Now that the Wheel of the Year has turned ahead another notch, I'd
better make a point of blogging more often!
2013 has been quite the trying year, my 90 yr old father has taken the turn over into senile dementia- but only part of the way- he still knows who he is and where he is, but the paranoia and downright spitefulness is ridiculous. Four of his six children live either with him, or 2 minutes from him, but no one helps him...we're all lazy asses...taking advantage of things, stealing his money, blahblahblah. My sister resigned her position as a Pastor for a Lutheran church in upstate New York to come home and take care of him after he fell twice, breaking his leg, then his hip. I had been the one in charge of taking care of him, but I was diagnosed with B-cell Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma of my third lumbar vertebra in January 2008 and I had my own battle to deal with. This past summer Wilmond told everyone he came in contact with, that my sister quit because she was about to be FIRED and they didn't want her anymore! Same crazy crap with me too, I've lived here 20 years, and in the late '90's Wilmond approved of, and helped me build a chicken coop and a goat shelter that was on his land, behind the house I rent from my brother. But this summer, I had RUINED his land, building things I didn't have permission to do, and I and my husband were TRESPASSERS and just renters that were overstepping our boundaries!
The only reason I moved my family back down to this po-dunk two 4-way stop, not even an incorporated little village, was to take care of my mother who had to get a leg amputated below the knee after she, a brittle diabetic, cut her own toenails because Wilmond fussed at her about the co-pay they'd have to pay, that was in 1993. I had three kids in elementary school, was working part-time at a hospital with a 45 minute commute, but I helped her because I was the only one close enough that had the knowledge to do so. She died in 1997, after a bout with colon cancer, 2 heart attacks, 4 strokes, and numerous times in the hospital for diabetic ketoacidosis. Her death came after having surgery to correct 90% blockages in both carotid arteries, and her second leg being amputated because it was gangrenous. In those last months of her life, she had become aphasic, with short-term memory loss so I had to give her the plethora of pills and insulin daily as she would forget she took them and start the day all over. Wilmond was no help with this at all, in fact he still expected her to cook his meals. He was lucky she didn't accidentally burn the house down, she'd leave a pot on the stove and then he'd fart around outside as per usual, and not come in until it was almost too late. He was mean to her when she was incontinent, yet he'd make her go on his shopping excursions, then leave her in the truck for hours on end, in all kinds of weather.
After she passed away, I was the one who had to teach him how to do the laundry, and the dishes. I had to show him how to cook, and use the microwave. I had to show him which dishes he wouldn't melt in the microwave too. The only thing I wouldn't deal with was his money, my oldest brother took care of that, but only until they retired and moved permanently to Florida, then Wilmond was on his own. With an eighth grade education, and my mother taking care of the checkbook until her last six months alive, he didn't have much of a clue. Throw in some major anxiety regarding money, taxes, insurance, and government in general- and THAT is why I'd not touch his finances. I just made sure he got to the doctor if he needed it. My sister has POA and is on his bank accounts now, which is best as she has an accounting degree, but he's begun accusing her of STEALING his MONEY!
Every time he even SEES me he starts screaming at me, he's even threatened to hit me with his cane numerous times, but if he ever does, he won't know what hit HIM. I walk with a rollator (rolling walker) when I'm outside because I am all hunched over because after the targeted radiation treatments I had for the lymphoma made my bones so osteoporotic that I ended up with 7 spinal compression fractures, from lumbar 4, all the way up to thoracic 11. I had to have two surgeries to inject a polymer cement into the vertebra to make them stabile. The orthopedic surgeon wanted to put rods in and fuse that entire section, but I refused. As it was, I almost died in the fall of 2009, so adding a major surgery like that? I most certainly would not be here typing this today. I also had fractures of my pelvis, my hip, (opposite sides, one left, one right), and the most stupid of all- I broke my wrist throwing a soft dog toy!
So that old man, who keeps being so nasty to me and my siblings, EVER hits me with something, he won't be able to get up off the ground, I already feel my mother's anger channeling through me. He was an ass to her all the time, and I would be the one to have her rage come down on me. My younger brother got it some, but not as much as he was born handicapped. We had 4 box elder trees in the yard, and she left one side untrimmed, so there were 'switches'. I'd have to go get her one to beat me with. There were times I'd just run down our long driveway and hide in the woods, being tortured by the mosquitoes instead of enduring the lashes with the switch. When it wasn't summer and warm, there was always a yardstick tucked over the top of the doorframe that went between the kitchen and dining room on the old part of the house. (Half of the house I grew up in was built in the late 1870's, and the other half was built in 1950) That yardstick was thick, sturdy wood-not like the flimsy stuff they are made of nowadays. It HURT! Pretty much anything that came into reach would work for mom, plastic flyswatter, wire coat hanger, spoon, shoe, rolled up magazine, belt. I got to the point that I wouldn't even cry, great thing to learn as a child, how to repress emotions. All that did was piss her off all the more. My aunt, (mom's sister) told me I was the most like her, so maybe that's why, plus the fact she started menopause right about the time I was 10. She could beat me all she wanted, but the thing that hurt my soul & psyche the most....she would scream at me- "I should have stopped with the first four!"
I am number Five.
