDED to go to rehab. That she had no strength. Later that evening, she proceeded to call everyone she knew and tell them that she had no idea how to run her oxygen machine (that was now at the house), but she never asked us about it. We knew how to run it because the man had come and shown us before we went to pick her up that day....but she was in a mood and didn't want to talk to us. I felt sorry for her, but at the same time I wasn't sure what to do. I guess I might say I was ashamed of the way I handled (or rather didn't handle) her. But she was mad at us. Why? I'm still not sure if I know. Maybe she was just mad at how life had treated her.
So, she went to rehab and then back to her daughter's house where she had lived prior to living with us. She has never been back to our house because she can't climb the stairs. We offered to have a ramp put in for her but she wanted it that day and that just wasn't a possibility or reality. So, we didn't get the ramp. We still don't have a ramp because it was pointless. She wasn't coming back. I doubt she'll ever come back. And it's sad. I doubt my Dad could climb those stairs and I doubt my Dad will ever be back either. And I have to quit typing now because I am in tears.
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