Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board

Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Members' Stories => Topic started by: jordanspeeps on March 04, 2008, 09:00:38 PM

Title: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on March 04, 2008, 09:00:38 PM: My childhood was marked by loneliness, neglect, and self-sufficiency.

Very much a latchkey kid by age 7, I had to figure out how to prepare meals (when there was food in the fridge), clean/maintain a house, wake myself up in the morning, dress myself, and catch the schoolbus every day. By age 12, I had figured out haphazardly what my menstrual cycle was and somehow snooped around in my mother's locked bedroom to locate feminine products and teach myself how to mange my womanhood. Not allowed school friends, I had to be extremely observant in order to pick up on acceptable social behavior, I'm sure unwittingly making an ass out of myself regularly. I didn't get fitted for much needed prescription eyeglasses until I was in the 5th grade. (The school nurse and teachers were furious, I recall).

Childhood Fantasy:

I often imagined/fantasized that I was adopted, despite the fact that I am the spitting image of my mother: high cheekbones, large smile, reddish skin undertones. I would fantasize about my “birth mother”. I would dream of the day I was to meet “her”. I would anticipate longingly her proud, reactive response to me. I would ask her if she thought I was pretty. My fantasy Mom, instead of replying grouchily, “Well, you’re smart… “ would simply say to me on Easter morning all decked out in my frocks, “Sweetie, you are the prettiest little thing, I’ve ever seen.” I overachieved in school, (after I got the much needed eye-glasses, and could see the blackboard, of course), because when I met my “birth mother” I wanted her to be so proud of me and what I’d accomplished in my years.

When I knew something was wrong:

I figured out that my parents were "off" when I was in Jr. high school. So, in order to avoid them, I became engulfed in social/ extra-curricular activities at school. Anything to stay away from them, I attended a plethora of summer enrichment programs. For me, school and home life had to be separate. There were times when my accomplishments would make the local newspaper, say Young Author’s Contest, Spelling Bee, or like the time when I was featured for singing the National Anthem at various school athletic events. Neighbors and churchfolks would say to my mom and dad, “You must be so proud of her.” Sheepish because they hardly ever knew what the person was talking about, my parent would come to me with tons of questions, “Why didn’t you tell me you were representing the city at so and so? Who’s been taking you to the events? How are you preparing for them?, etc. And eventually in semi-frustrated tone, “Well, I’m taking you the next time…” I now imagine for the wonderful Nsupply it would provide to them. Without fail, these rare parental “appearances” would become fiascoes for me. I had sang the National Anthem about 30 times before my parents decided to make an appearance to hear my buzzed-about rendition. It was also the State Basketball Semi-Finals, so packed house, basically. Everyone there just knew that I was getting ready to DELIVER with this song as I had so many nights before. But on this night, without any forewarning, I just froze solid, I forgot the words. It was sooooo shockingly humiliating, not before my friends and visitors so much: the crowd just joined hands, swayed and sang the rest of the song altogether, but for my father and mother to see me so unprepared and vulnerable was horrifying. And they offered me no emotional support. That night at home, after a long, strange silence, my father was like, “I thought you were going to bring the house down, what happened to ya?” I was so outdone.

During a Spelling Bee when I was in 6th grade representing our city at the Regional Bee, someone from church, a newspaper reader obviously, offered my dad the ol’ “good luck to your daughter” which led to his unexpected “appearance” at the Spelling Bee auditorium. After months of my correctly spelling these ridiculous words far beyond my years and grade level, the sight of my father in the audience with this dark faithless look of fear, (which I now know to be chronic Low Self Esteem), caused me to flipping lose my composure once again. I bombed on the word “forty.” My mind went blank. I was sooo outdone. Gee, thanks Dad. From there on, I managed my academic successes very secretly. I quickly learned to drop the need to impress my parents with my grades and activities and to succeed for my own sake. Conversely, due to the embarrassment they suffered when I flubbed in their presence, they just learned to feign knowledge of my busy itinerary to the neighbors and co-workers when they spoke of my activities, and they would say, “Oh, yeah, where do you think she gets her talent from!!.

Maternal Jealousy

When I attempted to find joy my little life, there would be these moments where my mother would appear to take an interest in me. And usually it was when a new talent of mine was emerging.

When my father was a young aspiring minister speaking at various churches during his early years, it was a common practice for the minister to have his wife or mother to come and sing a special inspirational selection prior to the delivery of his message. Aware of the tradition in this newly joined church, my mother refused to participate despite her solid singing voice. When I was five, to spite my mother I believe, my father asked me to put together a little song to sing prior to his message at a highly anticipated regional event, the church was overflowing. It didn’t occur to me to be afraid. I sang the only song I knew. “Jesus Loves Me.” I remember this event so vividly. People were at first, tickled by this tyke’s tiny voice and confidence. Before the song was finished, I delivered some unexpected embellishments towards the end, tears were rolling down the cheeks of old ladies and people were on their feet in ovation. I took it all in stride. My father boasted for weeks. The church members would give me candy and smile at me. My mother, who chose not to even attend the all- important service was quiet and unacknowledgeing for some time during the days that followed. However, for the next few years whether she was angry at my father or not, she would not be denied this moment of Nsupply. She would sing as if she LOVED to sing and she would close her eyes and belt out his pre-message songs with all the feigned sincerity of a loving, supportive, Christian wife. I never really got to feel that wonderful feeling of applause and praise again during those years, but I had tasted it and I didn’t forget the sweetness of acceptance and applause from relative strangers.

As I mentioned before I was a leader in school and church activities. I was the youngest youth president our church had ever had and I was very active in school leadership. My mother, who for years refused to commit to women’s and minister’s wives groups, mostly to stymie my dad’s progress as a young minister, began to not just join groups, but went for the highest leadership positions available. My father was astounded. I would hear them argue about this at night beyond my bedroom walls. Sometimes he was shouting at her that she didn’t really do those things because she wanted to support him as a young minister, but for the recognition and attention it brought to her.

When I began writing as a youngster, I was entered into a few local Young Author’s Contests and began to place in them. One year, I won first place, a trophy, a huge dictionary, newspaper article and all. My mother, known by all to be THE worst speller, and just an overall hater of having to write things, ignored my accomplishments while secretly signing up for a local Community College writing course. This pass/fail course produced one five-pager, a story about the significance of a gift her father gave her. It was an okay story. Lots of plot holes and kind of dry, but because it had been grammatically and spelling corrected, it was her greatest masterpiece! My four bound blue-ribbon stories went into a steamer trunk, her short story stayed displayed prominently in various places in the home for months. I stopped writing.

When I was about 14, I performed an oration called “Thou Art There” based on a Psalm given to us by the judges of the First Annual Church Oratorical Contest. It was a spiritual oration with hand gestures and vocal intonations meant to inspire and move the listeners. It was a hit. I was being asked to perform it on a local, regional, and national level within my organization. It was at a regional event at this huuuuge church where I was to give this speech for this 10th or so time. I was sitting next to my mother in the pews when I told her I needed to go the bathroom prior to my performance. Initially she ignored me. Then as I would tap her on the arm to ask again, she covertly pinched the smallest piece of flesh on my thigh, OUUUCHH! and told me to be quiet. 45 minutes later, as I am watching dozens of people traipse back and forth to the bathroom, my knees are bouncing and tears are rolling down my face in discomfort. With bladder about to burst, I could not hide to the surrounding onlookers, my delimma. I was begging her to let me go pee. She finally could not pretend to be so caught up in the spirit that she couldn’t tell what was up with me. She allowed me to go. I could barely walk. I made it outside of the chapel and to the back bathroom, but there was a line 20 people long. I pissed myself, before I had the chance to give my speech. She tsk-tsked and grinned, “Too much soda…” I still hate her for that. Shortly thereafter she made the declaration that she was meant to deliver God’s word before people. And though female ministers were not allowed in the organization, she would go on to spend a considerable amount of energy proving to others that her spiritual musings were worthy of people’s attention.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on March 04, 2008, 09:03:06 PM: Mommie Dearest
I saw “Mommie Dearest” when I was a child. That movie really haunted me throughout my life. I didn't know my own mother was an Nmom as yet, but I knew there were some odd similarities between my mom and Joan Crawford. Mostly that whole dynamic that she was such a sugary, over-the-top actress with the outside world and was a miserable, grumpy, yelling, over-reactor at home. I, like Christina had the Christmas where we received all these gifts, which were then taken and given away to needy children. (To boot, one Thanksgiving she, in an extremely rare act of motherhood, prepared a full table spread, and feuled by some in-sensitive comment made by father, chucked the entire dinner outside into the back yard onto a fresh blanket of tall ice-hardened snow. I can still see and smell the steaming food settling into the cold pristine white-covered back yard. I, 7 or 8 was so shattered. Later, that night she “testified” in Thanksgiving church services that God had laid it on her heart to feed the birds because, get this, “How else were his precious creatures going to be able to get to their food in the rock hard ground underneath all that icy snow?” Was she for real? No one was allowed to give it away, that we, her human family members did not taste a drop of that immaculate smelling meal and were left to fend each for himself that night, much like the birds would have been I suppose.)

The scene in Mommie Dearest with the clothes hanger (No more WIRE HANGERS!!!) terrorized my dreams for some odd reason. In my recurring dream, I could feel my mother beating me with the wire hanger as I fell into the small closet. I saw the movie for the second time several months ago and I was just as disturbed, however watching the movie this time really empowered me. I watched it during a time that I was worried about the end of my mother's life and being the executor of her Estate, (my mom was at one time EXTREMELY financially successful). Seeing the way Joan Crawford left her daughter with nothing, especially after her daughter spoke so highly of her at the Academy Awards Ceremony, I was convinced that if I didn't let go of this drama with my mother and try to move on with my life, then I was going to be sick with regret and bitterness.

Speaking of beatings:
When I was five, my parents would fight constantly. I have distinct memories of a scenario when my mom came home from work furious that my father had allowed the children to make sandwiches on her new dining room table leaving behind scratches from the knife on the table. She was furious, he was calm, apathetic, she flipped her lid and grabbed the knife and wielded it towards him. He used a frying pan to ward her off and hit her square in the cheeks. She pressed charges. They separated for a time and mother took the children to live near her dysfunctional Family of Origin. This is the summer I was molested by my drunkened, porno-obsessed teenaged cousins who lived in the same duplex we rented. I do recall making a huge deal out of my private parts burning. I told my parents about my cousins being on top of me. I was ignored. My father and mother did not get back together until he had served out his penance sleeping in the broom closet of the small apartment for a few weeks.

As children, my brothers, and sister and I endured what are known as ritualistic beatings, where my father, under the assumption that no matter what state we were in when he arrived home for work, we had probably done something wrong and deserved a beating. He would come home, line us up and beat us nightly. Sometimes we knew why were getting the beating other times, not so clear. I now, at age 33, have all of these unexplained scars on my body. My knowledge of anatomy tells me that one’s epidermis, top layer of skin, is replaced about every seven years. If that is the case then these scars, a paramecium-shaped one on my left arm, a poorly-healed one on my right hand, and a huge gash across my eyebrows from which hair has never regrown. I get the feeling I was probably beat bad enough to need stiches a few times and never received them. I can remember nursing scrapes, hematomas, and whelps from a very, very young age. My dad’s last beating came when I was 17 and had a vehicle. He tried to take my keys in order to keep me at home. I was class president and needed to be out a lot and he was fuming at the idea of me being so free to go places with my new car. When he raised his hand to backhand my face, the rage of 17 years welled up in me and I grabbed the nearest thing I could, later I realized it was a spray bottle of Armour-All tire cleaner, and I raised it high in the air with the look of pure fury. I saw something in his eyes, something wild and crazy and deadly. But I think what he saw in my eyes was a reflection, one that was just as crazy at that moment. I’m not sure what damage I could have done with that little spray bottle but I think he got the idea what time it was.

Adolescence
Despite living an extremely sheltered life up until high school, I had become quite the social butterfly by 10th grade. I was class president twice, nominated for Most Popular and was the prom queen. In college, more of the same. I worked really hard at maintaining my friendships and learned many of the caveats of keeping people happy. I didn't just have one group of friends, or a major clique. I was a floating member of many, many cliques from the athletes to the pretty girls to the nerds. I pledged a sorority in college and tacked on about 100,000 more "friends."

Two years ago, I was proud and amazed at what I was able to accomplish as a child, but recently my spirit had begun to break as I mourned and felt sorry for the child in me. When I was 12, a sick, backwoods, farming family took an interest in me. Because my parents didn’t give a hoot in whose company I remained, they allowed this family (18 year-old daugter, 16 year old son, quietly weird mom and apathetic dad) to take me home with them after church on Sundays and some days in the summer. I wouldn’t/couldn’t protest this, and loved the nature and beauty of the countryside, so I looked forward to leaving my boring home. I read a lot, too, so a lot of the times, my head was buried in a book. (I was reading Tiger Eye by Judy Blume at the time. I had no idea, what sadistic plans this isolated family had for me on thier very isolated farm, but it felt to be too late once I was 3 months pregnant after only my second period. I remember those days when I was 12, the horrific feeling of being alone in this, hours and hours of crying alone while my siblings were in school.

And when I went into the abortion clinic alone to complete the paperwork and have the procedure, I remember having to take the clipboard with the paperwork which needed signing back out to the car, hidden under a large tree in the shade where my parents were parked together, talking. I didn’t think of it then, but I break up now, thinking, “they had each other to talk to, lean on." I had no one. Once the decision was made, I managed the entire process without my parents, save the 35 mile ride to the clinic. They were convinced the farm family was out to get them personally, because of jealousies within the church. Mom thought I should have known better than to let them trick me in such a way and told me NEVER to speak of the incident or to any of the farm family members again, ever.

That same week, at my mother’s insistence, she had a total hysterectomy at the age of 42 and against medical advice. She was going through the beginning stages of menopause and wanting nothing to do with losing control over her body, I imagine. The “change” would take place under her own terms. My father was against the surgery as he knew it would obliterate their sex life, or at least be used as an excuse to. He thought she insisted on the hysterectomy to spite him. During the first post-op days, I alone was summoned to sit at her bedside. Initially, I thought that this would be good, that maybe we would have the opportunity to talk about our emotional/gynecological dilemmas. I was at a complete lost for what was happening to my body. It still had not occurred to me that I wasn’t a virgin or that I had been violated. I was waiting for a conversation about what happened to me and how I came to be pregnant and why I was bleeding so much. But once I was left alone with her in the private hospital room, I was told to sit in a chair at the foot of the bed and just stay there. She was solemn and stone-faced. I was not allowed to speak. Instinctively I began to cry. I was told to SHUT UP!! When I sniffled and the tears rolled down my cheeks I was told to wipe my face and STOP IT!! I was to just sit quietly at her bedside as she steamed in silence. This is where I learned to squelch my emotions. I eventually returned home, my post-abortion pads soaked through from the uninterrupted sitting. I was not allowed to leave her bedside for even that one thing. It was horrible. 21 years later, I feel sick when I think about it.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on March 04, 2008, 09:06:03 PM: The Kindness of Strangers
There were kind people in my life, but often when I became too attached to someone as a child, the parents simply removed me from them. There was Mrs. Martha, my childhood neighborhood baby-sitter who watched a lot of the neighborhood kids. I LOVED her. We bonded as I sat between her legs having my hair braided. She loved to watch soap operas, and was a renowned cook, and she let us get away with extra visits to the “cookie monster” cookie jar without punishment. I followed her around like a puppy and she didn’t seem to mind. I was about five to six and I remember having such a good feeling when I was at her house. I also had teachers, principals, and other members of the community rooting for me. They knew what was going on in my crazy life, even when I had no idea. My parents were despised by some, both as a couple and individually and I could sense the hostility as a child. But I could also sense a desire to help me. I believe now, they could sense my naivete and sheltered/isolated circumstances. Quite a few narrow escapes in my childhood, probably due to unwitting helpers, (heroes) showed me my way of escape

My half-brother
Since I was a kid, I always wanted to be needed or even regarded by my oldest brother. He is nine years older and was very popular and handsome, smart as any man I knew until I met my husband. He was always in trouble, but he was by far, the "favored child." He was the first child born to her, by a much older man who wooed my mother when she was a teenager fresh from "the country" in a major metropolitan city. He taught her how to dress, talk, and behave for the city. He put her up while she went to LPN school and only asked for sex in return goes the story. When my brother was born, out of wedlock, my mother sent him, an infant, back to her town of origin to be raised by her own mother, our grandmother as my mother worked and finished her education without the stigma of being an unwed mother. Three years later, she met my father, whom according to her, she married because he was "really into" my brother and more importantly, they looked alike. So when she came to start her career with her son and new husband, who gave him his last name, no one knew that my father was not my brother's father. As a matter of fact, I didn't know until less than a decade ago, when someone at church let it leak during gossip. Anyway, I have a feeling that after a time, my father was not so kind to my brother and that there was jealousy between them. I also have a suspicion that my father may have been sexually abusive to my brother when he was a tot. My brother, has always been troubled and he would never say what it is that bothers him so. He will not admit what makes him try to kill himself with drugs and mistreat his children and their mothers so badly. Recently, when news of my own molestation by my older male cousins came to light, he admitted to me that he, too endured sexual misconduct by our family as a nine year old when two uncles forced him to watch as they masturbated themselves. This, he assumed was a punishment for some sexual misconduct perpertrated by my father to the alleged uncle’s wife. Convoluted, feuled by drugs and alcohol and sexual deviance.

Anyway, by the time their final three children came along, stairstepping in ages, me in the middle, my parents had denounced our family's past and had become "born again" holy rollers. My brother suffered a lot of abuse there, too. The church, according to my brother, changed my father and made him cold towards him. He no longer showed him any attention and he yelled at him and tried to beat him when he did. My mother and my father fought endlessly about my brother. She spoiled him with multiple bikes for Christmas and expensive clothes, toys, and eventually cars and gadgets. My father resented not being able to have a say in my brother’s child-rearing. My parents could never agree on what to do with him when he was getting in so much trouble in school. But each time, he went to jail, my mother, would bail him out, or keep lots of money on his jail account, or "put him up" completely equipped once he got out. She would give him position in her company. He would excel. She would become jealous and wield her CEO power to undo what he typically had done so well. He would be left to repair the carnage. She would prove the point that he would never be as smart than her. He would lose interest in the project. Depressed, he would re-connect with the old gang, they would use "old, familiar" ways to deal with problems. He began to steal from her to support his binges. She would become embarrassed, rage at him with awful tirades about his shortcomings, which would lead him to some big ACT, generally, of crime that would lead him back to jail, where she would begin the process all over again. It was cyclic, it was sick. He’s since been diagnosed BPD and most recently sent to the State Mental Facility to be evaluated for Severe Mentally Impaired status.

How I deal with pain
I have a very high threshold for physical pain. I recall the labor nurse constantly telling me I did not HAVE to pretend to endure the pain of childbirth contractions with my daughter, that I could have the epidural placed at any moment. I remember feeling pressured to get the epidural at the last moments of the childbirth, having had endured the worst of the discomfort, without meds.

I have been raped twice in my life, the first took my virginity and led to a pregnancy and subsequent abortion, the other at aged 15 was an anal rape by a neighborhood 20 year old where there was blood. I never experienced or recalled the visceral pain they must have caused. I think this quite odd to this day.

I have always been a crybaby. My siblings teased me for crying so much as a kid, at all the little holiday cartoon specials and Disney movies as a kid. Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special, each year on cue, despite my personal promises to hold it together, I would rain buckets of tears uncontrollably. The ridicule made me quite self-conscious about crying as an adult. I am a master at camafloging my emotions, but quite emotional nonetheless. I’m what you call a closet crybaby. And it’s often acts of kindness that make me cry. Inappropriately, I tend to snicker when I hear something uncharacteristically awful.

From my parents I received the message that dealing with painful things makes you worse, not better. I was programmed to think there was no use in drudging up, or enduring pain, best to avoid it completely. We lived an extremely sheltered and boring life. Ironically, as a child, I would beg my father to help me explain the bible verse beatitude that goes, “Blessed are the longsuffering, for they shall see God.”

The role of God in my childhood
Most of my help has come through my strong ties to God. I came to know Him as a 10-11 year old child in a cult-like Fundamentalist religious group. Really out there, church 6 days a week, 5 hours at a time, holiness facade but worst-case scenario abuse behind the scenes. But still, I could see God’s nature in the Sunday School lessons and Vacation Bible School and Church Plays and Pageants. I strayed away from God/church during my college years, when, not suprisingly, I exhibited a lot of the Nish traits I grew up on. I've recently rekindled the relationship as His teachings and Bible promises now have SO much more relevance to me. There are actually scriptures that refer to God's setting parents and their offspring at variance with one another for some higher reason/calling. So to all you creative, beautiful, special spirits out there maybe you ought to see yourself and your past as somewhat preparing you for a greater good. If you can detect and recognize evil in your own parents (who, if NPDs were probably trying to cover it up), imagine how you could be protective to other unsuspecting innocents before the damage you suffered happens to them. It's the stuff of superheroes.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on June 01, 2008, 08:08:51 PM: Current drama
Six months ago, I graduated from nursing school. My mother, a nurse of 35 years whose comments upon my telling her I’d gotten into nursing school were, “Well, look I can hardly ever get you on the telephone, let me bring you up to speed on what’s going on here before I’m unable to get in touch with you again!” In other words, a complete non-acknowledgement of my success or even attempting to follow in her footsteps. So I shouldn’t have been surprised that she did not come to either of my graduation ceremonies. Her excuse was that she ‘felt ill’. And since she was not able to come the entire 7-member clan was also unavailable to represent for me during graduation. It’s odd because I was certainly ambivalent about her being there. I was positive that she’d have found a way to steal the spotlight or to make the event a boring, uncomfortable fiasco but I still felt she of all people should have found a way to be there or to show some display of support or to even ‘allow’ some of the other family members who said they would be there to come. Well naturally, she did not. My N sister however, sent me textpages to say that she would take me out to dinner to celebrate at some later date (this will be a significant and ironic point later on). Fine, just as well, I had my hubby and little one, Jordan there to support me and I was happy. The day went on beautifully without incident. My father in law was the third guest and I’ll love him forever for that. If it weren’t for God sending me my hubby and his family I’m pretty sure I would be much more crazy by now!

Anyway, fast forward four months to April of this year when my mother decided to plan her own birthday/retirement party. A grand gala with fancy RSVP invitations, a prestigious gathering hall, and plans for 70-125 guests. When I received my invitation, naturally I was leary about going. Mostly because any event in honor of my mother, and there have been many such self-planned celebrations down through the years turns into a “line-up-and\-spew-all-the-compliments-and-glorious-facts-you-know-about-me-and-only-me-for-four-hours” event. It can be grueling and often one cannot decide whether or not they want the figurative “finger gun” to be aimed at his/her own temple or at the big Narci’s.

Personally, I was dreading the party, but like a beautiful sign from above, in the mail came another invitation set for the same date to my husband’s grandmother’s 80th birthday celebration. Without a second thought I praised God for his small miracles and never gave a second thought about RSVPing yes to hubby’s grandma and no to Nmom, afterall, she is the woman who enveloped me into her family with open arms, keeps a loving eye on my daughter when hubby and I need a date night, taught me how to cook, not just decent but darn-good meals for my family, the list goes on. There was no question in my mind, it was the easiest choice in the world for me to make.

My own grandmother has never acknowledged me in a positive way. Months earlier, in one of our few and definitely our last conversation my own mother’s mother, a witch of an N, told me she hated me. It was in the context of a convoluted business situation that had gone terribly awry. But she said it with such calm and purpose, I believed it and decided the emotionally toxic levels were far too high for me to tolerate and that it’d be best if I never see or speak to her again. Mind you, my mother, N grandma’s daughter, said nothing to console me or even attempt to justify why her mother would speak in such a way to her own daughter.

Needless to say, I would prefer the good time guaranteed at my hubby’s grandma’s 80th celebration. And it was indeed a wonderfully normal event chock full of fun and appreciation and interesting people. My daughter did a lovely poem for her Big Mama while I helped served food to the guests and my husband took pictures to commemorate the affair. It was time and energy well spent. My mother on the other hand, just HAD to call me after her event and whine. She chose not to address me directly: she went on and on, however about how aforementioned Ngrandma, of all people, did not show up to her retirement party and how badly it looked to everyone that her own mother was not at her retirement party. She refused to address me directly as she knew through the grapevine that I had RSVPed early, giving the honest reason to the ‘alleged party planners’ for why I wouldn’t be there. I say alleged because we all know who was really planning the party no matter how many middlemen she strategically placed and labeled ‘planners.’ She opined for about an hour about how grandma’s absence ruined the event. What’s weird is that her and Ngrandma had been on the “outs” for the last several months and were not even really on speaking terms. So she was definitely sending not-so-subliminal messages to me by proxy. I, however, had on my ‘emotional insulation,’ super-tight and was not giving her any extra feul for her controlled but furious fire. I would occasionally break her tirade with questions like, “Well, did you have a nice showing?” She said, “Of course! And there were many who telephoned upset because they wanted to be invited and we had to turn them away because we only had enough space and food servings for 100 people. And your sister (Nsister) really stepped up in the planning and the presentations and she spoke so well of me and made me so very proud!!”

My mother’s talk of my sister, whom I believe to have many of the characteristics and background criteria for NPD, wavers between golden child and scapegoat as she deems manipulate-appropriate. When my sister and I compare notes, to her I am the golden child and to me I am the family scapegoat. Paradoxically, whenever it suits my mother, especially when I am stepping ‘out of line’ and need a verbal flogging, my sister develops wings and incredibly becomes the ‘chosen one’. My mother, on most occasions, considers my sister a grand screw-up. She complains that she is an embarrassment because of the men she prefers to date (emotionally abusive, drug abusing, criminal, borderline types) and due to the fact that my sister steals money from my mother’s bank accounts, a habit she got from my oldest brother whose getting too old and recognizable to get away with local check cashing con games these days. (Aside: I believe this is a way, be it conscious or not, for my siblings to get back at Mom for a lifetime of manipulating them with money and objects).

Of course, these roles [scapegoat and golden child] have been interchangeable, but to each of us they’ve been all types of damaging because of course, Mom never brags about the golden child TO the golden child, only to the scapegoat. It does the double-duty of keeping the siblings alienated from one another while making us feel like crap when we are forced to be alone with her. It’s a no-win scenario when she’s deniably berating us while superficially giving kudos to the kid who was the very bane of her own existence some short time prior.

Despite this, she spends a lot of time supporting my sister financially, setting her up in business, paying her biweekly, paying her fees and wardrobe and covering any and other gaps in her personal finances. She sent my sister to business school immediately following the news of my getting into nursing school in an attempt I believe to both belittle my recent re-entry into academia while setting my sister up to be able to run her businesses for her, the original plan she had for me, that failed horribly due to my “ornery ways and inability to just do what she wanted without question.” My sister was due to graduate five months after me this May.

More to follow...
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on June 01, 2008, 08:37:08 PM: Current Drama continued…

My missing the retirement party was a real source of narcissistic injury to my mom. She made it clear that by certain family members missing the event, it made her look bad. Why wouldn’t the daughter who helped run the businesses for several years and as far as the general public was concerned, benefited in every way possible from her generous mother’s showering of blessings and opportunity, not come to support her mother’s retirement? For one thing, if I thought she was really retiring per se, I may take it more seriously. I know she will never give over the reigns to any person(s) and just enjoy her golden years in peace. Her life is about havoc and all consuming power and control. Also, if the general public only knew what I knew, they would understand perfectly why I would not want to show my face in an event celebrating her business prowess. My mother while never formally instructing me on the ways of the business and how to actually run the business, expected me to anticipate her daily needs and to do all the gruntwork, both on the executive and the “worker bee” levels. She poured all her problems on me, mostly run-ins with the federal and state vendors, IRS, employment commission, state tax department, etc. about being late on bills. She would have me call the vendors and explain to them that I was speaking on her behalf when asking them for extensions and other “breaks” to her because she was so ill and feeble. She, a nurse, mind you has the ability to create these Maunchausen-type illnesses by throwing her body into varied crises like hyperglycemia (high blood sugar; usually by drinking an extra large sweetened iced tea) or hypertensive crisis (high blood pressure; normally by gorging on a Chinese food dinner) spending hours in the Emergency Dept. summoning children, ex-husband, and minions from far and wide to her final hours on Earth. After the first two, I stopped showing up. You can rehearse for someone’s death but so many times for their own folly before it got old.

Vendors would feel sorry for her and they would cut her breaks with a promise that she would catch up on her payment schedule and begin paying on time. It was quite fascinating actually to watch they way officials would melt and subdue to her charms. I, the faithful, capable daughter was usually just the ‘insurance’ the agencies needed to feel confident that we would re-gain control over the finances and get back in good standing.

Being delinquent on bills was a longstanding problem stemming from lavishing business income on new “toys” like electronics, cars, and multiple apartments with new furnishings and personal assistants. The people she bought, or more delicately placed on her payrolls to do things like drive her everywhere, be personal shoppers, clean her home, wash her underwear, keep her company were often members of the extended family or her church family, or former employees who were in a pinch for income and would do whatever they could to earn a paycheck. At first they never minded the menial work, lack of appreciation for extra efforts, and increasing dissatisfactory work conditions- mom tends to drive you harder and harder with each paycheck. Eventually they one by one came to either despise her for her wanton folly with their feelings and/or time. Or they were not quite sure why they just didn’t enjoy being around her anymore. She has a charming way of seeming needy but capable and a way of having you help her seem more than worth your while. She baits you with your own greed or need. She will drive herself broke trying to maintain this need to control people with money. She often complains “With all I’ve done for so and so, you would have thought that he would have done better than…” She believes that it is the great privlege of the many nameless “boys and girls” under her employ to work and learn and eat from her table scraps.

Well it’s May and time for my sister’s graduation and I am more than happy to attend my sister’s graduation. I text her to clarify the date so that I can assure I have the date off. It’s Mother’s Day, lovely coincidence, I think with sarcasm, but I’m not going to let that ruin the day. I tell my sister to expect me and she’s excited. She gives the heads up to my mother, I’m not so sure why because what it does is rekindle the previous month’s resentment for my not coming to mom’s party and begins a series of random calls to my cell phone. This is problematic because sometime after the last conversation with mom, the one where she found every way to make me feel like crap, I’d decided that I was going to initiate “No Contact” with her in an attempt to get my own stuff together and to break free from her games. She sensed this lack, I supposed and subsequent to my sister’s news of my attempts at communication with her, followed through with a series of calls to my cellphone all of which I ignored.

So Graduation/Mother’s Day comes and to my economic surprise, my car needs four new tires, and some other work to be roadworthy. I get the work done and have some ridiculously small amount of money left in the bank. I still think I’m going to make every effort to go. I don’t even consider the fact that this is the third 12-hour night shift for me at the hospital. When I get home from work at 8:00 am the morning of the graduation, I can barely keep my eyes open. I promise myself one to two hours of shut eye before I get up, get dressed, eat and prepare to drive the two hour trip (I may have to borrow gas money to come home once I get there, I’m thinking as I drift off to sleep) to my sister’s graduation. Well, no grand surprise here, I overslept. When I awakened the first thing I did was call my sister, she was in the processional line in her cap and gown. I was so sorry. I felt really bad. I didn’t know what to say to her and I could hear my mother and niece in the background. It was so Freudian. Somehow, the phone was suddenly given to my niece who attempted to strike up a conversation with me. I felt like a dweeb. I asked my niece where the after festivities would be, she gave me weird sound and we lost connection, both figuratively and physically. My sister took no more calls from me for the rest of the night and the next day. Mom did call my phone, however, leaving a message in a chipper tone about returning the call to “them” when I could. Once again the puppetmaster was in control of who gets to talk to whom, and how each was perceived. Now, I was the selfish sister and daughter who continually failed to come through for this family. My sister failed to return any of my calls for several days.

Two weeks ago, I sent sister a final textpage saying that I loved her and that I was really sorry for missing her graduation and that I wanted to take her out to celebrate whenever it was good for her. She failed to return the page. Like before, my mother followed-up instead with an immediate callback. She called to say that she needed my help with something. That the state employment commission was on her back again and this time she would need my help in dealing with the mean “Ms. Bradshaw, because she knew that I knew how to deal with her and people like her.” Translation: I know you want to talk to your sister and be accepted by the family, but it will be under my terms and for my benefit exclusively. You do not have the choice to have a relationship with your siblings and none with me. If you want to come to this family it must be by me, the grand all-knowing chief Narci. Now return my call, lest I summons you!
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on June 01, 2008, 08:39:31 PM: A moment for introspection:

I’ve had to ask myself about the role I’ve played in maintaining this dynamic between my mother and me. Is it possible that I didn’t go to mom’s retirement knowing that it was in retaliation for her failure to come to my own graduation? Might I have then wanted her to feel the sadness and anger I felt from having no one from the family to support me? Did I further piss her off by intentionally seeking out my sister to make her feel special? Were my attempts to support my sister against-all-odds driven by a desire to show Mom what lengths I was willing to go to for those I cared about, even despite my sister’s own lack of effort to come to my graduation ceremony? It’s convoluted and I’ve struggled with guilt and shame and anxiety about all of it and I have began to have physical manifestations like vertigo and fatigue and stomach pain all of which I associate with depression and anxiety over it all.

So thus begins my third attempt at a long period of No Contact with not just Nmom but with all who fall under her reign. I read somewhere that it is selfish of a person to think his/her presence/input/advice in a situation is always to the benefit of those s/he wishes to help/benefit/change. That in fact sometimes your input and desire to see people in another light or a better situation is in fact participating in the same manipulation you profess to abhor. That the mission is self-awareness and realizing your own purpose in this life is my most recent lesson with all this. I know if I absolutely need to talk to mom I’ll use my old tools, indifference, disappearing and emotional insulation, but the goal for me now is No Contact for as long as possible. I deserve some peace, I think. Wish me luck!
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on June 08, 2008, 07:18:50 PM: Mother's response to NC

I have not been returning my mothers calls for about six weeks now. It is probably better not to listen to the voicemails either, however I have been. The last message was today: (in really sad, thoughtful, guilt-inducing tone she says) “Yeah, this is your Mom, I’ve been trying to get in touch for a few weeks now and I guess you haven’t been checking your voicemail messages or you’ve been busy but I miss you and I’ve been thinking about you. I guess I’m going to have to wait for you to check your messages or for you to think about me and call. I just want you to know that I love you and I’m waiting to hear from you.”

Now, she’s pulling out the heavy artillery. Tossing the “L” word around. Things must be really stressful for her now, if she’s resorting to such strong measures as to say I love you. She knows exactly how to dish out the things I always longed for when she’s desperate. A transparent attempt to placate me. It only happens rarely and it always amazes me how much it smarts to hear her say it. I expect she’ll ask how my husband and daughter are doing next. I just needed to acknowledge this moment. Not a huge biggie. The urge to return the call only lasted about one minute. That minute was followed by 20 minutes of anger (while typing) and now I’m okay. Looks like I’ll live to fight another day. In the meantime, not being engrossed in her problems has given me the time to go on a few dates with hubby, schedule my vacation time in August and to begin the writing framework for a nonprofit project I’m trying to start with my best friend. No contact has its benefits that is for sure.

Later

Tiffany
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on July 03, 2008, 09:58:53 AM: The last weeks were difficult for me. There were times when I thought I might break down and call someone from the FOO to connect in some way. I miss them honestly and resent the fact that I have to do so much work NOT to connect with them. The latest pang was three days ago when I had the impulse to text message my sister with the very cryptic and paranoid message, “Don’t believe all that you hear, some of it is lies.” I had just re-read some literature on Nmothers and became re-infuriated at what I’m missing out on in life being the victim of her manipulative folly. Anyhow, I “counted to 10” and got over that feeling, glad that I didn’t reveal my frustrations and make a fool of myself.

It had been about 2 or 3 weeks since Nmom’s last attempt to contact me and I had made a decision a week ago that whenever she called next, I would answer and have a brief, indifferent conversation. My thinking was that it takes so much energy to AVOID someone and that indifference is the better way to handle the No Contact lifestyle. If an Nparent knows you’re taking efforts to ignore him/her, he/she may be able to manipulate the scenario to others and portray you as cruel or inhumane for the act of ignoring or for unfairly holding a grudge. Worse, in my opinion, she may gain an intense personal satisfaction in having irritated/molested me to such a degree I would have to go to great lengths just to avoid her. It may not be positive attention but it does, in fact, constitute attention and in my case, I believe my mom would take any attention she could get at this juncture. After deciding that I wouldn’t put so much effort into being upset or resenting, the phone stopped ringing and I was resign to a having a brief, nonchalant conversation whenever Nmom called me next.

An Unexpected Event

Fast forward to two days ago. I was at the hospital (oncology unit) working when I recognized the name of an old family friend and former fellow churchgoer. I hadn’t been to this church in a decade or so, I considered it to be a cult when I left for college after high school and never looked back. Most of the pain I’ve endured in this world has in some significant way been connected via this church, and I made a personal pact to flee and never return to this organization after my last service 16 years ago. I guess it shouldn’t be a major deal to me that this man was a patient on our unit, however when I saw his name, I had an instantaneous reaction in my gut. I knew my Nfather was one of this man’s closest comrades and that by the end of the week I would be dealing with my family in some way. First, I ran into my old pastor, surprisingly spry for 85 years old, who had stopped by for a visit to the patient. I thought he might not recognize me but he did, and he seemed glad to see me. He said with a quizzical turn of the head, “You look good…” He mentioned that he had just seen my entire family (they had been estranged from the church as well, only my father was attending the old family church), the previous two Sundays as visitors to the church. I was a little surprised by that, and considered it a “heads up” on the fact that he would probably see someone from my family again soon. I went home that day with dread. After seeing the patient’s wife, who too mentioned that my entire family sans me had visited the old church and that she would be sure and tell everyone that she saw me. The next day, I had the patient in the bed next to the family friend. I was there on a quick four hour fill in shift, I thought I would be “in and out” and that maybe, just maybe I wouldn’t have to worry about making a trip down memory lane with a bunch of chatty, curious, church-folk visitors, when I heard, “Pssst”

I was in the middle of an urgent phone call about my patient when I turned and saw my father and sister’s daughter, yes the sister who is currently not speaking to me for not coming to her graduation. They both had full cheesy grins when I approached them with hugs. My father says, “So this is where you work?” I had told them which hospital but never which floor, or maybe I did once and he forgot. I promptly told both that I was in the middle of trouble-shooting a situation: I had a post-operative patient, still groggy from anesthesia, who was in an enormous amount of pain and delirium, and needed my undivided attention. After hearing the question by my father, “You sure you know what you’re doing? Do you need to get some help?” I gave him a sarcastic smile, (such a typical expression from my doubt-inducing dad) and led the two of them to the patient’s room, also the room of the patient with whom I was working. My father gave a quick acknowledgement and a quickie 6-second prayer to the church-friend and then returned his attention to me, I was currently trying to keep my delirious, tubing-laden, nearly nude patient from trying to exit his bed in a stupor. My father stood there staring, while my niece pulled out her camera phone to snap a shot of me at work. A lot going on there in the moment and I was quite perturbed. A quick goodbye and they were off.

I thought, okay, news travels fast. Maybe they will leave well enough alone and consider this an inevitable coincidence of sorts. Later that day, my mother calls. I had already made this pact to answer the next call she gave and I was also in the middle of a nap, so a little disoriented when I saw her name on caller id. She was surprised that I called right back. I could hear this in her voice. She was, however instantaneously polite sounding. (I later listened to the voicemail she left in the minute between my callback to her: she sounded annoyed and mean). She asked if I liked my job, as if she couldn’t believe I could. She also wanted me to know immediately that she had been going to the old cult church again. I believe she’s embarrassed in some ways to be going back to something she made such great efforts to leave. You see, this organization does not believe in female ministers/clergy and when she left the organization, (a few months following my unprecedented decision to leave that church for good), she, too went back to college, to obtain a degree in divinity. She always felt the churchfolks were jealous of her spiritual abilities and of her lifestyle as a business owner and millionaire (in the 90s). And, although it seemed she was well liked and respected, she harbored a notion that the folks were envious and oppressive towards her. In actuality, I believe I bore the brunt of many of the ill feelings the church people allegedly had towards her. I was persecuted in this church. I was treated with such mean-ness and oppression by various factions in the church. Petty things like my style of dress (I am a clothes-horse and love cutting edge design and color; this church encouraged bland sameness) and issues like my popularity at school (this church believes that we “saints” are to be IN this world but not OF it). The youth groups would bring me up on official charges (punishable by banishment to the back bench of the church, an old fashion method of shunning members without the messy exile process) of disobeying the church’s laws and would design punishments to make my life miserable. This is the same church where I was raped at 12, stripped of my ability to express my individuality and gifts, and where I was told losing weight was pure vanity and that I would need to stop it immediately before I became too thin (gimme a break I was age 17, 5’6”, 145 lbs, size 10, nowhere near too thin). They discouraged high schoolers from going to college, as it was a bevy of sin, of course.

Back to the issue, despite my intentions to just be on the telephone with my mother for maybe 12 minutes and then politely excuse myself, I could not get a word in edgewise and was forced to listen as my mother went into the routine litany of her current life events. I can get really upset at the end of one of these diatribes because she tends to be frank about her feelings regarding the various people she’s abusing. My brother for instance: My mother has been unable to easily “scare off” his current girlfriend, whom my mother sees as a pure embarrassment (she has 11 children, she’s 35). My mother goes through these horrible cycles with my brother. There is definitely a Munchausen by proxy syndrome situation there. Mother provides all his physical needs, except sex of course—hence, the love of his girlfriend I suppose. His housing, food, health/pharmacy expenses, etc. are paid by my mother and in exchange, she must know his whereabouts at all times. Her primary complaint with my brother is that he is not adequately attentive to her. She requires a daily call, on-demand visitation as needed, and free and open access to all his thoughts and intentions. He was, historically happy to oblige until he met the new girlfriend, whom indeed has a few “issues” of her own. She drinks to excess daily and she has a scathing tongue. She’s had major verbal “blowups” with my father, my aunt, and some neighbors to boot. I kind of wish I had her brash verbal abilities, at times. I fantasize about what it would feel like to cuss out some of the crazy outlandish personalities in my family. But then I look at the corner she’s painted herself into being labeled mentally unstable and unfit and I think, ‘Probably better to keep the non-confrontational approach with my family’ Poor girl, though I believe she’s using the only instincts she has to deal with dysfunction of this family. Even if she does have some dysfunctional behaviors of her own, she couldn’t have had a clue what she was signing on for when she decided to be my brother’s live-in girlfriend.

More to follow...
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on July 03, 2008, 10:00:32 AM: My brother

To the point, my mother was speaking of how my brother, whom she now has on her payroll to be the primary caregiver/ 24 hour sitter for my great aunt who has Alzheimer’s disease, now has a means to help foot the house expenses, (11 kids, could you imagine the water and electric bills?!!). I think it also serves the purpose to attempt to keep him inside his home and his girlfriend and her kids (all of whom “live” in one of my mother’s rentals, currently without electricity) out of his (my Nmom’s) home. My father also keeps a room in my brother’s house, as my mother and father, although divorced still live together but have these “blow ups” that often end in my mother sending my father somewhere to lick his wounds while they both calm down only to resume the fight again in several weeks. They fight mostly about, get this, “childrearing” and the mistakes each made with the “children” that can be corrected now via direct intervention in their 30-40 something year old lives. Between arguments, my father has agreed, by my mother’s prodding I am sure, to pop-in, daily, on my brother, to 1) monitor the care for our lovely but challenging great-aunt and 2) bear witness to the comings and goings of the girlfriend and her children all while 3) report and confirm to my mother the proof of my brother’s lascivious ways. They of course, tell my brother that the reason my father needs to stay with my brother is because he needs someone to look after him since he unexpectedly has grand mal seizures due to his epilepsy. The latest issue with my brother’s illness is that although he has told my mother his anti-seizure meds are running low, she has not seen to it to refill the prescription, yet. She said during our conversation, “He needs to call me and come and get me and take me to the drugstore if he wants me to help him with his prescriptions.” NTranslation: I know I said I would cover this expense for him as needed, but it was SUPPOSED to be in exchange for time and attention and validation towards me. My brother obviously would rather go without his meds and risk having a seizure than to spend some quality time with his mother. Sounds like chaos right? My Nmother wouldn’t have it any other way. She has to get up pretty early in the morning to pontificate on all the puppets she has in play and the best way to keep all the complicated strings from entangling. All the while, the marionette causes the puppets to play their parts, smoothly, with no control over their own actions.

Besides being a major feature in my brother’s life, my mother was placing her mental energies into finding a way to start all over again with her own current life situation. She expressed major disappointment with all facets of her life, her dwindling financial resources mostly and the belief that the old church family will consider her ‘defeated’ if she returns like a prodigal daughter back to fellowship again after all these years. She regrets having to be seen coming down the aisle to her pew leaning on a cane, and she is extremely annoyed at having to stand and sit and stand and sit so repeatedly throughout this church’s services. She also talks of having a “body makeover,” (she loves to tell the story of how sexy she was when she first came to that church 40 years ago during the era of the short short mini skirt. She’s 6’1. She considered herself a stallion, “the (self-proclaimed) Body Beautiful”). She considered it a major downer to have to attend this church again, of which she apparently is in serious consideration. This was further supported by her request of me to consider going on a one week vacation to the Church’s National Convention in Atlanta, GA the last week in July. She told me not to rush my response to think about it. It took great reserve and intestinal fortitude for me not to blurt out, “Are you crazy?! Heckie no! If I my vacation request is honored I’m going to spend that week doing something romantic with my hubby and something fun with my daughter and new puppy. The LAST thing I would want to do with my spare time is go on an 8 hour road trip with Controlling Annie. I’d prefer water torture. She didn’t even give a thought to what I might want to do with my own little family if I had time off from work. For that matter, during this entire conversation, there was no inquiry in any way about her granddaughter or son-in-law.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on July 03, 2008, 10:03:17 AM: An Attempt to Break “No Contact”

So, today, I’m checking my voicemail and I hear a day old message from my brother who’s saying, “Hey, there I’m just calling from [your Hospital]. I’m down at the information desk and I thought I’d see if I could visit with you. I’m here to get Financial Screening, finally. [Quick note, this is something my mother has put off doing for about four years. She, the Munchausen mom I believe her to be, keeps my brother at the local, barely par medical treatment facilities and is normally reactionary in her approach to his healthcare seeking, taking him to the ED when he inevitably has a breakthrough seizure after lapsing on his meds, usually. Her reason for putting off the screening process at this particular hospital was that it was too far to come during a seizure or for clinic visits. This was before I was employed there, or before anybody knew that I was employed there. I believe this resumption of that screening process to be related to the latest, despite my best efforts, ‘me’ sightings. I’m sure my mother was standing there as my brother fumbled through this voice message trying to sound matter-of-factly about coming to see his sister at her job. If he really was clueless as to why there was a sudden change in heart regarding this screening process he’s been begging to complete for the past several years, he probably figured out why once my mother dragged him all the way to the hospital, a feat for her so early in the day, and had him call me on my cell phone immediately upon arriving in the hospital lobby. I wonder if they even got the screening done that day…

Now What?

I’ve gotta set some boundaries here. I think I need to return the call to my bro and say, “Look, stopping by the job to visit me, not cool.” It’s unprofessional, it’s inappropriate, it’s downright tacky. Normally, in a hospital, groups of weird-looking folks who all look alike, are there to see a patient, not an employee. When I’m at work, I’m working. We can do lunch some other time. I’m feeling a little violated here.

When it comes to my mother, I feel she’s behind all the actions of my brothers, sister and father. I believe she cuts them off from my communication as she likes and she mobilizes them to interact with me as she wishes. I am the wild card. I am the one out there trying to live my life and be happy. I am the one defying all of her tales of the horror that await you when you attempt to cut the strings from the Grand Puppetmaster. I believe her invitation to travel for a week to Atlanta with the old church is an attempt to bring me back into the drama that is her life. She gleans and sucks energy from me and it has, in the past, left me lethargic and just a drag to be around. How is it that she is not even considering my family and how they would like to spend our summer vacation? Why would she want me to re-join that cult of an organization? Does she not remember what life was like for me when I was a member there? Does she not believe there a reason despite an annual invitation, someone would not return to the church of their youth for a decade or more? Does she even want to have that conversation or does she just want me to, like every other horror of my life, get over it? Gosh, I thought I had and I believed I was busy trying to…

‘Normal-functioning-myself’ flies in the face of the ‘Nmom Program’, which dictates, “Through me you find all happiness and satisfaction in life. There is no joy in working a traditional job, there is no happiness in relationships outside the FOO, there is no way to survive without my support.” I guess spotting me on the job sent a bunch of people into a tizzy, old church personalities and the immediate FOO. And I think the overall theme is, “ Hey N, you gave me the impression that Tiffany was doing no better than a lump on a log, She looks okay to me!”

I am okay.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on July 24, 2008, 08:56:00 AM: The Trip to Atlanta

Since the last entry I’ve been trying to play it cool with the FOO and laying low on the whole trip to Atlanta, GA idea. My mother called a week ago to say that she was just about ready for travel. She had gone to several doctor’s appointments, tweaked her prescriptions, and updated her care regimen. She was pretty excited. She asked again if I thought I might want to travel with her. I did not immediately call her back. And the reason I didn’t come right out to my mother and say, “not interested,” is because in the back of my mind I thought it would be great if Jordan could ride back to Virginia from Atlanta with my parents. I thought it great because we are so financially strapped and gas is soooo expensive. It was just an idea though and I was torn with whether I could actually trust my parents to bring her back without any drama. I knew how capable they were of creating a lot of drama in a little time (it’s an 8 hour drive). I was worried about them interrogating her about her and her parents’ lives, habits, etc. I feared she would be used to get to me.

At one point, I thought Jordan might not be able to go on her visit because we could not work out the logistics as smoothly as I thought it should be. Another consideration was that my husband’s sister, with whom my daughter would be spending about half of her time there, was involved in some stressful doctor’s visits with several consultations about some lumps she had in her breast. She insisted that Jordan should come down and that she would not be any burden or distraction to her. She works from home so I agreed to allow Jordan to go see her folks. How she was to get home was up in the air. I decided to hold on speaking to my parents about it. If she were to ride back with them, it would be better, I thought, to provide that information on a need to basis, like maybe the day before they leave GA to come back home. I’ve found that while they (Nmom and Ndad) are quite the opportunists, things work out best when they are caught off guard.

I received a voice mail from mother days after the previous call saying, “Hey, It’s a beautiful day, today and I was just thinking of you, I love you, kiss Jordan, and how’s hubby.” What did I tell you before? When she throws that statement about hubby and child she thinks she;’s really getting to me. She thinks that is just the maximum in consideration to me, to say I Love you, how’s your kid and husband in the same sentence, she’s really pushing for some Nsupply. She really wants a callback. She’s desperate. She’s being tooo nice. Over the years, I’ve learn to distrust nice behavior in people because of this lady. What’s odd is that instead of getting that warm, fuzzy feeling you are supposed to get when someone says those things, I got super suspicious and decided not to call right back just yet.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on July 24, 2008, 08:57:04 AM: A call from Father

A day turned into a week and as I awaited her next move, I received a voicemail from my father, saying “Call me, it’s important.” I had a decision to make, now. Do I, knowing that father is probably doing mother’s bidding in some way, continue to try to hold fast to my No Contact attempts or do I call back, besides it’s “important.” So I call him. It’s my niece’s birthday and the family (mother, sister-who is still not speaking to me, and father) is out to dinner and a go-kart recreational place. It’s unusual for someone to be allowed to have a cell phone conversation while in the presence of my mother as she has to have constant and undivided attention, but my father is allowed to have this 30 minute telephone conversation with me. First, I should note that he, too is all sweetness and lights. He calls me “baby” (very weird) and he speaks in a very fake sing-song voice as if he were speaking to a toddler or a puppy. I wonder if my parents know just how transparent they’ve become. I think they believe they are still “slick” and cunning with their manipulations but it’s almost comical the way they come off to me these days.

Anyway, my father made chit-chat and small talk to which I remained aloof in private anticipation of his “important” issue. He spoke of his friend about whom I wrote earlier who was on my unit prior to his surgery to resect his cancer. He apparently was back in my hospital for some post surgery complications. He also spoke of his own brother who was currently undergoing chemotherapy for recurrent colon cancer. He was not able to visit his brother, father complained, because he so busy dealing with family problems here on the homefront. Problems like my mother’s health, my brother’s drug recovery which calls for daily chauferuring to and my other brother’s personal problems with aforementioned “town whore.” My sister, was doing okay, per dad, she was losing a good deal of weight on her diet and “looking good.”

He then cut to the chase. “The other night I had a dream….” I think to myself, ‘Oh, here we go, dream time.” Quick aside re: my father’s dreams. Throughout my life, my father and mother have believed that they have the power to dream prophetic dreams. My mother’s dreams of foreboding danger generally involve a snake of some type. When I was growing up, it would not be unusual for her to say, “I had a dream last night about a small white snake and I thought of you, so no, you can’t go to this (whatever) tonight, something could happen to you.” Or she would say, “I had a dream of 10 big black snakes, something terrible is going to happen.” Many major decisions rested upon the snake dreams of my mother. My father’s dreams tend to be less dramatic, but the significance he places on them when he gets a certain feeling can be just as dramatic as mother’s. So I have grown up with the sense that dreams have supernatural significance. As I became older and a lover Psychology, I began to research dream phenomena and now feel comfortable about what dreams really are and why we have them and where they come from. Have you ever asked your favorite N what they dream of? It can be quite telling. My father’s dream as he described it to me:

“There was a woman I didn’t know standing before me with her back turned and she was in silhouette or a shadow. I could see from the back that she had a large growth on her neck and shoulder area. I wondered who the woman was and something said it’s [my name].” From there he says, “I know you looked like the picture of health when I saw you the other day, but I would like for you to get yourself checked out by a doctor, okay? I debated long and hard about whether I should come to you or not, but I think you should see someone.” I told him I already had several appointments to follow up on various aspects of my health now that I have great medical coverage with my new job. There was a little more chit-chat. I did not ask to speak to mother or sister and I sent a “Happy Birthday” to my niece via Dad. We hung up.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on July 24, 2008, 08:59:15 AM: Dream Fallout

Immediately, I regressed to childhood. A quick flash of all the interactions between my father and I came before my eyes and years of resentment returned in an instant. How dare he do this to me?! It has been so typical for him to take a perfectly nice scenario/event/conversation and turn into a Debbie-Downer situation. He won’t call me to say Happy Birthday, or I love you, or how are you, or just thinking of you. The only reason I’m in his thoughts now, I believe is because his favorite person in the world, his pastor, laid eyes on me while at work. I think all the hubbub surrounding seeing me at work (honestly, I think my family was in denial about my existence, definitely about the fact that I completed school and am in the working world making without the support of my mother), caused him to begin to regard me again. This dream, I think is indicative of years of inducing doubt and fear into his children. It can be a tool of manipulation if one puts credence in other’s dreams. It can also drive you to accept the seeds of doubt and worry and begin to fertilize and water that seed therefore bringing to manifest the very thing someone has wished upon you. The power of suggestion can indeed be very powerful.

After my initial flare-up of anger, I pulled myself together and with the working knowledge that dreams are manifestations of our own fears and subconscious thoughts, I pulled out a dream dictionary to research the symbols in his dream.

Daughter (Sick)
One’s relationship with the daughter, might show the feelings in the relationship being “ill.” The daughter can represent what happens in a marrriage between husband and wife. The child is what has arisen from the bonding, howver momentary of two people. Indreams the child therefore is sometimes used to depict how the relationship is faring.

Illness
If one has painful memories which are never cleared, or feelings of anger or resentment which are held within, these will often be shown in a dream ans an illness or infection; a collapse of one’s confidence, or the uprising of fears and depression can also be shown as illness. Also occasionally depicts the way we attempt to get love or attention, by being ill, sometimes relates to our actual physical body, but quite rarely, also may show our intuitions about the physical condition of someone else.

Cancer
Fear of this illness, a part of our personality or being which is out of harmony with our wholeness, expression of how we feel about other people’s--especially our mother’s-- emotional influence. This influence might be eating away at our own sense of well being. Occasionally awareness of illness in part of body suggested.

Neck
Connection between body (feelings and sexuality) and head (thinking and willing), weak point. Often refers to attitudes, as in idioms; breaking one’s neck; up to his neck; risk one’s neck; stick one’s neck out; dead from the neck down.

Shoulder
Ability to bear or carry what life brings. Idioms: have broad shoulders; put one shoulder to the wheel; a shoulder to cry on; rubs shoulders with; chip on the shoulder.

Shade,Shadow/Sillhouette/Shadowy figure
feeling ‘put in the shade’; feelings still overshadowing one from past experiences or relationships; feeling inferior; protection; occasionally a sense of the dead or fear of the unknown. Idioms: afraid of one’s shadow; shades of, shadow of one’s former self; worn to a shadow. meeting one’s own feelingof fear. This is obvious because the shadowy figures are our own rejected emotions or potentials. The Shadow is any part of ourself which we reject, and so do not allow expression in our life. We may so dislike aspects of our nature we fail to see them altogether and instead see them in other people and criticize them.

With what I found there, it made good sense to me why he would be dreaming this dream. And given the not-so-small talk surrounding the telling of his dream to me, I would say, he definitely has cancer on the brain right now. My being a cancer nurse has to also play some kind of role in this train of thoughts.

Initially, I wanted to call and share what I found with him and to possibly encourage him not to worry and to help him with the interpretation of his dream. I got all up on my hind legs and thought, ‘here’s a chance for me to minister to the minister.’ Well, I went from rage to pity to sadness in about twenty-four hours. My husband, who watched this cycling of emotions as he has many times in our past together, quietly observed before giving input. He eventually said something that brought back things back into perspective for me. He mentioned that my father, if he is the N I believe him to be, might not appreciate the turning of the tables towards him. He would, in fact appreciate that I obsessed over the issue in this way and that I in fact, shouldered (dream reference here) the onus and responsibility for this dream. I would be playing into his manipulations if I forced a response/reaction on him and this would bring him Nsatisfaction to see me flailing for an explanation and deflecting the meaning from me to him. He would also be offended that I was using psychology to explain something he considered supernatural.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on July 24, 2008, 09:02:45 AM: What to do with all this…

I decided to hold what I had for myself and to drop the matter of calling my father with his dream interpretation. This was July the 17th. It took about two days for me to get myself together from this. Part of putting my mind at ease involved using rational reasoning re: what cancer is all about. I know from both my public health and nursing training that when one is worried about cancer, s/he should screen based upon risk factors. Sad to say, there are soooo many risk factors out there that expose us: genetic predisposition, harmful radiation, chemical/environmental exposures, certain viruses, medications, treatments for other illnesses, having had cancer before, But in order to feel one has done due diligence to screen based on risk factors one also has to maintain a vitamin-nutrient enriched diet, lower intake of free-radicals and other gene mutating factors and to have a reasonable exercise and bowel regimen for good waste elimination.

Personally, I know I’m at risk for cervical cancer. I was exposed to HPV when I was molested prior to age 16. (there were three incidents, I am unable to isolate which caused me to contract HPV, however, I was more susceptible to it prior to puberty when the tip of my cervix was still in a convex shape rather than the concave shape it takes on after adulthood) There was no Gardisil vaccine to protect me, then. I have been going to the OB doctor every six months for the last ten years to keep a close watch on the cells of my cervix so that I may catch any mutations early and be able to treat accordingly. I am also at risk for colon cancer because of the paternal uncle who has it and because I have IBS which when it flares puts me at risk of being in the inflammatory process which if it happens often enough exposes my gut to potential mutations. I also screen for that every few years or so. I had to process through these things in order to truly feel better following my father’s dream. There is no shoulder, back of neck physician to consult and I have no pimples or lesions there to speak of. What would I say to the PCP, “Uh, yeah, my father had a dream I had a growth on my shoulder, could you do a work up on me?” I guess the resentment is still very much there.

Anyway, I’ve calmed down a lot since the 17th. We got Jordan down to Atlanta on the 19th and, based on the dream drama and the reminder of the emotional baggage that comes along with any interaction with my FOO, I decided not to ask my parents to bring her back from Atlanta. I also decided to re-initiate No Contact with them and to leave well enough alone.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on July 24, 2008, 09:04:59 AM: Eerie Follow-up

I called to check on Jordan on her second night in Atlanta and her aunt picked up the receiver, this was my sister- in-law, 35, mother of four, whom I mentioned earlier. I asked how her last doctor’s appointment went. She told me she had just returned home only an hour earlier and that in fact she does have breast cancer.

All I can say right now is, Whoa.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on August 23, 2008, 03:04:36 PM: The Atlanta Trip

I received a call several days ago from my mother and thought to myself how much easier it is sometimes to just answer the call, have the brief conversation and just be over it than to obsess and ignore and what have you. I’m just getting so tired of feeling physically ill whenever I sense she’s about to call or when I know she just called and is waiting on my return call. I decided to call her back right away this time. She had gone to Atlanta and by her account, she had a decent time while she was there. She was accompanied by my father, of course, my niece, and surprisingly, my brother. Immediately, I wondered how she managed this given the fact that my brother’s girlfriend hardly lets him out of her sight. The girlfriend has apparently become quite a foe to my parents. She gives them a piece of her mind, regularly. Most recently, my father told the girlfriend to let my brother be, that it looked “bad” for him to be “shacking” with her and that she was an embarrassment to the family. Well, my brother, who was in fact frustrated with this young lady due to her heavy smoking, consistent cursing, and permanent attachment to a beer filled cup, was just about ready to call it quits. In the heat of a very public argument involving my father, brother and the young lady, my brother broke up with her. He went home to one of my mother’s rentals that night. Dad also stays there from time to time to both keep tabs on my brother and to cool down when my mother and father get into their classic heated arguments and need to separate for a few days to get over it.

In a drunken rage, my brother’s girlfriend comes banging on his back door and window, after midnight, screaming, (per my father) for my brother to wake up and open the door. To the door comes my father who, (per my mother), after asking the girlfriend to leave the porch, places his hand on her arm “in encouragement” of her to leave. This young lady, no stranger to physical contact, smacks my father, leaving, (per my mother), a bruise to his face. The police were called and escorted the girlfriend home. I’m guessing this is how my mother was able to get my brother to go with her to Atlanta. They stayed in the same hotel room, the biggest complaint of my mother’s being how loud my brother snores even while on his CPAP machine for the sleep apnea. To this complaint, my brother opined, “Well, I don’t snore as bad when I sleep with my girlfriend, she has a calming effect on me.” To this my mother responded with a date for my brother, a girl at the convention from another state, who may have met my brother several years earlier when he was still young,childless, and spry. Surprise, surprise, the date never showed up at the agreed upon place. Could some of the church folks have warned her to steer clear of the crazy family? Maybe she heard he already had three biological children for which he was not doing very much. Whatever the case, Mom’s deduction was that he needs a more aggressive suitor (can females be suitors—suitette, I suppose)? He’s much too passive. Maybe the girl she picked for his date wanted him to play hard to get, Mom contemplated out loud.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on August 23, 2008, 03:05:50 PM: Post Atlanta Fallout

Now here’s a big surprise, when my brother came back home from Atlanta, he not only re-connected with his girlfriend, he moved into her apartment (also one of my mother’s rentals, for which she has not paid rent in four or five months). This is a two bedroom with out hot water or heat. (Yes. Mom’s a slumlord, to boot)! There are at least seven people sleeping there on any given night.

This is not the only surprise to greet my mother upon her return home. A representative from the IRS paid a visit to one of her two rural offices. He was greeted by a receptionist who could provide him with no help in getting in touch with whomever was in charge. My sister, my mother’s proxy for the business, was no where to be found when he walked over to the small local bank that housed her payroll accounts and placed a $14,000 levy on her accounts which caused several payroll checks to bounce. Mom had to use some money she just got from the under-the-table sale of one of her rentals. Because of the tax liens on her own social security number, she’s not been able to sell her property without getting hung up at the title search. She had one of the ministers she ordained and promised future ruler-ship over the church, on the hook for one of the houses and when the minister was advised by a friend to pull out of the deal, my mother became perturbed with her and threatened to shut down the church forever. The reason the church isn’t shut down right now, according to my mother, is because the church voted and decided that since my oldest brother, the recovering addict, is doing so well in his recovery, coming to church every Sunday and accrediting God and the promise of His Word to his current success, he’s been clean for about five or six months. He’s also going to a daily outpatient treatment program and AA meetings. He still lives upstairs with my mother, on the weekdays, but he’s seeing a long time positive influence in his life again and he looks to be doing his best to stay clean. I’m glad to hear that ray of hope with my oldest brother. To every thing there is a season. Maybe this is his time to have some positivity. I think of him daily and am quietly proud of his progress.

Back to the IRS levy. My mother was told to call the IRS rep to discuss the levy and future payment plans. Well, naturally, my mother had her proxy call to take the stressful “hit” of representative’s diatribe. Apparently, he was quite rough. My mother ducked in a hole like a coward while my sister was left to deal with the questions and reprimands of the IRS officer. Poor sister. I’ve been where she is and she has no clue just how bad this can get. But she will soon. My mother was glad to announce to me that, with her prompting, my sister has agreed to get a contract in her name, and to take all the other necessary steps to have my mother’s clients transferred over to my sister. It is déjà vu for me. Here’s what happens next: sister gets contract, transfers clients, believes business to be her own, finds out the hard way that mother never meant to relinquish control, sister desires to prove herself as a capable leader, mother finds every way to discourage, undermine, and control her, sister rebels, mother withholds, the business suffers, mother doesn’t care.

I can’t warn my sister, either. She’s still not talking to me. And, honestly, every time I want to call her something strong tells me to just hold back a while longer. This time without my intervention/interference will prove to be important later. For so long, she has been benchmarked against me and reacting to a lifetime of mean comparisons made by our parents. I didn’t make it any easier for her being the overachiever in church, high school and college, either. She’s taken the opposing viewpoint in most things in our life. If I’m red she’s blue. If I want classic, she wants eclectic. I understand. Sometimes it’s easier to blaze a new path instead of trying to follow one already laid out to a T. The less we talk, though, the more I worry she’ll blindly walk into a very bad situation. But sometimes I can’t help but think that she may resent me terribly if I were to try to warn her or to try to reveal our mother’s true selfish nature. Mom only wants my sister to start the business anew because it’s getting ready to completely sink for her and she’s run out of her own options.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on August 23, 2008, 03:07:18 PM: Dad is more than odd

I need to finish this entry with an odd trigger that came from my conversation with my mother. She said that after coming back from Atlanta and moving in with his girlfriend, my brother was on my father’s bad side. My brother was in need of anti-seizure medication and is normally dependent on my father for rides to the pharmacy and what have you. Well, father felt the need to withhold this favor, as he was not in the habit of supporting a son that didn’t want his kind of support. He told my brother, who cannot legally drive for six months after a seizure, to drive himself to the pharmacy. That he was tired of having to haul his sons everywhere without any appreciation, blah, blah, blah. (I only criticize here because, he’s the one who feels the need to “make up for lost time” with his sons and to be more of the father he couldn’t be when my brother’s were younger). Anyway, my father “prepares” a car for my brother to drive himself to the pharmacy. My father is the king of junkyard cars. He goes through at least three new junk cars a year. He buys them, fixes them up, sells them or junks them or does God-only-knows-what with them. Year-round there is a car, not always the same one, on cinderblocks in his driveway. Before I asked him to stop coming to my home unannounced, a bad habit he used to have wherein he would stalk around my backyard for 20 minutes before knocking on the door and drive through my neighborhood to see if I was home before just popping up at midnight, I would never know what kind of car he was driving when I would peer through the blinds. He always has a stash vehicle on the ready. On this day with my brother, he did a little work on a compact car before having my brother use the car to go to the pharmacy. My brother agrees to drive the car, naturally, as the tags on his former car were allowed to expire and he had no real “wheels” to get around in.

To get to the point, on the way to the pharmacy a wheel came off of my brother’s car, hit another car and caused my brother to be forced off the road. He, nor the people in the other car were hurt. I say this is a trigger because I cannot help but think about a time when I was 16 and had just gotten my first car, a very old clunker that my Dad found, My father was trying to get me to stay in the house and go out less often. He made me stay in the house while he gave my car a look over. He did some work to the brakes and allowed me to go on a road trip 40 miles away to a high school pageant. Upon return home through the toll booths, I found I could not stop my car. When I pumped the brakes, there was less and less of a brake response. I was quite young and dumb. I should have stopped on the roadside and called for someone to get us, but I tried to make it home with the ever- decreasing braking ability, having to resort to the emergency brake to stop the vehicle at the bottom of a steep hill. I had three of my best friends with me. We could have died that night. Just like my brother could have died last week. These are the thoughts that try to plague and worry me.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on August 28, 2008, 08:18:14 PM: The Prince Situation

I’m relaxing at home on my day off and I get a call from an old friend turned nemesis, I’ll call him Prince Akwaaba. (yes, the first name is Prince as is customary in Ghana, West Africa) He was born to the queen-mother of a traditional West African tribal clan and was the heir-apparent to leadership in this clan’s family. He, however, converted to Christianity and turned from his traditional heritage and was excommunicated from his family, accordingly. He was ordained Bishop by a British female evangelist and was embarking upon a grand church expansion when he met my mother back in ’94. It was customary for him to travel to the U.S. once a year to raise money in various churches on an East Coast preaching circuit that grew larger year by year. He met my mother, at that time well known as a highly successful woman of means. My mother had just graduated with her Master’s in Divinity and was ready to test her ability as a minister. In her, Prince must have seen much, because within hours of meeting her he invited her to Africa for a visit and a special surprise. When she arrived, she was made honorary Queen-mother, a hallowed honor reserved for women of dignity and spiritual gifts. It was just the narcissistic supply she needed to feel comfortable pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into this village for years to come.

When I graduated from college in ‘96, I traveled with her for her third and my first visit to Ghana. Having just completed a degree in Anthropology, it was a complete fantasy trip for me. I took a video camera and tons of film and batteries and made an attempt to take in every ounce of culture I possibly could. It was truly a life-changing and life-affirming trip for me. While there, Prince, still practically a young prodigy at that time about 29 or 30, Prince was our host in charge of all our daily activities. I was about 22. Although he was Christian, and a believer in the philosophy of one-husband, one-wife, he would often flirt with the idea of plural wives in my and his wife’s presence. He would joke with my mother that he would offer many cows for me, an esteemed dowry for a young woman to become the wife of a prince. My mother would elbow me to laugh when he would make these awkward jokes, which I would and could not do in the presence of his beautiful, docile wife. When his wife was not present, he would jokingly call me, ”Second wife” and he would say it in a way that made me feel like I was taking myself too seriously when I disagreed or shied away from the expression or implication. I honestly thought it to be a complete and utter insult to his wife and to me. He didn’t seem to mind so much that both she and I were uncomfortable.

Well this is the extent of my involvement with this man until last year this time when my mother called me in distress about the “Prince” situation. During this time last year, I had just entered my second-degree Nursing program and was doing my best to remain as scarce as possible in her affairs. When she called, she sounded pretty desperate when she said, “I really need you to help me to get the value out of the things I own. I would like to retire and give you and your siblings your inheritances while I am still living. Your brother is getting these rental properties, you sister will get the business/clients, and you can get the African property if you fight for it and don’t allow Prince to just take it right from under your nose. I should have followed my original instinct to just drop the issue and say, “No thanks.”
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on August 28, 2008, 08:21:50 PM: The African Property

Earlier in the 90s when my mother’s money, (shucks, most people’s money) was prolific and property was cheap, she purchased some 100 or so acres of beachfront Ghanaian property. By some “freak accident” the scale on the blueprint of the house she was having built on the property was misappropriated and the house, a round, mud-bricked structure with a circle shaped, direct sunlight atrium in the center of the home, was being built at about 10 times the original intended size. It was Prince’s idea to partition off one part of the home to be my mother’s quarters whenever she’s in Africa for visits. The other 90% could be a hotel or a resort for visitors to the village where they could have updated amenities and Prince could oversee the management of the facilities. Perfect plan and potential money-maker it seemed. However, building halted on my mother’s vacation home while funds sent over to Africa to Prince were being poured into the growing church and Prince’s new home and of course, the chief contractor, who also ran a successful construction company in the U.S. had to build his second home on my mother’s dime. In essence, my mother’s vacation house stood a shell of a huge building, untouched for years as she continued to stay in hotels during her visits to which become fewer and fewer over the years, partly because she became bored and disinterested in her African “children.”

Last year, my mother insisted, after years of having my stay out of her African affairs, that I speak to Prince about this property. Strangely, I received a call from a former associate of Prince’s; one of his former trustees and a guarantor on the original agreement that facilitated the purchase of the African property by an American citizen. This had to be done in a way in which Prince’s name was on the property along with my mother’s. This associate, (Roger, we’ll say), called me with a head’s up. He said that a short while earlier, Prince made an attempt to sell the property, which he could not legally do without my mother’s permission in writing. Roger, being the guarantor on the agreement, could have signed a document that would have allowed Prince to finagle the deal somehow. He did not, however, and this caused a great rift between Prince and his longtime “friend.” The telephone call from this meek-sounding man was cryptic and there was a definite feeling of underlying fear in the demeanor of Prince’s former lackey. He implied that Prince wasn’t the type of person you angered and that by Roger’s insistence upon Prince to consult “Mumma” about the intended sale of the property, he became an outcast to Prince and had been shunned (bullied).

When I spoke to Prince, I was charged with a lot of different energies. I was somewhat excited about the prospect of owning a piece of African beachfront property. (although in my gut, I knew better) I was also on a crusade for justice to find out if Prince really intended to sell the property from under my mother without her knowledge to pay his own debts. I also had that feeling I get sometimes when I know someone is a rat and I know that we’re about to go toe to toe in a battle of principles. Prince, the narcissist I now know him to be, was absolutely and utterly offended by my approach. How dare I inquire upon the condition and sale-ability of that property? You see, I did not merely inquire, I all but demanded to have a current assessment of the property’s value and I made it known that I would like to have an agent hired to facilitate with the complete transfer of the property into my mother’s own name. Prince laughed with condescension as he insisted that the property was about to become an addition to his church and that this decision had been made a long time ago. He stated also that he was in town to get Mumma to sign over her name to him so that he could complete the process of owning the property.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on August 28, 2008, 08:25:17 PM: The reason for un-enemeshment

It was then that I did what I was set up by my mother to do. I cut him a new one. I attacked every intention this man could possibly have for this building. I took it all the way back to 1994 and reminded him of the original plans for that property and of the mistake his men made when executing the blueprints and I reminded him of the hundreds of thousands dumped into various unintended projects over the years, none of which resulted in her vacation home. I informed him that he used my mother and that he didn’t appreciated all of what she had done and that the least he could do is leave her someplace she could retire if she wished to do so or at least to continue to hold her own assets which may be liquidated at a time she deemed necessary. He was shocked at “Second wife.” He believed me to still be the shy 22 year old he disrespected a decade earlier but with five years of business and real estate dealings under my belt, I felt my opinion had some validity and that with the level headed logic I was talking, I should have been taken much more seriously. He could only defer to my mother and insist that whatever Mumma says is what will happen. With confidence, I said well, I agree and the conversation ended.

The next day, I called my mother to follow up on her conversation with Prince. You can guess what happened. She allowed him to have the property. He promised in writing to her that he would pay her $500/month or $6000.00 a year for the property for some undisclosed number of years until Prince’s portion was paid in full. For me, this was a final straw with my mother. This was another example of how she baited me into being interested in her affairs, loaded me like a bullet in a gun, and set me off on the people she wished to reprimand or scold. Like clockwork, without getting any of the “stuff” on her, she’s allowed to continue to look innocent while I end up looking harsh and venomous. According to mother, Prince reported to her that I “spoke to him really rough, hurt his feelings, and disrespected him.” I can assure you, I spoke with control and tact and used the expected and proper tone for business related affairs. His feelings were hurt because he is a narcissist and I was proposing a block to his grimy, dishonest plan. I learned about the both of them at that time. I decided they deserve each other. He won’t pay her one dime of that money (feeling entitled to the land, I’m sure), and she will hold it over his head and use it to continue to receive N supply from him. When someone owes you money, you have power over them, has always been my mother’s M.O.

Well, fast forward a year, this guy called yesterday, I listened to the message he left about trying to get my mother’s new cell phone number. I called my mother, long conversation, who took his number with haste. He could, she mentioned, help her with her career goals by providing a letter of recommendation to add to her curriculum vitae as she is convinced her next job will be professor of divinity at a community college or at one of the local church bible colleges. She also believes he must be calling to pay something on the property although he hadn’t called her since they spoke last year to make the agreement. I couldn’t hide the chuckle in my voice when I said, “Oh, I just assumed he was called to ask you for something or another. I guess I never really expected him to produce any money to you for anything.” She doesn’t care really, she’ll take the reference letter and the phony attention. I don’t think she ever expected he would pay anything to her.

She could use that $6,000.00 though. The IRS guy said that this was “Strike three” and that she gets no more chances. He has placed garnishments on her government contract checks. One happened the first week in August. I asked her if she knew when the next would be coming. She was like, “Huh?” as if she had no clue that they would try to come and garnish again. I told her she should call and get a beat on that or she would be blind-sided right out of business. She said this IRS guy has it out for her. He told her, “Don’t call me anymore, until you’ve brought your accounts current.” She has hired one of those tax specialists, (they cost $5000.00) to make an Offer and Compromise settlement. She is also selling another rental for cash. I have no clue what will become of the business or her rentals and her holdings but she is losing ground fast. She actually said to me today, “I want to do what you did and wiggle out of this business and start all over again.” Exxxcuuuuse me? Wiggle? It was NEVER my intention to wiggle out of anything but her narcissistic enmeshment. What she laid up to be my certain Albatross, I was able to be delivered from. And it was not the business. I actually wanted the business. It was she who I wiggle, wrestled, and with controlled fury escaped from. And all the carnage and disarray left in my life is worth being free from enmeshment with her.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on September 03, 2008, 01:15:12 PM: Unexpected Turn

It disturbs me to write this posting on various levels. If I had not the opportunity to blog here about the turn of events in my life with my wacked Nfamily, my anxiety would be eating me alive by now. It’s back to school time and my daughter, Jordan is supposed to begin at a new school this year. At her old school, I was not aware that there was an outstanding tuition balance on her account that would prohibit her records from being sent to the new school. I procrastinated on getting her enrolled in the new school so this became somewhat of a stressful issue getting Jordan into her new school. I did not have the funds right away. We live from check to check and I would need until at least Friday to get her balance taken care of. Around the time I called my mother to tell her about Prince’s call, I mentioned that I had something to work out with Jordan’s old school and that I was hopeful that everything would work out okay. She wanted the details on the matter. I explained and she said, “Let me pay that for you. I want to take care of that for my grand-daughter.” She said that she was closing on the sale of another property around this week and that she will gladly take care of the balance for us. It was not my intention to get her to help me with the fees when I called her, however there was an instant sense of relief when she insisted upon helping. I don’t ask for financial help from her often because historically I have to pay her back with at least one pound of my flesh, if you will. She told me last week, “Just call back on Tuesday and I should know where we are on the sale of the house. I’m going to use that money primarily to make good on this current tax quarter, so that the IRS officer will talk to me about making an installment agreement or and Offer and Compromise.“ She said something strange after that, “It will be like paying tithes.” I thought to myself, “tithes…hmmm” Tithes are the 10% of income you pay to your church, (symbolically to God), as an offering of appreciation, or support, or I supposed in her case, penance.” Nonetheless, the word “tithes” was bothersome. Also, the tax representative she hired wanted his next installment so that he could proceed with assisting my mother in dealing with the IRS guy. This conversation took place last Thursday, she told me to call back on this Tuesday to follow up on the sale of the house and at that time, she would overnight me the funds. Overnight me the funds, really, that’s unusual.

Anyway, so it’s Tuesday, the first day of school and I’ve just put Jordan on the bus, (her new school allowed me, after signing a release form, to register her, for now, in lieu of the lack of school records). After several minutes of deep breathing I call my mother. She informs me that she indeed called her vendor and that there were no more indications of garnishments to her government contract as of last Friday. She also mentions that the IRS tax representative wanted copies of last year’s corporation taxes, which she had not completed yet and they wanted it by the end of business that day. She bounces a few tax form related questions to me, the answers to which I happened to know because I filed those same forms when I was still in business a year ago. She’s grateful for the opportunity to talk to someone who knows what she’s going through as everyone in her circle runs and hides whenever she calls with business problems. About my sister, my mother has decided to be frank, she says she doesn’t answer to phone until 11 or 12 in the mornings and that when she needs tax related information from this office some 50 miles away, my sister doesn’t answer or reply to the messages. My sister is obviously in first-class denial about what’s happening to the business that’s been promised to her, the one she is in charge of managing, the one that sinking fast. Mother then dilly-dallies a bit about the close of the house deal being completed by Friday and she says, in the meantime, she will check all of her accounts today, and see if she could front me the funds for Jordan’s fees until the deal on the house was done. She told me to go ahead and start heading towards her direction, (she lives 30 miles away) to get the money. Aside: A little something inside me, intuition, I suppose, tells me, as I’m boiling some hot water for tea, “Everything is going to be alright.” I smile and give myself kudos for having a much more positive outlook on life these days.

I decide to hold back on leaving the house just yet, I figure it’s better to get a peg on her timing, because she is notorious for stealing a whole day and Jordan would be out of school by 3:30 pm and I wanted to be there when she got off the bus, of course. I drift off to sleep while watching the Steve Wilkos Show. Despite my deep interest in today’s topic, (a lie-detector confirmed that this father has molested his daughter for 3 years and Steve has him standing there on the stage ferociously spit-shouting to this guy’s face about how much of a piece of scum he is), I cannot keep my eyes open. The cell phone buzzing on the ottoman awakens me mid-doze. I’m kinda amazed that I don’t shudder as hard as I used to when I see the word “Mom” on the caller i.d. “Hello.” my voice is raspy from the nap. “Yeah…” her voice is raspier, weakened, “I called to check my accounts… and I’ve been garnished again. There is a negative $3,000 balance and when I checked the vendor’s hotline that tells you how much and when your billings will pay out to your bank account, they only paid out $3,500 of the $15,000 I billed. Payroll is this Friday, and I will have nothing in that account.” Silence. I allowed the silence to continue to get a feel for where her mind was. More silence. I said, “What are you thinking about your next move?” She says, calm-like, shaky, “ I’m numb, right now, I think that’s best because I don’t want my blood pressure to go through the roof, I can’t think right now.” Silence. It’s only natural for me to begin pontificating on a solution or a way out. Things like this, even when it’s of my own doing, tend to make me mad, and when I get mad, my brain begins to work a little better, when I’m under pressure, I’ve done some of my more clear thinking. I’ve forgotten about Jordan’s money and I’ve let the wall down I maintain when normally dealing my mother. I empathize with her and I get angry. I say to her, in inconvenience to her present denial party, “Well, what are you going to do?” She senses my agitation but she has nothing. She says, I don’t know, what do I do?” In retrospect, I really can’t believe this. She behaves as though I’m the one who has been in business for 20 years and she’s the rookie with only 5 years of experience. In actuality, this very scenario is how I got into business in the first place.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on September 03, 2008, 01:16:58 PM: This is déjà vu

She was in this very same situation with the same type of business organized under different tax id, corporation, contract, and bank account numbers back in 2000. I just out of grad school. I was pregnant. I was “shaking up” with my then boyfriend, now husband. Those were fun times. I had no job, nothing to lose. My mom hated my boyfriend and wanted him out of my life. She wanted me to let her help me raise the baby and work the business together and help her grow her fledgling church. Fun times, I tell ya. The gift/punishment for wanting to marry my boyfriend and start this family was for my mother to give me a “jump start” in life by giving me the failing business. The unspoken deal was that if I could keep this business from sinking, I could have it. Trust me when I say this baby was sinking and sinking fast. The overhead was ridiculous, my mother had accumulated all these office workers she couldn’t afford and they were robbing her of her time and money because they were superfluous and not really necessary to make the office run. My mother just likes to collect people and have them on her payroll or indebted to her in some way. They had no respect for her because she locked you in at a peasant’s salary and never gave people raises, no matter what they did or how long they stayed. She just wanted them to be grateful to have a job and to be loyal to her for taking them out of their former poverty. I had to terminate many of these people in order to lower overhead with this business. It was not fun, most of them were understanding, some were angry. Lightening the load, moving out of the $3,000 a month rental space into something affordable, and beginning to pay the payroll taxes on time, along with speaking on my mother’s behalf to the IRS officers, was what saved the business. One of the IRS officers told us even without any real assets, he would allow my husband and I to continue in this business based on our potential and responsibility since acquiring from my mother. My mother was dumbfounded, I’m sure, when 7 years later, my husband and I were living comfortably as young business owners, having completely re-organized and re-structured the formerly doomed business. Having to lose the business after 8 years as a result of my mother failing to come through for us as our professional on record, causing us to be hit hard by the government vendor with penalties and fees that drove us to have to sell out. To whom, you suppose, my mother. I should really hate her. At times, I have. But I am a believer in God’s force in my life and I have no better sense than to believe that these are lessons preparing me for something greater and greater. I’m now working as a nurse, my hubby is struggling to obtain good, stable work, but we both sigh with relief when we think of how much more frustrating and out of control our lives were when we were still dependant upon my mother for our livelihood. The purpose of my going to nursing school in the first place was for me to become our company’s professional on record, it was very difficult to find an RN who was willing to work for such a small company run by such young people, and with no real benefits to speak of. And there is a shortage of nurses. But just before graduation, the business folded. It was tough, but I’ve yet to go without something I’ve needed, thank God for that.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on September 03, 2008, 01:18:48 PM: Move the Money

Back to right now. I advise my mother, who’s trying her best to check out mentally, that she may want to consider moving money for the time being if she wants to stop the bleeding in any way. I told her that this guy sounds like he means to shut the business down and that he’s trying to get what he can from your bank accounts and government billing payouts until he can’t anymore, these are last ditch efforts. And by saying stuff like, “Don’t call me until you’re current on this past quarter’s payroll taxes, and three strikes and your out…” he sounds a little more than serious. “What do you mean move the money?” she asks. I want to punch something. Is she really about to act like a novice here. Moving her money is WHAT SHE DOES!!!! The reason she even has had four to five manifestations of this business over the last 20 years is because she runs and runs from her problems by starting over and MOVING her MONEY. Each new manifestation has it’s own contract number, tax id number, and bank account. The buck never stops when you move your money, right?! Is she serious right now??!! Despite my fury, I speak to her in a calm, controlled voice. “You can transfer your clients to your {remaining satellite office} and pay your employees from that location and bank account.” She begins to awaken from her stupor. I can do that, can’t I? Here’s what I‘m going to do… And she proceeds to repeat exactly what I just suggested to her as if the idea came channeling straight down directly into her third eye from the most high. I chuckle, out loud, I believe from a cartoon-like vision I have of her snapping her fingers, widening her eyes and pointing her index finger upwards, I’ve got it! She wonders out loud if she should contact the IRS tax representative she’s hired to deal with this. I tell her to forget about him, especially if he requires more money out of you in order to talk or deal with your situation. I tell her it’s better if she speaks directly to the IRS guy from here on and to try her best to appeal to him and get a real idea on what he means to do with her. The thought of this frightens her, I can tell, but she wants off the phone to trouble shoot with my sister, who has the business transfer records there with her.

It’s my day off, Jordan’s first day of school. I still have a real feel that everything is going to be alright because now that I’m un-enmeshed from my mother, this problem is not my problem, nor does it change the way I have to live my life. I decide to finish that nap. I’m awakened again about 30 minutes later to the buzzing of the cell phone. It’s my mother. I reflect for a second on how I had so sincerely intended on having the No Contact lifestyle several weeks ago. I answer the phone. She says, with some confidence, “Yeah, what’s the best way to get that money to you?” I say, “Umm, don’t you think that’s not a good idea right now. I can work something out with the school. You have bigger problems to work out right now.” She insists, “No, I want to help my grand-daughter, and this amount of money is not going to make or break the situation with my taxes right now.” She was going to get busy with going down to {sister’s town, business location} and pick up the records so that she could make the transfer of clients to the new business and to enter the employees in the payroll at the remaining satellite office in preparation for this Friday’s payroll. She had a lot of work ahead of her and she was going to leave the money under the mat in her garage for me. I only had three hours before Jordan’s school let out, so I think, okay, and got going towards my mother’s town. I wasn’t at all surprised to see that she was still at home when I arrived. She wrote out the check while revealing that she called the tax representative after talking with me informing him of the second bank levy. He responded by saying to her that she should move her money, open a new bank account and get a new government contract. Meanwhile, he could not further advise her until she paid him another installment. While acknowledging that he told her basically the same thing I told her, she asked me again, what are the tax reps really doing for me? Do you think I should go to the IRS guy myself? I respond to her, “yes you should and forget about the tax rep.” I recalled to her the situation with tax reps hired, to the tune of $5000, to “help” when that initial business transfer back in 2000 when things went bad with the IRS after we had acquired the business. They did nothing to improve the situation. It was actually showing up at the Federal building in person to sit down and face the music and attempt to make a deal that made the biggest difference in the behavior of the IRS agent. My mother, still fearful the thought of speaking directly to the officer, wrote out the check. I think now, moreso than before, that she was insisting on “paying me” for giving her advice now proven to be consistent with the professional’s.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on September 03, 2008, 01:19:53 PM: Another Turn

This was yesterday, the first day of school. Jordan came home and jumped into my arms and said it was an awesome first day!! She tied for first place in a contest having to do with memorizing words and had a sticker on her shirt to prove it! She says there is a boy bully who said mean things to her. I asked what type of mean things and she said things like, “What are you looking at me like that for? and “That’s why you only tied for the contest and didn’t win outright!” I chuckled and gave the heads up, “I think he likes you, sweety. Just ignore him.” She smiled widely and said, “Really!!” And I thought to myself, “Uh, oh.”

This morning after kissing her off to her second day of school, (turns out, with bills all paid, she was placed in just the right class for her learning abilities and needs and all is well with her record transfer), I called my oldest brother, the addict, to wish him a Happy Birthday. He told me that this was the second birthday of his adult life that he was clean and that last year this time, he was unable to awaken the entire day of his 44th birthday. I kidded with him about having a happy 80th birthday and I told him how proud I was of him with his recovery this time around. Before we could get into the chit-chatter about my family and stuff, my mother was cueing on my call-waiting from her cell phone line. She heard the upstairs phone ring, yes oldest bro lives upstairs to mother. He keeps the cordless phone to a second line to the house up there while the base remains in my mother’s office. Good way to keep an eye on all that goes on in the house, I’m sure. When the phone rang, she heard the audible caller id announce my last name on the phone and called me from another line assuming I was looking for her. Once I mentioned to brother, this is mom on the other line, he quickly said, “Oh, thanks for calling, see ya.” And, like always, our bonding was cut short. Before I could tell her I was wishing my brother a happy birthday, she was expressing to me, her frame of mind as she was preparing to call the IRS guy this morning. I told her I would be praying for her.

She calls back thirty minutes later close to tears. She says after talking to the IRS man, he reveals, “I’m trying to close your business. I’m in the process of filing an injunction to padlock the doors and to try to get whatever I can to cover these debts. I also plan to file a suit against you to cover trust fund taxes, (the taxes on monies already paid to the employees during the year of 2006). He suggested that she sell out and get what she could to pay on this debt, over $100,000 total, as he was coming for her personal income next. Again, she was trying to go numb. This time though, after the initial moment of silence, she hurriedly asked, “What should I do?” For now, I could only take it back to the initial and much re-iterated point, move the money, get a new bank account, transfer the clients. She says, “Really?” I say, “Continue with your efforts from yesterday and get your records and important items from the building before he closes the doors.” The padlock is not proverbial. It’s large and there’s probably a chain and a sign that goes along with it. I try to get her to behave with a sense of urgency as he sounds pretty urgent. I don’t tell her that this will only be a temporary quick fix. That she should begin some long range planning right away. This guy is going to come after her personal social security number such that the house in which she lives is in jeopardy, her three cars, her properties. The business she is transferring the clients to is also in jeopardy as it is a sole proprietorship. I don’t tell her that this is the beginning of the end. Just as she begins to thank me for being there to talk to her and to encourage her “to do” and not shrink in self-pity, the cell phone, not sure who’s hers or mine, reception begins to fade and her words garble and disappear. Serendipity, I suppose; the signal fades and she doesn’t call back. Neither do I.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on September 09, 2008, 06:18:51 PM: Relationship

I fell asleep reading The Shack by William Paul Young, so my brain was in wonderment mode last night, which I thought should make for pretty cool dreams. Not so, I had somewhat of a nightmare with several icons of salient predators in my life, both past and present. My grandmother, my mother, this guy at work who makes me feel uncomfortable and an unknown force, a relative apparently, who is trying to find me to do me some harm. I spend a good deal of the dream hiding from this entity.

Dream- Takes place at my maternal Ngrandmother’s house, and my Nmom is there and the house is large, and in mirror-image to the one she has in real life, and with rug and window treatments consistent with my mother’s taste. It was bright and the windows were opened. I knew it was my grandmother’s home although it had been made larger or added upon obviously by my mother. From the front room, however, I could see through to a bedroom where a man was molesting an adolescent girl, rubbing a stick or ruler or grape flavored frozen ice-pop or some other phallic-type object up and down her pre-pubescent chest outside her shirt. After two swipes one up and then down, he then laughed a grimy pirate’s laugh, thanked her for bringing him the (phallic) object and sent her on her way. Almost as a fly on the wall observer, I witnessed her wipe the ick off herself, a slight brush to the front of her shirt and a wipe to the side of her face, while walking through the front room away from the bedroom where the man remained. The man I’m running from and hiding from within my grandmother’s house, (why else would I be at her house??!!) has me so afraid I’m peeking out of the windows and trying with a nervous fervor to avoid him. This guy from work, Mr. Williams (there’s a brief history of icky encounters) is in the dream. Is he the guy I’m hiding from and why in that house? I wake up perturbed.

I’m thinking this dream sucks. I thought it would be a whole lot more interesting if it were anything like the scenes from the book I’m reading. I shed tears last night while reading this excerpt about the grandeur and beauty of a waterfall as backdrop to a flower covered mountainside.

Despite my busy plans for the day, I think I should call my mother this morning. I called her last night but her phone went straight to voicemail and the mailbox was full. I’m a little worried that she has dropped into “avoidance” mode. And I call anyhow. The plan this morning if she does not answer is to leave her a voicemail if possible and just to let the whole thing alone and move on. However, she answers the phone this morning.

She remains in contact with the tax representative middle-man guy. He has consistently been advising her to give him a copy of all her tax records. She is stumped at a few places on the Turbo Tax return and is becoming frustrated at why the bottom line on her tax return is not matching the bottom line in her books. Turbo tax has given the ill-fated red-letter error message and she is absolutely stumped. She admits that she was just about to call me when I called her. She had just finished talking to my sister earlier this morning, who will not return from her 50 mile away, hideaway, where all the important and relevant business papers live. She won’t come to mom, therefore, today mom’s plan is to go to the town where sis’ is and to work on these tax papers to turn over to the tax middle-man. This agent, to whom she’s signed over Power of Attorney, has said his team can help her because they know things about dealing with the IRS she can’t possibly know and that he can likely get a Compromise going if she would just give him all her missed tax filings and another payment installment to his company. This would be hard work, he promised, but they “should” be able to get something worked out for her.

She matter-of-factly mentions that she had a summons for Sept. 10, tomorrow, to appear before the IRS man himself (Mr. “Three Strikes-don’t call me back until your current-there’s nothing you can do,” IRS man) with all of her financial paperwork and current financial statements. Her plan, I’m appalled to say, was to blow off the summons for her to appear tomorrow. She said, with vehemence, “He already said, ‘There’s nothing you can do,’ and the {tax middle-man} said he would take care of things just as soon as I fax these papers over to him.

She says, while reminding herself out loud not to say anything negative about my sister that sis’ is going to help her finish up the paperwork and that sis is going to help her (mom) “stay focused” so that they can complete the work of transferring the clients and completing the un-filed quarterly and annual tax returns. Truthfully, all of the quarterly payroll returns were completed by the accountant and only required a signature by my mother or mom’s stamped signature that could be applied by my sister and mailed off. More often, more recently, this had not been done. My mother doesn’t admit this, she just acknowledges that she has proof of something or another and rambles a bit about what the tax representatives promise to do for her once she gets these forms completed.

I mention again that the tax middle-man is a waste of time. I say, he’s right, he knows the IRS better than you. He knows that the writing is on the wall and that the next phase is total liquidation of her business by the IRS. I told her it would be foolish of her to avoid a summons to appear before the IRS officer. It would give Mr. Three Strikes exactly what he needs to show a judge proof of due diligence and due process and to then be able to proceed, full speed ahead, with the job of quickly shutting down the business. He was not subtle about this. Without sounding like a reprimand, I presented the facts that were before this IRS officer: unfilled tax returns, unpaid payroll taxes, etc. He never actually ever met my mother; for all he knows, she could be walking around flaunting the cash of her unpaid taxes in diamonds or furs or new cars, etc. (Little irony here, she actually did go around flaunting diamonds and furs and new cars back in the 90s when the money flowed as such; now her currency is odd jobs for “peons” and living expenses for grown children and ex-husband). I mention to her that without knowing anything about her, never having spoken to her to know what she’s been doing over the last few years and not knowing why she failed to pay her taxes, he can only imagine the worst. I offer her the option of presenting herself to him as, here’s a thought, a human-being who has made some mistakes and is now willing to be transparent and cooperative and at the mercy of this officer for her livelihood. I mention that she should consider taking in her hospital bills and bringing up the unexpected business upheaval that took place in 2006 when a long time employee left her and took half her clientele with her, sending the entire business reeling off of its’ axis. When I used the words “human-being” a distinct mood change took place in her.

Silence.

She, like the 50s era cartoons, pulls another “Eureka, I’ve found it!” and declares that what she’s decided to do is to face the IRS officer on tomorrow and to put all if today’s efforts towards presenting her case tomorrow and attempt to see what could be done to help herself while working directly with the officer. She mentioned here that the tax representative middle-man hadn’t answered her phone calls in three days. She then did something completely out of left field.

She then said to me, in a tone almost defiant and furious, “Thank you so much, [Tiffany] You don’t know how much this means to me. She then went into a story about something that happened yesterday. She said that she was at her mother’s house, (after a long and painful period of no contact with her); she was talking to her about what she wanted for her and her mother’s relationship. She wanted that they would look back on the bad history between them and be able to laugh about the “sad times” now that time has past. She wanted their relationship to be restored and she mentioned to Ngrandma that she also wanted this restoration for hers and my, her own daughter’s relationship. For us to be able to talk and to become closer as she got older as things would become less and less about money. She wants to be able to laugh about the sad times. She used words like reconciliation and mistakes and support.

She again said she appreciated me calling to check on her this morning and for giving her such wise advisement. She said it made her feel good that I would call and check on her and that every word I’ve said is valuable. She said it meant so much as there was NO ONE who understood the gravity of what she was going through except me. Which led directly into an apology for what I had to go through with my business because of her, What follows I’ve tried to present verbatim and in the chronological order in which she spoke her thoughts:

“It makes me feel sorry for messing up and not being attentive to the business. I repented to God for this. I’m sorry about how it went with you. I hereby make a promise that I, if allowed to “come back” from this would do something to help you get out of the situation your life is in now. I would not wish to be rich I would just mange my own life and I would share with you where I could. Last week, in the midst of my troubles, I sowed the seed for my granddaughter, Jordan, and with a promise that as I pay my taxes on time, I will continue to sow more seeds to you and yours. You are the only one who is working hard for your money and you’re ‘out there’ learning the lessons of life. Like your brother, who’s hanging out with this rich, old guy whose showing him things and teaching him lessons, things that your daddy should have shown him growing up, but we won’t get into that right now… You are learning life’s lessons and it looks like you are going to be all right. From time to time, in the future, when you’re in a pinch, you’ll need me and I’ll be there for you. You may not it’s coming from me, but I’ll be there for you. You can call on me, and you don’t have to be ashamed or fearful to come to me and I’m going to help you, Tiffany, Tiffany, are you there? Can you hear what I’m saying to you?

I respond to her. “Yes, I hear you, I appreciate the apology. I look forward to a day when we can look at the sad times and appreciate the lessons learned from them. There have been times where I needed your financial help and had nowhere else to turn and you gave it to me. This is bigger than the “sad times” of the past. I’m trying to move on into my future. To God be the glory, Mom, and we awkwardly get off the phone.

I’ll process this more later, but for now I feel as though I’m witnessing the N with her back to a wall, attempting to bargain and make promises for the future while acknowledging some mistakes of the past. I have to say I’ve never seen her like this before. I’ll be careful with my heart and remain humble with what I’ve received today. An apology, validation that she made my recent life a hell, and an acknowledgment that she withheld her sharing and caring from me, that means something. Do I need much more than that, really? I think I’ll accept that for right now. But, as the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished, and the ramifications of today’s promises, good or bad, have yet to be realized. I will some day have to answer for my council to her during this time of duress, of this I can be sure. Will I grow to regret or appreciate my role in this scenario, only time will tell.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on September 17, 2008, 12:42:47 PM: Update on my sister, Prince, and the IRS meeting

After our intense last conversation, I thought it a good idea to hang back a little until my mother called me in follow-up to the summons meeting. I assumed after a few days passed that the news was not so great. This was, in fact, a no-win situation, but attending the meeting was about reducing the loss and showing up to take responsibility for her actions or lack thereof, with the hope of gaining favor with the IRS officer and ameliorating the swift, harsh punishment of sudden business closure. As days passed, I couldn’t help but wonder about the outcome of the summons meeting.

I called my mother’s business cell phone. There was a difference in the cell phone ring. There was one of those annoying, and quite unprofessional, I thought, hip-hop tones that play a song in your ear as you wait for person to say “Hello” To my surprise, my sister answered and without any indication of having not spoken to me in the last four months, she made me aware that it was my nephew’s (brother’s son) birthday and that this was the first year my oldest brother called his now 18 year-old son to wish him a Happy Birthday, a decent indication that my brother is making progress in his recovery. (I couldn’t help but wonder if sis’ was ‘granted’ permission by mother to re-institute speaking to me after last week’s grand Declaration of acceptance and inclusion).

During the conversation with sister, I asked how I could get in touch with mom. Sister informed me that mom got a new cell phone/business phone and that sis’ now carries mom’s old phone and younger brother has sis’s old phone. “Mom needed a new phone, why?” I asked. Sis had no answer. I changed the subject. “Did Prince ever get in touch with mom?” She told me mom spoke to him, and that he wanted to explain why he hasn’t sent any money on the property in the last year. (Big surprise, there.) To boot, he was in the US for his annual visit and wanted to stay with his “mumma” for several days next week so that he can talk to her about sending his teenaged daughter here from Ghana to begin her college education. He would like Mom to be the sponsor for her Green Card, and responsible for his daughter while she goes to school. Not a small request.

Sis, who wanted to linger on the phone a bit after I got my mother’s new cell phone number, asked about my daughter. I shared with her that Jordan was selected be a safety patrol at school. Sis then went into a 20 minute diatribe about how her own daughter wanted to be safety patrol but she had to be elected because there were so many kids who wanted to do it in her class. Sis then informed me that she would be in my city this weekend attempting to join a graduate chapter sorority (big bucks and lots of community service hours). I was a little surprised at the chit-chatter after four months of absolutely no contact. I was admittedly eager to get off the phone. Something felt icky and wrong.

I then spoke to mom, I asked her why the new phone. She, like my sister, mumbled something inaudible and changed the subject. “How’d it go with the tax guy?” I asked. She said, she went to the meeting, but the tax guy was on vacation, so…mumble, mumble, mumble. She was despondent and unclear. “So what’d you do?” I had to know.

She then went into how the hired tax rep is going to handle everything. “They said they should be able to get the IRS to stop the levies and garnishments and to get some type of agreement established. I rolled my eyes, and instinctively held my tongue. This was not a time to try to convince her that this was not in her best interest.

Something smells fishy, though. I asked her if she checked-in with someone else at the IRS office or sign something indicating that she indeed followed through with showing up for the summons. She stammered and changed the subject, (I smelled the lie). So it sounds like she did not attend the meeting. She is putting all her faith in the hired agent with Power of Attorney who promises to represent her well with the IRS if she would just send another $1500 installment today.

Why would the IRS officer issue a summons only to be on vacation that very day?
Why would she change the only telephone on which most of her debtors are able to reach her?
Why would sis’ and grandma suddenly re-appear as major influences in mom’s decisions on how to handle her current financial problems?

Why? Well, I suppose it has a lot to do with her high level of anxiety and the fact that she is still in a good bit of denial about what is really happening to her. She is terrified of hearing the blatant criticism by the IRS officer. She and sis are making plans as if everything’s going to just magically work itself out. I asked her if she was worried about whether or not the IRS officer would continue with the garnishments and levies to her accounts. She shakily responded, “See, that still worries me a little, but the representative said…blah, blah, blah.”

Am I supposed to be her conscious? The “good devil” sitting on her shoulder egging her on to do the “right thing,” while she continues to ponder with the “bad angel,” who only encourages her to do the selfish, self-defeating, irresponsible thing. Is that even fair to me? Do I get anything out of it? Why would I want to keep doing this to myself? Am I an idiot?

Did the conversations with grandma and sister during the Day of Reconciliation have something to do with her not going to the IRS meeting the next day? I can’t help but wonder how they (grandma and sis’) really feel given the aforementioned “sad times”. I wonder if they don’t secretly wish for her downfall (being the Ns they are) and resent my rescue/intervention in the matter.

I resent my rescue/intervention.

It is a possibility that NGrandma and Nsister are proponents of the third party guy because they see the writing on the wall and sense the imminent doom promised by the IRS officer? Are they just tired of hearing her complain and whine about her problems and encourage the idea of getting someone else to handle them? Is it more sinister than that? Mom is definitely taking counsel from anyone who will listen to her now. Why would she flip- flop from wanting to do the responsible thing and wanted to hide and defer within 24 hrs? After all that talk about my being the only one who knows what she is going through and about how my advice was such good, strong counsel, she is going the way of the doomed. Mom, Grandma, Sis and Prince: all the Ns can have one another!

I need to step back, w-w-way back. And just not intervene anymore. I’ve not rescued anyone; instead I’m participating in a sick, perverted play where there is no happy ending. I’m going to create my own happy endings and just be thankful that I am no longer fiscally enmeshed with her anymore.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on September 24, 2008, 07:49:20 PM: Distractions

Mom called today: “Yeah, I was calling because I know you needed extra money, what about you doing my nursing visits for me? You could visit the clients (from satellite office 2 hour drive from my city) in one of my cars and I will send the office worker, Mary, to ride with you and show you where the clients live. I just wanted to give you the opportunity for the job before I try and get another RN to do these visits for me.”

She babbled on like this for another few minutes while I sat quietly thinking of a way to tell her HECK NO! I was thinking fast, but not fast enough as I responded with, “I’m getting ready to start a part-time position with a clinical research nurse,” which was the truth, but a truth I had promised not to share with her because I was so tired of her sapping the energy from every new venture upon which I embarked. Her response to this statement was a marked, “hmm, that’s interesting…” I folded like a cheap suit and I can pretty much guarantee she’ll be talking of research in some capacity in the near future as if the very idea of it dropped, as if by serendipity, out of the sky. Guaranteed.

She went on, “I am not able to continue going in and out of people’s homes, the getting out of the car repeatedly is hard on my joints. I guess I’m procrastinating on hiring a new nurse because a lot of times they have schedules you can hardly work with.”

I needed to get the point across that I am not interested without causing too much Ninjury so I reminded her of the government’s rule that all nursing professionals performing visits as well teaching have to have 2 years of experience in a health care setting prior to working for the agency. With the reminder, she immediately said,” No, I don’t think so. I think you can get around that rule.” I remained silent. She relented temporarily.

She transitioned to my sister who came by to visit her on last Thursday, finally. Sis has been ignoring and avoiding Mom for the last several months and has refused to come from the town 1 hour away to see our mother, even when the other shoe dropped with the IRS garnishments, levies, and summons, sis was no where to be found. And this is the part of the company she was promised. Well, apparently on this visit to mom, she left a lot to be desired. Mom said sis refused to be responsible for billing, setting up charts, performing background checks and references and was not making any promises about calling or communicating with mom. On top of that, Mom reports to me that her personal bankcard is missing. She called sis to see if she had taken it and sis denied it. When Mom checked online for card activity, the card was quite active, a cell phone bill was paid and ATM withdrawals were being made. Silence. I don’t feel the need to try to interpret what is crystal clear. It’s not fair to me, either. So I sit in silence, while Mom abruptly changes the subject, which she will come to do several more times before this entire conversation ends.

The company hired to represent her with the IRS finally “got through” to the IRS officer guy. “I think they got them to stop the levies and garnishments,” she said with trepidation. She‘s been in a holding pattern on the billing of the office under scrutiny for the last four weeks, fearful that the IRS would garnish those accounts, (a potential reason for sis’s recent need for Mom’s personal cash cards). She complained that there were a few clients with large billable hours for whom she hasn’t been able to bill because of paperwork discrepancies on my sister’s part. I asked, “What makes you think the people you hired were able to stop the levies, did they tell you so?” To this, she responded, “Well, they said it would be about 2 weeks before they could stop the IRS from applying levies… they just need me to send them one more tax form…” she trailed off incomprehensibly. Another abrupt subject change.

“Your brother had a seizure last night,” she mentioned matter-of-factly. The emergency room doctor said his anti-seizure medication blood levels were therapeutic. This means he was having a breakthrough seizure and needs to be re-evaluated by his physician. Mom blames the seizure on high stress from brother’s girlfriend, aforementioned sassy lover-of-beer. Apparently, she just lost her “brother” (he was raised by her mother from infancy when no other family members would accept him, born drug-addicted and motherless). He was living in a city an hour away and he was allegedly shot to death. Brother’s girlfriend wants my brother to step up and be supportive of her by watching her little children while she and the older children travel to town one hour away for funeral this weekend. She also would like brother to be “supportive” while she indulges in drinking binges, per mother. All the death and poor parenting talk got brother to thinking that he would like to see his own young children and, per mother, this is upsetting to the girlfriend as well.

The last time brother’s children were in town it was without brother’s prior knowledge. Dad picked up the three young children from their mother’s home 2 hours away and he dropped them off at my brother’s house and father left. While children were visiting with their father, they noticed him to be drooling and behaving goofily. The kids thought he was entertaining them and they made a loud laughing commotion that alerted someone to call my father. Father came and hoisted up brother who had fallen to the floor on the way to his room to get his anti-seizure medicine; he placed brother in his bed, placed the CPAP machine over his face and took the children back home to their mother immediately. It upset mom that dad did not call the ambulance and only placed him in the bed without telling anyone what had happened. He simply left him alone in the house with the great aunt who has Alzheimer’s.

Several days later brother would go to Ngrandma’s house, she lives one block away from brother, and sits down on her couch. He fell into a deep three-hour sleep that no one seemed particularly worried about. When brother awakened, heavy-headed and groggy, the items he was holding in his hands had fallen, scattered to the floor. He thought he might have had a small seizure on that day. This was several days ago.

The mention of grandma led to talk about the current state of grandma’s home. Grandma’s long time home aide, a woman, originally hired by me and sent to help grandma with her home care five years ago. Originally, they were two peas in a pod, a perfect pair, completely smitten with one another. Between my mother’s contempt for anyone who gets close to her mother and the woman’s own manipulative nature, there were repeated problems over the years. The last fallout between Ngrandma and Nmom was instigated by this woman, who despised my mother. She never bought any of the polite undermining my mother offered. She, on a mission to become my grandmother’s sole beneficiary, grabbed hold to grandma’s household tightly and refused to let go for years and years…until last week or so. Mom said she was at grandma’s house yesterday to help her get ready for a doctor’s appointment and that the house was absolutely filthy, putrid with the smell of urine and stale food. Mom said she would get one of her aides to come to provide care for grandma, but that she would be too embarrassed for them to see how her own mother lived. She was rambling on like this when I realized that she was saying, in essence, that the long time aide was no longer seeing grandma. I asked, “Why did she quit?” Mom, in a hurried blur, spoke of a recent blow-up spurred on by a comment my oldest brother made. He apparently mumbled something in the background of a telephone conversation with Mom that caused the agency who provides the aide to follow up on the aide. The company could not get her on the phone when she was supposed to be at my grandmother’s house and normal cover-up efforts by other house inhabitants were thwarted. The aide, once she found out she had been undermined, threw a fit and told my grandmother that if my mother was back in her life and making decisions then she was gone. She left in a huff and I guess my mother has assumed some type of responsibility to provide home care for her mother. She doesn’t want to talk about this anymore and she quickly switches the topic of conversation towards another gossip item. My young cousin, (19 or 20) someone who could potentially have been be a caregiver for my grandmother is now pregnant with her second child, my mother blurts out in an effort to change the subject, while ruling-out my younger cousin as an option to help my mother with caring for her mother.

At this point, I say to my mother, “Your problems are overwhelmingly heavy.” She responds with “Yeah, I know” almost proud-like. And she begins to ramble on about how she needs to just worry about herself and stop trying to take care of everybody else. She went on about how she could take care of herself if she managed her own finances and didn’t take so many other people into consideration. She was particularly bummed about my sister’s recent resumption of alleged thievery. This is the rhetoric she uses with me because she knows I’ve always supported this line of thinking even though she never just worries about herself. She’s always finding new ways to enmesh herself with her immediate family members and she can’t help but meddle in everyone’s business all the while denouncing their behaviors. She was consumed with my brother’s burdensome baggage and distracted by my grandmother’s grievous games. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about with the IRS, she is now consumed with all of the family’s issues. And now she wants to get me back in the fold.

I’m not in the least bit interested in becoming entangled in her business affairs in any way. If I illegally became her nurse, it would be a negative reflection on my own license. And I am not willing to jeopardize my license for her sake. Even if it were two years later, I would not be interested because I’m sure she would not show me respect as a colleague, she would overwhelm me with paperwork, she would violate my time, she would distract me and glean from my fresh ideas teasing me with the threat to accomplish my life’s goals before I got the chance to pursue them. She would come to expect me to come through for her repeatedly while everyone else continues to avoid her and ignore her daily requests for attention. Life, overall, would suck. I just have to think of another excuse or I will have to, as I have several times in the past, explode the truth onto her. There’s no need for that, though. I have no interest in wasting more time trying to get through to her. I feel the need to put more time and energy into my own future plans, plans that include doing something that helps people and gives them hope and increases self worth and self esteem. This would be more for me than for them, but I need my crazy life to have some purpose and meaning. More than just being my self-absorbed mother’s sidekick and confidant. I have a strong desire to make my suffering with her have a purpose. I’m sick and tired of feeling stuck like this. I feel damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I deserve better.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on October 06, 2008, 03:35:33 PM: 9/25/08 dream:

I, or some voyeur version of me was watching, from a distance, a scene unfold at this huge three-story beach house that sat atop a large rock almost at the ocean;’s edge. The house was pink and the house’s owner wore pink clothing, a night gown/house coat type of garment. The subject of her (I presume she is me) discussion was a dog. A small, cute, Pomeranian, white, fluffy number. The lady in pink was smitten by the cuteness and sweetness of the dog and wanted the puppy, making it her second such puppy purchase in a very short period of time. Onlookers were in discussion about this as for the most part, folks thought it unwise for her to make such a purchase so close to just getting her first new puppy. She came floating and ephemeral from the large, palatial pink-toned home to discuss the dogs. While she talked, I noticed her home being battered by the seawater. There were waves, swirling about the foundation and pools of water gathering in the upper balconies and alcoves of the home. At some point it looked as if there was a person on a parachute or a hang-glider perhaps, who seemed to have gotten trapped in the pooling water. The water rose to a level above his head just before he was somehow freed from the water’s trap. There’s a moment of trepidation and then the dream ends.

From the Dream Symbol Dictionary:
Beach

To see the beach in your dream, symbolizes the meeting between your two states of mind. The sand is symbolic of the rational and mental processes while the water signifies the irrational, unsteady, and emotional aspects of yourself. It is a place of transition between the physical/material and the spiritual.

To dream that you are on the beach and looking out toward the ocean, indicates unknown and major changes that are occurring in your life. Consider the state of the ocean, whether it is calm, pleasant, forbidding, etc.

Sea

To see the sea in your dream, represents your unconscious and your transition between your unconscious and conscious. It also often represents your emotions. The dream may also be a pun on your understanding and perception of a situation. "I see" or perhaps there is something you need to "see" more clearly. Alternatively, the dream may indicate a need to reassure yourself or offer reassurance to someone.

Dog

To see a dog in your dream, indicate a skill that you have ignored or forgotten, but needs to be activated. Alternatively, dogs may symbolize intuition, loyalty, generosity, protection, and fidelity. Your own values and intentions will enable you to go forward in the world and succeed. Alternatively, it represents a deterioration of your instincts.

To see a happily barking dog in your dream, symbolizes pleasures and much social activity. If the dog is barking ferociously, then it represents your habit of making demands on people and controlling situations around you. It could also mean unfriendly companions.

To dream that you are buying a dog, indicates your tendency to buy your friends or buy compliments/favors. Alternatively, it suggest a need for you to find companionship.

Also consider the notions associated with the word dog, such as loyalty ("man's best friend") and to be "treated like a dog".

Mansion

To see a mansion in your dream, symbolizes your greatest potential and growth. You may feel that your current situation or relationship is in a rut.

House

To see a house in your dream, represents your own soul and self. Specific rooms in the house indicate a specific aspect of your psyche. In general, the attic represents your intellect, the basement represents the unconscious, etc. If the house is empty, then it indicates feelings of insecurity. If the house is shifting, then it suggests that you are going through some personal changes and changing your belief system. If you live with others in your waking life, but dream that you are living alone, suggests that you need to take new steps toward independence. You need to accept responsibilities and be more self-reliant. To see a new house in your dream, indicates that you are entering into a new phase or new area in your life.

Water

To see water in your dream, symbolizes your unconscious and your emotional state of mind. Water is the living essence of the psyche and the flow of life energy. It is also symbolic of spirituality, knowledge, healing and refreshment.

To dream that water is rising up in your house, signifies your struggles and overwhelming emotions.

Waves

To see clear, calm waves in your dream, signifies a calming of emotions. It may also signal an important decision to be made.

To dream that you are caught in a tidal wave, signifies the strength of your emotions, perhaps accompanied by tears that you are holding back in your waking life.

Pink

Pink represents love, joy, sweetness, happiness, affection, kindness. Being in love or healing through love is also implied with this color

I don’t know how best to interpret this dream but I do know that the people in your dream represent you and versions of yourself. Symbolically, it could make a lot of sense.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on October 06, 2008, 04:49:31 PM: What’s my sister up to?

My sister has recently resumed sending me these random chain text messages again. They say things like, “ Shoot this arrow )))==> to 13 hearts u truly care about and in 13 min u will get great news.” They are often signed Miss King or Miss Fifty, cryptic code names, affiliated somehow with the social club she’s trying to join. Personally, the chain mail implications offend my sensibilities so I never respond or pass them on. They are probably innocuous but I noted that she had not sent me one of these daily messages for at least 4 months since she stopped communicating with me.

The next day, she sent another text with random gossip about a high school gym teacher and girls basketball coach who is now the principal of our old high school which is allegedly going to the dogs. It’s not that I’m above the gossip, I happened to have already been offered this not-so-juicy bit of information months earlier by an old friend. I was perplexed at her approach considering the fact that her texts were the last thing she stopped doing when she broke off complete communication following her graduation on Mother’s Day when I was a no-show.

This perplexed feeling was replaced by anger when I thought of the way she so hastily and thoroughly broke off communication with me without any explanation on her my part. She can’t just lazily traipse back onto the scene now without any debrief. It was at that moment one week ago that I said to myself, ‘Screw this’ and re-instituted No –contact with both my mother and sister. After my mother’s seemingly flippant request that I come to work for her and my sister’s recent “re-kindling” efforts, I’m thinking I’m a dupe if I walk down this road with them especially now given the current desperate circumstances. I have so much going on in my own life and legitimate opportunities for happiness and success. I just need to embrace those things and turn loose these attachments that are weighing me down like an albatross. The cycle is endless.

With that in mind, the day before yesterday, I got a series of telephone calls from the cell phone of my 10 year old niece, my sister’s daughter. I’m asleep when they call and I try to ignore the buzzing phone, but once I get up check the caller id and see it’s my niece 8 times in a row, I decide not to call right back. My instinct is to avoid this interaction and check the voicemails in case there’s an emergency. But if there is an emergency, then they wouldn’t send a 10 year old to contact me would they? Well, in this family, they might. Anyway, I can’t get back to sleep after this and I begin thinking that they, (either my mother or my sister, or my father or all three) are making an attempt to get to me in some way. It would not at all be out of the realm of thinking that they would use a child to be a pawn in the game, used to advance and protect themselves while they strategize on a larger scale.

In the voicemail my niece says she’s coming into town for the State Fair and wants to know if her cousin Jordan can go with her. I thought to myself, here we go again, it’s like the Atlanta trip where I would have loved to be able to have Jordan enjoy herself with her extended family while also doing something entertaining and fun. But I was too worried that the predators would use chicanery to confuse my eight year old child’s thinking and that they would use guilt to make her feel as though there’s something she or her parent’s have done wrong. I decide it’s best to ignore the voicemail and continue with our already-made plans to take Jordan to the State Fair on the next day. There’s a cheerful knock at the door and my hubby answers to my chipper niece who begged him on the spot to allow Jordan to go to the Fair. He comes upstairs and it’s too late, Jordan is running full speed ahead into her cousin’s arms. I can’t say she can’t go at this point. My father is sitting in the car out front, curbside and after being waved in, he comes inside long enough to say that our new puppy, who can’t stop jumping on visitors and trying to lick them to death, needs obedience training. Well, he does, bless his puppy heart. But, after not seeing my father since he came to visit one of my patient’s at work several month’s ago, I would think there’d less perfunctory chit-chat between us and not ramblings about how much our puppy looks like my Ngrandmother’s new dog, same dog mix, different color…blah, blah. He mentioned that he could keep both girls and take them to church tomorrow and bring Jordan back around 6 pm Sunday night. He mentioned that my mother would want to see her. also. With my husband standing there, I couldn’t make an excuse that I needed to check with him first, so we both almost helplessly agreed that she could stay the night. I went to pack an overnight bag with a sinking feeling.

When I woke up this morning I called my niece’s cell phone. I reminded her that I forgot to pack a toothbrush for Jordan and that Jordan needed not to forget her denim jacket. My niece was sure to let me know that Jordan’s visit was all her idea and that grandpa, my father, tried to talk her out of inviting Jordan to the fair, repeatedly asking her if she was sure she didn’t want to ask one of her friends to go with her to the Fair. Niece also said everyone is so excited that Jordan’s in town and that the plans for the day are changing as they would all be going to the old family cult church. Justgreat. I feel as though I’ve sent my baby out amongst the wolves. I worked a twelve-hour shift last night and generally I can’t get a thought in edgewise when I’m working, I am so busy. But, I keep thinking of my Jordan and praying for her that she would be protected from danger. She’s a smart girl and she has angels watching over her. My hubby says, they know better than to allow something to happen to her. They know, and I believe this, that we would stop at nothing to vindicate any type of harm that could come to our Jordan. I’m not worried that she’ll be harmed per se. I worry that via subtlety and cunning she’ll be coerced into being a pawn for my mother. I wait for the other shoe to drop on that one. It’s 6: 12 pm and no one has called to say Jordan is on the way here. I need to follow up remind them of her school schedule. They don’t typically give a care about stuff like that.

Well, although it was 2.5 hours later than earlier promised, Jordan was returned safe and sound. She appears to have had a good time with them. The big news was that my mom was completely surprised to see Jordan and wanted her to come back next weekend so that she could have more time with her and “tell her good stories about her mother.” I’m kinda glad everything happened so fast and that mom didn’t have the forethought and planning to really set her hooks into my baby. I guess that’s why she wanted so badly for her to return next week. But, I plan to be very busy with Jordan this weekend with no possibility of being able to make the return trip so soon. When saying our goodbyes, Dad went on a long harangue about how my brother needed to get away from the drunken harlot. It was interesting that when he gave the rendition of recent events involving my brother’s breakthrough seizures, my Alzheimer’s aunt’s antics, and my sister’s sudden decision to move back into the home of my mother, his overall attitude was somewhat blithe and gay. When he recanted the story of how he and brother’s girlfriend came into a physical altercation, he admitted to grabbing her arm to “escort” her out of the house prior to calling the police. When recalling the events surrounding my brother’s recent seizure where father simply laid his seizing body flat on the bed, placed the CPAP mask over his face, and left him alone to return brother’s young children to their mother, he admitted that he’s tired of the 5 to 6 hours wait he has to endure when takes brother to the hospital after a seizure. He admits to being tired of having to be the one to look after my brother and be his chauffeur when my brother won’t even listen to him and leave the town skankpot alone. When father jokes that oldest brother who lives in mom’s upstairs guestroom has moved from that bedroom to the other guest bedroom before my sister moves back in, leaving her with the worst of the two, I say, “So Mom’s not still talking about selling the house?” Dad looks at me and says, ”She wavers back and forth, but it is really that bad?” Clearly, she’s decided to keep him in the dark about just how bad her finances really are. He mentions that he will be going by Mom’s the next morning to talk with her about these things and he rushes off my porch. I guess I let more of the cat out of the bag regarding mom’s financial woes but, honestly, I don’t want to be part of the dialogue anymore. You never know when you’re saying too much, because everyone manipulates and hides and lies so much. I really do wish to make no-contact a reality. I feel the tug getting stronger and I feel the need to fight like crazy to keep myself from getting sucked (suckered) back in. Have you ever been so ambivalent about something while also being absolutely sure what you’re really supposed to do? I hate this feeling. My anxiety is at about a 6/10. My IBS is flaring up. My dreams are all over the place. Depression is trying it’s best to creep in. I’m just going to put up a psychic fight. I need to muster all of my mental energy and focus on my daughter and husband and my burgeoning career. I need to see the glass half-full right now.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on October 15, 2008, 10:39:17 PM: The family reaches out

It was not so unexpected that my brother, (the one with “the” girlfriend) called me a few days ago. I was glad to hear from him and despite my effort to try to NC the entire family, I give in to the desire to communicate with my brother, whom I love and cannot resist. After last week and the surprise accosting of Jordan to go the Fair, I was laying low, so to speak, when it came to immediately answering all incoming calls from the hometown, especially ones from my niece and father. But when my brother called, I was excited to hear from him, although I proceeded with caution considering my theory that mom, the Great Puppetmaster, controls all around her. No one calls me without an specific duty of my mother’s bidding. He talked about his girlfriend and her relationship (or lack thereof) with our family. He also mentioned that my grandmother’s former nurse’s aide is furious with my mother for having her terminated from my grandmother’s case and that the aide was threatening to call a governing entity (Medicaid services) about my mother’s hiring of my brother’s girlfriend (not in the least certified to work as a nurse’s aide) to work for grandmother in the aide’s place. I suppose my mother and the nurse’s aide cannot both be in my grandmother’s life. My mother forced my grandmother to reveal to the aide’s agency that she was not making her home visits as prescribed.

My brother says that mother’s plan is to bar the former aide from my grandmother’s property as the old aide has been coming around to my grandmother’s house supposedly trying to get my grandmother to re-hire her. Right in the middle of the conversation, my brother asks suddenly, “So is Jordan coming down this weekend? Mom wants all her granddaughters with her this weekend.” He goes on to say that he doesn’t really plan on sending his own daughter, as he wanted to spend some time with his children when they come to town for visitation this weekend. I say nothing about whether or not Jordan will be staying with her grandmother this weekend, though I know she will most certainly will not be staying, but I do share with my brother that Jordan is sick and just missed two days from school for a horrible cold and fever she caught sometime last weekend when she went away to the Fair. According to Jordan, who is well aware of how a germ is spread, once she knew her cousin was recovering from a cold, Jordan told her cousin that they needed to be careful not to spread it, to which her cousin responded by allowing a pool of drool form in the corner of her mouth and letting it dribble down onto Jordan’s thigh. When I asked Jordan what she did, she told me she said “Eww,” and wiped the drool off her own thigh. I’m thinking she didn’t go and wash her hands and thigh immediately and for that matter, they slept together that night, so spreading germs was probably inevitable. And to boot, they were at the Fair with all those many different germs from different regions, not hard to believe she picked up a bug there. But the intentional drooling after being reminded to be careful: random.

My brother and I finished our conversation talking about our great aunt who hasn’t been getting adequate care from her nurse’s aide. The aide is a former disgruntled employee who was good friends with the woman who took half of my mother’s clients in a bad business split. FYI, when my mother asked me what I thought of the aide, who did some work for me a few years ago, I told her that the aide was unreliable, flighty and would most certain disappoint her when she needed her the most. Apparently, that was just the information she needed to hire the aide the next week.

The next day my niece calls to see if it’s true what my brother said, that Jordan is not coming to stay with Mom this weekend because she’s sick. I say to her, “Well, Jordan is sick.” My niece responds, “Well, I guess that will be a good enough excuse for Grandma.” This somewhat confirms my suspicion that my brother was dispatched by my mother to influence our weekend plans. Why she wouldn’t just call me and ask me herself is still beyond me; my guess is that she is reeling from my decision to opt-out of becoming her employee.

The day after that, to my great surprise, my oldest brother calls out of the blue, (or because my mother told him to). I’m super excited to hear from him. He leaves a message on my telephone that says, “Hey I just developed some pictures that I took of Jordan and {her cousin} from last weekend and I wanted to speak to you whenever you got the chance.” I called him back, with some reserve, because he did happen the hot topic of the hour, Jordan. I’m pretty sure he was prompted to call to do some reconnaissance on her, but I hadn’t heard from him in so long, I took a risk and called my beloved brother. Talking to him was wonderful! He’s doing so well in his recovery. When I mentioned to him that November would be my one-year anniversary in nursing, he said that November would too be his one-year anniversary in sobriety. I was so overjoyed to hear that he was taking his sobriety so seriously, and I let him know so. He mentioned seeing Jordan and he told me that my husband and I were doing a great job with raising our daughter. He also shared with me that seeing Jordan with her older cousin was a trigger for him. He said seeing them together and the way Jordan “idolized” her cousin reminded him of himself and our older male cousin, who eventually went on to facilitate his getting strung out on drugs. He mentioned that he was not trying to perpetuate any negativity in any way, but that seeing the two of them together made him think of his own youth and the innocence he had as a child. He’s going to two Narcotics Anonymous meetings a day and he’s taking it “one day at a time.” Hearing him say that it all started with 90 meeting in 90 days and that one day turned into 300 some days, made my heart leap, it was so inspiring. I’ve kind of been riding on a high (pun intended) since I spoke to my brother. I collected a “second wind” from my conversation with him and I’ve been on a roll every since, taking a proactive approach to realizing my dreams and seeing the positive in life. I’m not so spooked by my mother and what she’s capable of either. What will be, will be. It’ is not my intention to be readily available to her, NC is probably the best thing for her and I, but I’m not going to be bummed about it anymore. My outlook is upbeat and positive and I have my big bro to thank for that.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on November 29, 2008, 04:22:06 PM: Recent attempts at No Contact

It’s been about 6 weeks since No Contact was last re-initiated. Mother and I have spoken twice. I’ve spoken to my siblings several times, prompted by mother, I’m sure. For the most part, I have been able to maintain an anxiety-free outlook on the family’s situation, as sucky as it is. My last conversations with both mother on yesterday and my brother earlier today, however, have me particularly agitated. In review, my mother’s dealings with the IRS have come to somewhat of a stalemate as she and the agency she hired to help her have located a loophole that keeps the IRS from being able to move further on her case in a direct manner. The IRS officer, in his frustration I imagine, has figured out a way to keep the proverbial “ball” rolling in this case. He has put out a legal summons for my sister, who has, in the past, called this IRS officer on my mother’s behalf (or shall I say at my mother’s bidding), to deal with related matters. The summons is for my sister to provide any financial information she has on the company to include many of the items he was requesting from my mother but still had not received. This summons date is in December and I can only imagine how this request for her to appear in his office is affecting both mother and sister.

From mother, I get the impression that she’s resting on the idea that the IRS cannot legally hold my sister responsible for anything, as she is not an officer of the company. From sister, I get the impression that either a), she is in denial or that b), she has plotted some great revenge on my mother that could possibly include the following:

Several weeks ago, during the first conversation with mother after about a month of No Contact, mother revealed that my sister, with newly elicited help from her 10-year old daughter, is stealing from her personal bank accounts again. My niece was recruited by sis to look over my mother’s shoulder while she was standing at the ATM and to learn her new ATM password; mother’s had to change it three times in 2008. My niece was also suspected of actually removing the new ATM card from mother’s purse, delivering it to her mother and then returning it to her grandmother’s purse the next day. This makes me sad.

Speaking of sad, my sister is in a terrible funk right now and mother seems to think she is ill. She believes that because Sis is losing weight. (She has stopped eating red meat) and is lethargic most of the time, sleeping most of the day and not answering her phone calls from mom. To mother, she must be sick, and the fact that my sister had what appeared to be a nervous breakdown the other day, screaming, crying, throwing things, only supports that fact. My niece was so afraid during sister’s fit, she called the police. When the police arrived and asked how they cold help my sister, she said something to the effect of , “not unless you can make the men in my life act right…” The very same guy she moved to this town to get away from is now out of jail and, he has a new baby with a woman and has decided to stay with that woman. Despite the fact that he was co-dependent and abusive and suicidal, my sister is still distraught over his decision to extinguish his candle for my her and to get serious about this new woman. Important missing detail: this gentleman is our second cousin.

Mother: “ I’m worried about her, she doesn’t have any friends or a husband or anything. (little dig there to me for being married), I’m worried about her. I think she needs to be here with me. I’ve gotta get my baby girl up here. (sniffle). I kinda went off on her and told her I’m coming with a UHaul to get her…” To this idea, apparently, Sis was underwhelmed, less than impressed. Her response was pathetic, and she cited my mother’s insistence upon her moving to this strange town in the first place, as a means to escape the embarrassing relationship with her own cousin. My sister said, “You made us move here and then you left us…” sis told Mom. From this, mother, inferred sis’ cooperation, or rather acquiescence, with the sudden move back to the hometown. With the assumption that sis will not probably not follow the house rules, Mom’s thinking she will have an apartment all ready for sis when she moves her back home. Mom’s words: “I want her to be comfortable, and I don’t want her to be half-sick so far away where I can’t help her…”

Meanwhile my oldest brother, who celebrated one year clean and sober this month, his longest period of sobriety since he was 14. He’s 44. Mother spoke of this occasion with contempt, I’d have to say. She didn’t seem happy or overjoyed for him. She mentioned how nervous he was while planning his small celebration that would be held at my mother’s home and she spoke of his gathering as though it would be a nuisance to her and a disturbance to her normal Sunday evening activities. I could not hide my excitement over his accomplishment as I promised to call him and congratulate him.. The transition from this statement was, “Now, I just have to bring your sister back home and get her better…” The implication here was that she is responsible for getting my brother better and that her work as a miracle-worker is never done.

Grand Narci

My mother’s own health was a major topic of discussion, as she has had many nagging health issues being addressed now that her Medicare has taken effect. She’s had her insulin regulated to a point where her blood sugars are now in better control. She’s had a laser eye surgery for some bleeding on both her retinas. And she’s had other diagnostic tests like a colonoscopy and abdominal imaging to address her worry that there is something “going on” in her GI tract that the doctors are just not picking up on. All the diagnostics were negative (no disease processes found). I only mention this because in a very cavalier manner, mother reveals that she didn’t pay her Medicaid part D and they cancelled her therefore causing her to have to pay full price $117 for a 10 day supply of the insulin (formerly $20 with Part D). She claims, “I thought they would just take it out of my social security check…” This infuriates me. She’s so wrapped up with being fiscally responsible for each and everyone in the family but she allows her own bills to lapse, mortgage 3 months behind, Medicaid prescription benefits cancelled, 3 vehicles all 2 months behind, apartments for 2 grown adults and their children, and their utilities and incidental expenses. And to add to all that…

Grandma, aka, Grand Narci has metastatic cancer in the liver now. She’s not a candidate for surgery and chemotherapy would kill her at her age. Guess who has signed up for the responsibility of grand Narci’s care until she dies? You guessed it. Mother’s plan is to, without discussing it with the rest of the siblings, move grandmother upstairs in her home, right next to oldest brother. I suggested to her that this might not be appreciated by her siblings and that she may want to consider opening this discussion of end of life care with them so that they are able to help in whatever ways they can, and so there won’t be deep-seated resentment later when the siblings feel shut off from being there for their mother. I also told her that she had a responsibility as the family member who was present when the doctor told grandmother her prognosis, to share this information with the rest of the family and not to just move along with that information without considering the others, even if she does have power of attorney. I also shared with her that liver metastasis is tough to deal with and that there will be times towards the end that mother will need support as a caregiver. Around the clock nursing care would be ideal, I told her, as grandmother will probably become mentally altered at some point and will definitely become physically deconditioned, incontinent of her stool and urine, and difficult to feed. God forbid she has pain that’s difficult to treat. It’s strange because my mother was an oncology nurse many moons ago. She said that she had forgotten the systems of the body and the way cancer affects it. Did she really forget or is she playing me, I wonder?

Grand Narci is not getting the support she had expected from her children, (big surprise there) and is remaining quite stoic about the whole thing. My mother has run out of people to pay to help my grandmother at her home. The old aide that I hired for grandmother several years ago, the one who became extremely close with grandma, and at some point was rumored to have been named in grandma’s Last Will and Testament, is still hanging around despite her recent firing upon my mother’s insistence. My theory is that in order for mother to be able to be closer to grandma in her last days, the old aide would have to be out of the picture. This old aide, however was the only one who was able to keep grandma relatively healthy. She cooked the right foods for her and cleaned out her place regularly and dumped her bedside commode as needed. Now that the old aide was fired, the new aides were inconsistent and unreliable, generally deterred by the crazy antics of the various family members who transiently pass through grandma’s home. Mother leaves money for the transients to buy groceries for grandmother and naturally, they buy food for themselves, usually fish sticks, French fries, and such and give grandmother the cold, hardened leftovers which usually remains uneaten at her bedside as she knows the grease will upset her belly for the remainder of the day or night. My grandmother is now being cared for by my brother’s girlfriend who’s being paid by mother’s health care agency, and to whom grandma has recently grown fond of.

All this talk about my grandmother’s end of life care has my mother upset about her own situation, and she wanted my advice on the best way to handle her affairs. I reminded her that two years ago, I bought the Suze Orman CD to her so that she could establish a trust and to get her affairs in order while she still had some assets to protect. She blew it off, and took the CD and the materials to parouse although she had no real intentions of completing the process. I believe she questioned my intentions when purchasing this packet for her. She probably thought I was trying to line up my own wealth and I believe she failed to follow through to spite me. Several times over the past two years I would remind her why protecting her assets was a good thing to do and she would again say she would look at the package again and then she would blow it off, again. Needless to say, now that grandma’s Will has gone mysteriously missing, she’s re-evaluating the need to get her own affairs in order in such a way that gives her more control in her final wishes. She asked me what I thought of her getting a reverse mortgage as well. I chuckled within, and told myself, “don’t even take the bait…” I played dumb and told her I didn’t know what she should do. I’m so sick and tired of giving her valuable advice only to have her do the opposite and have the whole thing blow up in everybody’s face. It’s better to just say, “Do whatever you think is best…” and just be done with the whole matter. Any way I look at it, she’s going to end in financial ruin and I’m pretty sure I’ll be bankrupting her estate upon her death and I expect to get zero, nothing, nada from it.

The dysfunctional matriarch

My mother has recruited the younger of my two older brothers to feel sorry for grandma on her behalf. Brother called me yesterday after a long stimulating conversation with mother, he repeated verbatim to me every single word I spoke to my mother the day before about what she could expect with grandmother’s disease. He asked if I could again share with him the disease process and things he could do to help grandma feel better. I tried to remain as dispassionate as possible because honestly, with my history with my grandmother (her last words to me one year ago were, “I hate you.”), I was having a difficult time not saying something mean or disrespectful to my brother about his precious grandmother. But after he starts regurgitating all of these judgmental theories that my mother’s siblings are horrible deadbeats, I can’t hold back. I tell him, “Don’t do that. Don’t judge the others for how they respond to grandmother’s impending death. You don’t know what the nuances of their relationships were and believe me, despite her current sad, frail, status, grandma is no angel.” She’s lucky that our mother wants to even attempt to care for her in her last days, grandmother certainly didn’t care for mother in her first days, giving her up to be raised by other family members while she moved on with her life with another man and children. My brother quietly agreed. I feel bad for him because his seizure disorder affects his memory and he has to be reminded of events that have occurred from time to time. He revealed to me then, that his girlfriend during one of her visits to help my grandmother was accosted by one of the nieces who told her the sordid tale of her incestual molestation by one my grandmother’s beloved grandsons and how grandmother, the family’s matriarch, turned a blind eye and deaf ear and did nothing while her sons and grandson’s abused the children of the family over the years. Grandmother is famous for loving and doting on the men of the family beyond explanation while destroying the self-esteem of all of the females, pitting sister against sister and grand-daughter against grand-daughter. It’s obvious and pervasive and the women of the family resent her for it.

I encouraged my brother not to forget to take care of himself throughout all this. He finished the conversation with, “I’m glad I talked to you, you always get me to thinking…” I tell him I love him and we get off the phone.” I’m mentally exhausted.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on December 18, 2008, 05:05:55 PM: A visit home

My mother called last week and told me that she had some “Christmas money” for my daughter and she wondered if she should mail it. She claimed she lost my address. And after fumbling her words a bit, she thought she might send it via my father but she knew how I didn’t like for him to just pop by unannounced so…. Translation…. “I would like for you to come for a visit but I don’t know how to simply ask so I need you to see what I’m implying with innuendo…

I give in and tell her I’ll look at my work schedule and call her when I can come there. Two days later, I show up to her home, and what is the very first thing I see on a purple sticky note attached to the side of the CPU tower atop her home office desk (at which she sits daily particularly during her telephone conversations)? I see my address in bold letters on the only sticky note seen anywhere on the desk. Always the manipulator, white lies don’t count in her world.

She awkwardly handed me three crisp one hundred dollar bills almost immediately upon my arrival with the explanation that she was only giving Christmas gifts to two of her grandchildren this year, my Jordan and my sister’s 10 year old. My brother’s have three children each, all of whom would be grateful for the least little inkling of a thought of a present, I’m sure. So gee thanks mom, I get to accept this disproportionate gift for my child with all the pre-loaded guilt and uncomfortable emotions attached like a bow. I thought to suggest she divide the entire $600.00 she was going to give to my and my sister’s kids among all eight of the grandkids, but that kind of thing ALWAYS blows up in my face. So I’ve learned with her, no good deed goes unpunished and to just grin and bear it if you don’t want a drawn out fiasco. There would be enough of those before the evening was through. As soon as she handed over the cash to me, she ripped in…

The younger of my two older brothers needs to find a new house, according to her. The house was recently headed for foreclosure during the same time the home in which mother lives was going into foreclosure and she was overwhelmed with the stress of it all. My brother feels the Alzheimer’s aunt should be the one to have to go and find a new place, however ironically it was her disability and retirement income that got them out of this last foreclosure situation. My brother’s having a difficult time seeing that he needs to find somewhere to live because the tap is running dry and there will soon be no house in which to live. He is an exemplar of the art of denial.

My brother’s young children are all coming for their weekend the day after Christmas and according to mother, he’s going to have to access “spillover gifts” provided by his girlfriend (the mother of 11 children who has approached various help agencies about donating gifts to her family and who has according to mother, hit the jackpot with all the toys she’s expecting). Maybe mom’s trying to test and see if the girlfriend has what it takes to provide for my brother’s needs thus freeing her from the responsibility and worry of being his provider.

The business’ walls are closing in…

Since the IRS has figured out a way to continue garnishments of both her government contract agency and the associated bank account to which the checks are direct deposited, mother is attempting to fast-track the transfer off the clients in the failing office to an unaffected branch. The part of the company losing the clients is the part that my sister was promised.

The agency responsible for approving transfers is giving mother one road-block after another in getting all the transfers completed. According to mother they have provided her a lot of “petty and unfounded” reasons for rejecting her requests and having her re-submit paperwork in order to get approvals to bill them. More stringent policies and accountability procedures are also hampering her ability to have a smooth transfer and that has her frustrated because pending approvals reduce her income while the bills are steadily piling. I’m not sure how’s she has not already sunk under the weight of her payroll which she says is now at 10K/week with taxes and she’s only bringing in 8K/week. During her harangue, she slipped and mentioned that she is now getting a “little behind” on the payroll taxes for the company to which she is transferring the clients. She’s robbing Peter to pay Paul, per se.

I asked her whatever happened to the tax representatives who promised to help her out of this situation. She said all they kept telling her was to sell her house and take the equity to make the IRS an offer and compromise for less than the 100K that’s accrued. So she’s out with them, they’ve wasted her time, not worth another thought or word. I wonder how much the final tally was before she realized this, my guess: $10-15K.

And on top of that…

My sister’s stealing is at an all time high. She is taking checks, uses her daughter to access the ATM card and takes $300 or more at a time. After an incident where my mother tried to recover the money from sis’s payroll check by docking her pay $300, my sister called the accountant behind my mother’s back and used her previously assigned authority to not only reverse the docking of the $300.00, but to additionally give herself a $5 an hour raise. To boot, she had the accountant draw up a separate check to cover not the business office’s but her own apartment’s back rent. When Mom asked why she was doing this to her, why she was stealing from her, sister claimed that what she was doing was not stealing. She gave her reasons. Being moved from city to city at my mother’s whims, having to move her daughter from school to school and having to be responsible for the business were primary reasons for her need to access money this way.

This now has Mom thinking that sis is stealing for drugs or is in some kind of trouble. When she offers this to sister, sister promptly enters a huge screaming rage that shuts down the entire conversation. Like mother, like daughter, it seems.

When I ask about the IRS tax summons and if sister responded or not, she said sister called the officer on the morning of the meeting, citing car trouble 15 minutes before the scheduled appointment. The IRS officer, the same one garnishing the accounts, gave her an hour to fax her job description to his office. At this time, sis called mom, after several days of sis’s refusing to take any calls from her for help in the matter because she, of course, had no formal job description and needed to create it in 45 minutes in order to avoid further prosecution. Mother obliged grateful that sis finally called.

Oldest brother speaks out…

During the visit to my mom, I got a chance to see my brother, T. He was preparing to leave for a Narcotics Anonymous meeting for which he prepares the coffee. I went in the kitchen to chat with him before he left, I was not going to allow my entire time to be monopolized by my mother, even though she thinks she paid for it. Normally when someone visits, she holes up in her bedroom which keeps things all about her. She doesn’t come out into the common areas where we can all enjoy one another’s company. My going out to the kitchen to see T made her have to come out of her dungeon and communicate with her family. However, this is how she chose to spend this moment:

Mother: While I have you both here, I need your advice. T, never wants to say anything when we talk, but I need both your input about what I should do about all these problems I have. I want to know step-by-step what you think I should do.

T: (who never wants to say anything) You mean advice about the elephant in the room?

Me: (through unintentional laughter) What Elephant in the Room? (I had a vision of about 4 or 5 large goofy-looking elephants crammed into my mother’s great room and eat-in kitchen)

T and Mother at the same time: T: [Sister] is stealing…Mom: She’s doing drugs…

T: Well, I don’t think there’s any evidence to support anything other than she is displaying addictive and compulsive behavior. If she was doing drugs thing I believe I, of all people, would know…

Mom: Well, I think the way she’s sleeping all the time, not eating, looking sick, and spending all this money while not paying her bills. She must be doing something wrong. And, I know for a fact that she was using marijuana with that boyfriend who went to jail. She told me herself! (becoming increasingly edgier) …so I know that she’s capable of doing drugs.

Me: (not wanting to touch this with a 10 foot pole) Well, T, what do you think should happen next?

T: (to mom) If you don’t want to have her steal anymore than just STOP supporting her lifestyle.

Mom: What do you mean stop? Stop what? Stop enabling? I told her I would prosecute her the next time she takes a check. Do you want me to throw her in jail, T? (she crescendos into a 5 minute Nrage. I zone out. I come back around when she says), …What? step by step, should I do?

T: (calmly, soberly) Attach consequences to her actions and stick to it…

Mom: Okay, I won’t talk about it to y’all anymore.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on January 14, 2009, 10:24:23 AM: Grandma’s death show

I received a call from mom one week ago. It was 715 am and she wanted to know if I had to work that day or not. I told her I had worked the evening before and that I was off until the next day and she immediately started in on a 30 minute complaint session about her sister with whom she was locked in constant battle over every detail of my dying grandmother’s care and wishes. My grandmother, after a week-long hospitalization where her Code Status was changed to Do Not Resuscitate/Do Not Intubate wherein no heroic measures were to be taken to sustain her heartbeat her brain activity if her heart spontaneously stopped. Upon granting this status, which my mother and sister agreed upon after the physician said there was nothing else they could do for grandmother, the hospital discharged my grandmother to my mother’s home with a hospice nurse and health care aides to turn and clean her. This was to be my mother’s last show of devotion to her mother, to give her a dignified, well-attended death. According to my mother, my aunt disagreed with her on every turn. For instance, who will be in charge of picking up my grandmother’s youngest son from the airport now that the hospice nurse has deemed my grandmother “hours” from death. Gather the family, this is it.

Uncle C, Who’s going to pick him up from airport? My aunt wanted to know why I hadn’t stopped by to see grandmother yet and why couldn’t I just get Uncle C and bring him since I lived closest to the airport. My mother and aunt argued over the fact that I had not performed up to snuff in this bizarre death-of-the-matriarch ritual and it was this bickering that resulted in my mother’s razzled early-morning call. Mom, who didn’t want to leave grandma’s side, asked me to bring Uncle C and myself to pay respects. I, put on the spot, agreed to get him and visit for a while.

At my mother’s house, my grandmother was lying in a hospital bed, with noticeable agonal abdominal breathing, Kaussmal’s respirations, often associated with the final hours of dying. Her eyes were set in the death glare, the glazed over stare that seems to see through you. Her bald head with tufts of gray hair was exposed, I was expecting to see her in her wig, she would have wanted her wig, I thought. She was wearing my mother’s cotton pajama top as a gown, my mother was standing by, eyes near tears, and doting on her dying mother.

When Uncle C walked in to see her, he spoke, “Hey, ma” and she turned her head towards his voice, something, per mother, she hadn’t been doing during the last 48 hours.

After letting them have their time together, I was summoned to grandma’s bedside, I identified myself and I took her hand. Before I could think of something appropriate to say, I said I Love you. There were tears in her eyes (probably residual from my uncle’s, her favorite son’s, arrival).

Mom reacted to the new change in grandma’s behavior by grabbing me into a bear hug and proceeded into whimpering cry, very dramatic, quite awkward for me internally, but externally, I exhibited the behavior that has become second nature to me as a nurse. I rubbed her back in small circles and didn’t pull back until she seemed to let go. It felt like a full minute and a half, an eternity. It was not comfortable.

People began to stroll in over the course of the evening. I sat in the room with grandma for a while observing her breathing patterns, and watching my mother attend to her mother’s death. She gave her liquid morphine round the clock every three hours. Apparently Grandma spit out the medication for the first time on this evening. “Why did she do that?” my mother wondered out loud. Mother was looking to me for an answer at every turn. I said, with a hunch of the shoulders, “maybe she doesn’t want to take it this time, maybe she wants to be more alert for her new company.” My mother put a towel under grandma’s chin and administered the morphine on schedule. “She needs it for her pain.” Again, I hunched my shoulders. This is her show.

I’ve heard so much about you…

I had an opportunity to meet my brother’s girlfriend in person. This is the girlfriend who has 11 children, and has been one of my grandmother’s healthcare workers for the past several months. She was hired by my mother to change my grandmothers soiled sheets and garments. She was dressed in a scrub suit and she sat attentively by my grandmother’s side. I’m not sure if this was a “Can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” or a “Keep your enemy closer,” or a “Can’t we all just get along” situation, but my mother, who once despised this young lady, has joined forces in the care of the family. When she and I met, I gave her a hug. She said, “I’ve heard so much about you, all good, and you’re so cute” and I returned, “I’ve heard a lot about you, too and it looks like you’re taking good care of my brother.” She says, with a smile, “He’s like a baby, I tell you.” I smile back and look at my brother who’s wearing the most sheepish grin. I can tell he’s happy we finally met. If the occasion were less solemn I would have liked to yuck it up with her a bit. My brother was getting a kick out of it. I also met my oldest brother’s girlfriend, who greeted me with the same, “I’ve heard so much about you. To which I returned the same as before, “It looks like you’re taking good care of my brother.” She replies, “Well, I love him too.” She seems sweet and attentive. She said she liked my felt hat, an oversized floppy number that covered my face and hair for the most part, probably symbolic of the guarded manner in which I was approaching this scenario, now that I think about it.

My brother’s girlfriends both seemed awkward around my mother, who during the entire time I was getting acquainted with the two ladies, was either screaming orders at my sister, (oh yeah, she made an unexpected appearance) or she was standing vigil at my mother’s side wiping her forehead, touching her hand and completing the image of what one does at her dying mother’s bedside. Yes, I felt a farce, unexplainable, but there. The vibe I felt coming from that direction was one of heightened theatrics. Drama.

After a while I was summoned by my mother to assist my brother’s girlfriend, grandmother’s caretaker, with changing her soiled bed pads and gown. My mother said, in a joke, let me see what your nursing skills are like. I softly harrumphed and said, “Well, I would get the assistance of the care partner if I had one available to me and let her take the lead on that. My brother’s girlfriend then smiles and said, “Yeah, because we’re the ones who do this work, not the nurses.” I leave it at that and start gathering supplies needed… While I’m cleaning my grandmother’s perineal area with a warm washcloth, she gives me a look of terrified fear. She seemed very frightened. I re-oriented her the way I would a mentally altered patient who has cancer spread to the brain or liver which can reduce patients to an Alzhiemer’s like dementia wherein the person is driven by primal instincts with language, vision, and fine motor ability giving over to a hazy half blind awareness with only the use of grunts and large energy-stealing body movements to show purposeful intention. I tell her what we’re doing, that we’re giving her privacy and a towel for warmth and that we would be done. The frightened look remained. I think maybe it’s the large floppy hat that disguises my face, maybe she imagines I am not human at all, maybe I’m a monster or a demon whose come to collect her soul. She seems to see me and she seems to be afraid.

Mom’s latest great idea

After demanding the caregiver not to leave my grandmother’s bedside, my mother calls me to her bedroom to discuss some things on her mind. She wants to vent, I can tell. She’s lying on her bed with her CPAP mask over her nose. She’s speaking in a low voice despite the hiss and hum of the CPAP machine. So I have to come in close to hear. Typical Nstuff. I can’t bring myself to sit on her bed. This, too would be uncomfortable. I feel the need for boundaries.

She says my aunt is driving her crazy. That she’s going nuts having to host all these people in her home. That her sister was on her way with a ton of people, my cousins and such. For the most part, they would all be in various versions of inebriation, with substance abuse being my family’s main stress coping mechanism. I hear this and pretty much know I’m ready to wrap up this visit and prepare to leave. Besides, although it seemed as if every breath my grandmother was taking would be her last, it also seemed as if she could go on breathing like that all night. My mother admitted that grandmother was more alert than she had been in several days. At the hospital, we call that “rallying,” when the patient makes one final burst of activity and alertness before succumbing and giving over to the process.

While Mom is rambling, I begin to think to myself, when she dies, if I have the day off from work, maybe I’ll slip in for the funeral, a little late so that I don’t have to be with the family procession. Then, I hear my mother, who has started in on her financial woes; the IRS guy is cornering in on her and has told her she better sell everything and shut down her business because if she doesn’t he’s going to see to it that she never gets another government contract, ever. I hear her mutter something about wanting to establish a bank account in Jordan’s name. I hear her name and I think to myself, for a second, that Mom really must be feeling sentimental and wants to make some big time adjustments in her ways. An account for Jordan, what a great idea! That fantasy bubble is quickly popped in two short sentences when she clarifies that she wants to start an account for HERSELF in Jordan’s name and have a bank card on that account for which she can withdraw and deposit money. (the needle scratches across the record player. here) Is she serious? Now, it’s time to go.

Grandma runs the show

I check my voicemail the next morning, later that evening, the next day and the next evening. No word about grandmother. I think she could not possibly breathe the full death-rattle for much longer than a few hours when I last saw her. I began to think maybe she died and verbalized her wishes that she didn’t want me at her funeral. I thought maybe they just forgot to call me. Then I think, maybe she’s fighting and hanging on. Maybe she wants to bear witness to her own death show. Hearing is the last sense to go and my mother’s home has such acoustics that you can hear a mouse fart in a room on the other side of the house. There were so many people and conversations going, I’m thinking, my grandmother, she who loves to sit and listen to your drunken tales of woe, didn’t want to miss this the last complete gathering of the descendants of her matriarchal reign. I believe she may have been re-energized by the arrival of her youngest child who moved far away years ago. My mother kept saying “…you two are the last two to arrive, the only two who hadn’t come to see her.”

Earlier in the evening, I felt the need to be cordial and to behave with respect, despite my grandmother’s extremely low opinion of me, but at this point in the evening, I have to tell my mother that I would not have been there if Uncle C didn’t need the ride from the airport to her home. She ignored this declaration, but my oldest brother who was standing by at the time, reached in for a hug and said, “Thanks for rising above the drama and stopping by.” And I assure him that I love him but that I’m probably going to disappear again for a while.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on January 21, 2009, 06:58:17 PM: Three days after she only had three “hours” left to live, grandmother died

Me: “Did you talk to grandmother re: her arrangements and her wishes for the funeral and her property and such?”

Mom: “No, not really. She doesn’t care about certain things. She trusts me to do whatever I think is best. She gives over to me the responsibility to do the right thing. Even Uncle C and Uncle I give over to me to do the right thing. But my sister, she seems to disagree with every decision I make.”

Out of the blue, my aunt stated to her her siblings over grandmother’s dying body: “Mother knows I loved her and I know she loves me, but I don’t know about SOME PEOPLE..” (sharp cut of the eyes towards my mother) To this, my mother took offense. She believed my aunt was singling her out as not having loved their mother and was possibly alluding to the fact that maybe their mother didn’t really ever love my mother.

Mom: “What is that supposed to mean?!! I’ve been by her side 24 hours a day for the last seven days, holding her hands and caring for her. If she ever felt any doubt, a long time ago, then she now knows that I love her.”

To further convince herself, my mother told a story of how, weeks ago, when my grandmother’s decline was becoming more apparent, my aunt, in a heated reaction to my mother about a decision she made in my grandmother’s home, said aloud to those present, “Why does she have to be so bossy? She doesn’t live here. Who made her the one in charge? Why does she do those things?” At that time, grandmother, still talking but quite ill, said aloud to my aunt, “She does these things because she loves me.” My mother promises that others heard her say that.

My father: “She must have loved you. She signed the Power of Attorney forms, not once, but twice. Remember when you lost it and needed it for something recently and she signed a new one for you? She wouldn’t do that if she didn’t love you.”

My mother and aunt spent a lot of time arguing over where the funeral would be held, who would officiate, which wig would she wear, her old black one or if it will be a more “realistic” one with some gray in it? They were arguing over the day and time of the funeral, they were arguing over everything. My mother finally said, “My sister’s just being mean to me.” Over the past years, I’ve been able to ignore her and cut her off from my life. But now that mother’s become the focus, I can’t avoid her. When this is over, I don’t ever have to talk to her again.

Me: “So where will the funeral be? Will everyone be able to be there?”

Mom: “The funeral’s at {the church of grandma’s youth}. Ike, (grandmother’s oldest son), will be just out of his knee replacement surgery and all hopped up on pain pills like crazy, and Uncle C, (the uncle I picked up from the airport), who hasn’t been around for two days out running behind God knows what.. (to me:) Are you going to come?.”

Me: “If I can get someone to switch my shifts at work.”

She then begins to go over the obituary details, calling out loud the questions on the funeral director’s questionnaire, “Name, Date of Birth, Date of Death, Birthplace, Occupation, Church, place of death… “Where should I say?” she asked me. I say, “daughter’s home, or family member’s home,” to which she quickly clarifies, “Of course, daughter’s home.” I can hear pride in her voice. She goes over the list of grandkids, great grandkids, and great-great grandkids. She talks of photos for the program and obituary and birth and death certificates. She mentions the cost for the memorial programme/bulliten and the optional slideshow and in my mind, the cash register begins to ring. I ask her if she’s already “talked turkey” with the undertaker and she says that that will be in the morning. She says she will probably just cover all the costs of the funeral and later get repaid from the sale of grandmother’s home. “I’m Power of Attorney and I know what’s best.”

Listening to this, I can only think of her current overwhelming financial problems and I remind her that funerals can be very expensive, an average of $8-10, 000. I also remind her that Power of Attorney does not extend past death and that at this point the Executor of the Will and the Benefactors of her insurance policies played more of a decision-making role I also pondered aloud whether or not the house would truly be sold as this was where my aunt and cousin lived with grandmother. My mother uttered something to the effect that she knew what grandmother wanted on this issue. I don’t believe she wanted the house to be sold from under her daughter and grandson, but mother didn’t admit this.

I asked, “What about insurance policies?” My mother said that her sister had a couple of policies on their mother and that grandmother had several on herself. I mentioned to my mother that the policies could be used to cover the cost of the funeral and that she could divvy the remaining expenses amongst the other siblings, giving them an opportunity to participate in this way. She quieted and so did I. After a marked silence, she broke it with, “Yeah, I give up. I should have gotten insurance policies on her, myself, and I should have found her lost wills. I started to do this stuff earlier, but I allowed myself to get distracted with her care.

The hospice nurse kept saying to my mother how strong grandmother’s will was. I spoke up in agreement acknowledging that she really hung on towards the end living another three days after the nurse said she was within a few hours of her death. My mother cut me off in a controlled rage with a sharp-toned, “Why? Why did she do that?” Again, I’m supposed to have all the answers.

I say, “I don’t know, Mom. Maybe, she needed that time for herself. To prepare herself.”

My mother said, “ Yeah, I don’t think she felt sure of her salvation. I think she may have been unsure of where she stood with God.”

She tried to describe a strange thing that happened the day before she died. When she was dying, she was getting morphine once an hour and she had been struggling, pulling, breathing with accessory muscles, with pain in her sides. Grandmother raised her body up in the bed and she said aloud, {Daughter} come here {Daughter,| come here! My mother runs into the room and says, “{Grandmother’s first name}, I’m right here.” Grandmother then said, “Good,” and relaxed. My mother came in close to grandmother’s face to better hear her and grandmother said, “I… I…I… (and then collapsed in exhaustion and remained ‘out of it’ for the rest of the day. My mother took that demonstrative act to mean that grandmother was trying to say I love you. “I think she was saying that I did good.”

I say, “At the hospital, we would, at this point, advise the family to reassure the patient that everything would be alright that they needn’t worry about the children and grandchildren, and such…”

My mother cut me off. “Yes, that’s what the hospice nurse said,” And I did that. I was telling her that everything was going to be okay with everyone here and that she can rest in knowing that we will all be okay when she snapped at me in a short, abrupt, way that chilled me to the bone, She looked to me and said with clarity, “I know.” I believed she knew that we would be okay, but that she was worried about herself. “I stopped telling her that it was going to be okay after that,” said Mom.

On another occasion grandmother was said to have spoken prophecy on my brother and father and this cost her a lot of energy. She said to my father that he had to “do better” and that my brother needed to go back to church because she wanted to see him in Heaven. She really let him ‘have it’ and rebuked him for running with ‘the devil.’ My mother said about the fervor-filled declaration, it was “strong and unique. She gave her opinion withholding nothing.”

Mom complained about the way Uncle C did not spend enough time with their mother. After arriving in town, he spent 48 hours away from the house where his mother lay dying, the house where he was supposed to be lodging. My mother judged him for needing to drink alcohol and questioned whether or not he was using illicit substances in addition to alcohol given his present company, his cocaine-abusing nephew.

Mom complained about the way my aunt brought her teacher friends by to see the death show.and “marched them through her house” as if it were her own. She was upset by the fact that they ignored my mother and went outside in the yard and talked for a while after visiting inside the home. My mother felt her sister never did anything to actually care for their mother only paraded her friends for the entire family to see. And aunt said aloud to her friends that mother would be more alert to visit with them but that my mother was was doping their mother, keeping her “drugged up.”

My mother was obsessed with my aunt.

My mother: “So what should I say? I want whatever needs to be done in this process to be done and I don’t want others to go off with insurance and WILL assets and they never did anything to deserve it.” She trails off in silence. Then, “I’m not going to play boss anymore. I think I’ve done enough. I took her places, I bought her home, I got Uncle C here, I was with her for seven days 24 hours a day. I just wanted my mother to know that I did what was expected of me. And I have the confidence that she knew and let me know that I did good. I’m going to have to give up the fight.”

Then began her trip down memory lane. She recalled the period of time when her mother left her abusive alcoholic, husband. Grandmother was very sick and all the children were little; she couldn’t handle the care of the children two of whom were also very sick. My aunt (now deceased), the oldest of all the children, born out of wedlock when my grandmother was 16, helped with the care of the little ones. My mother, the next oldest, born to a second man when grandmother was 18, lived with my grandmother’s parents until they died when my mother was 15 years old. The three youngest children, two boys and a girl, were all born to the abusive alcoholic the first man my grandmother married. At the time, my mother went to live with her mother for the first time since she was a baby, when she was sent away to be raised by her grandmother. The abusive father beat both my mother and grandmother while my oldest aunt and the three young children were spared. My grandmother, extremely sick, left the husband and took the children with her. Eventually, the husband’s family convinced my grandmother to allow them to take the youngest children until she got better. Well, she got better and came for the children and the family wouldn’t allow them to go. They said that the children were safe with them and that my grandmother was an unclean, unfit mother. My grandmother had to go to court to regain custody of her children.

Mom (after this hour-long emotionally, exhausting conversation) : Oh, and did I tell you about the IRS guy?

Me: (with a quiet sigh,) No, what?

Mom: “As my mother lay dying and the house full of people, the IRS man came knocking at the door. Your sister almost let him in when your father asked him to stay on the porch while someone came to get me. By the time I came to the door, he was coming inside and looking around the foyer. Can you believe he came about a $57.00 bill for unpaid payroll taxes on {the last surviving contracted business to which all the clients in the failing business are being transferred}?”

Me: $57.00?

Mom: “Yeah. They are becoming aggressive. He’s not even the officer assigned to this business’ payroll taxes account. I think the reason he showed up at my house is because I only give a Post Office Box address on my tax forms and it’s a sole proprietorship so my home address is fair game. I told the IRS officer I have a representative for this type of thing who will be dealing with him and he kept saying I had 30 days to appeal. I think he wants to buy time while he becomes the collection officer on record for this case.

Me: Wow.

Mom: Just before grandma took her final breaths, Mom went online and made the $57.00 remaining balance on the payroll tax account for the last vestige of her once massive business.

Oh, and she slipped in there right at the end that my aunt, her newest nemesis is now staying upstairs in the room next to Uncle C, and my oldest brother, whose just trying to go to his AA meetings everyday and maintain his sobriety through all this mess. Power to you, brother, more power to you.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on February 13, 2009, 03:21:20 PM: NO RESPONSIBILITIES

My sister’s ten-year old daughter is now living with my mother. She began at her new school a week ago. A few weeks before, my niece called my mother from the small town where she lives with her mother, frustrated with her life, her school, her mother. The last time I saw my niece, around the time of my grandmother’s death, she was showing me bite marks and scratches on her arms. She inferred that her mother (my sister) can be a little too rough when they play. I grew up with my sister, I had flashbacks of a large, frustrated, mean-faced tomboy who enjoyed rough physical contact whether you wanted it or not. I think I knew what my niece was talking about and I felt sad for her.

My mother: “So I offered her the chance to live with me. Your sister thought about it and she didn’t resist it. I guess she doesn’t need {niece} as much as I do here.”

And that’s how my niece came to live with her grandmother. As a side note, I would like to say that this disturbs me greatly, both my sister’s poor parenting and my mother’s need to have a child around for physical labor and assistance. In a way, I believe my mother is trying to re-play history, having been raised during her formative years, by her own grandmother, a strict, stoic woman.

A few nights ago, my niece couldn’t get in touch with my sister, who wouldn’t answer her cell phone. My niece went berserk, according to my mother. My niece was most concerned because she and her mother spoke each night before going to sleep and each morning upon arising when they were not together and this was atypical of her, apparently.

My mother: “We started to call police, I don’t know, to knock on the door or something, until I thought to have your brother, text her telling her to call.”

This obviously worked and my sister, who was dead-set on not taking any incoming calls from my mother, agreed to answer calls from her daughter at any time of the day no matter what. My sister is still angry over some thing my mother considers yet unspoken and a great mystery. My guess is that my mother has been a great disappointment to my sister over the last several years in that she promised her this wonderful life of success if she only does exactly what she’s told to do in her life. The repeated broken promises and last minute changes and bait-and-switch dealings have probably left my sister exhausted and angry. Her way of dealing with it now is to try to ignore my mother’s calls for help and to try to relinquish all her former duties to include office manager, errand-runner, bill payer, medical claims billing, etc. She made an appearance a week ago, per my mother, to do some medical claims back-pay reconciliation billing (about $5000 worth) and when my mother went to check the account re: the deposit of the funds, she found that the billing was not done correctly and needed to be re-submitted. And as was the course, sister was nowhere to be found for that.

My mother jumps haphazardly to the next topic: “I’m going through a lot with my mother’s death. Everyone is just going on with life as if everything is OK, but I’ve been really having a hard time with it. Not so much for her sake, it’s bringing up my own issues. It’s like I’m going through a depression or something. It’s not her, It’s me, it’s a brush with immortality… (Freudian slip, I suppose-my words not hers), I mean, mortality. I look at the way everybody acted and I think of myself and how everyone is going to be when the time comes for me to die. Watching her go through those phases so quickly in the last seven days like that. They said at the funeral that she died peacefully. They lied. She struggled. I’m relating her experiences to me, to my own stuff. And oh, I’ve made up my mind and decided to sell the house…”

She goes on to say that she will be talking to realtors today. She said that she had just put the church property up for sale the week before and that yesterday, a FOR SALE sign was placed in front of the house in which my brother lives with my father and the Alzheimer’s aunt. My mother says she’d been calling the IRS officer in follow-up after a very FINAL looking document came giving her 60 days (ending date, March 2, 2009) to submit a final proposal before they were going to proceed with “taking her house.”

My mother was in the process of submitting a proposal for $2000.00/month and the house going on the market; when the house is sold, the proceeds should cover the remaining tax debt ($150,000 or more). The realtor, once onboard, will write up the contract and fax it to the IRS guy as proof of intent.

NOT ONE, BUT TWO

The last time I spoke with my mother, she was hell-bent on suing the IRS guy for showing up at her home while her mother lay dying to harass her about a $57.00 late tax bill. According to mother, she was sure some kind of violation had been committed and her friends’ son, a lawyer, could find a way to stall the debt collection process by holding things up in court. She figured it was surely a conflict of interest that this one officer was now working on a second case involving another one of her businesses. When she tried to sell it to me, I responded, “Well, I guess you could try it.”

In a very calm tone, (a little too calm, I have to say), she reveals that in follow-up to the lawsuit she had planned for this officer who was violating her rights: “I came to the conclusion that the IRS guy who showed up at my door when grandma was dying is an altogether 2nd guy. Because I had hired those tax representatives and have never actually met with these people before, I never knew what they looked like. He claims that he’s going to become more aggressive with his debt collection. It looks like a previous agreement we made back in July of 2008 was forfeited because I was not keeping up with scheduled payments. He said that I should have closed this business a long time ago and that because it’s a sole proprietorship, he was going to come after me personally for whatever he could get. He was not nice about it.”

(After a quiet pause, she begins to blame my sister again). I tried to get your sister to take everything into her name so that I could make a fresh start with my name, but she wouldn’t take it as hers. She didn’t want to take on the responsibility even though I was going to tell her exactly what she needed in order to keep the business going. She just wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t help me, wouldn’t do anything.”

So basically the office from which all the clients were transferred, because the first IRS guy was submitting garnishments and levying the bank accounts, was now under attack by a second IRS guy. A bank levy last week left an account at a -$2000.00 balance and bills and interest statements are continually rolling in and piling up.

Mother: “The guy has access to my account activity. If he doesn’t get this agreement going, I can’t function, but I still need to finish paying last quarter in full in order to get the agreement, That’s $2500 I have to pay from my account before they submit another garnishment on the account thus taking the money before I can have the tax payment come out. I’m going to give 30 days notice to the old satellite office’s landlord (from where the clients were transferred) and will forward the mailbox to my church up here.
I have to store some furniture and hopefully the sale of my house will cover what expenses are left after the IRS bills are covered.”

THE CALM

I don’t say this but I’m thinking… Wow, how responsible of her. And, so calm. What gives? The wait is over. This is what gives:

One of my grandfather’s many girlfriends, Mary, calls my mother from out of the blue, around the time of my grandmother’s death. She lives in Atlanta, but keeps in touch with her hometown through ‘the grapevine’ and had heard about my mother’s loss. The old girlfriend, turns out was not that old, only a year older than my mother when she was a teenager dating my grandfather in the late 1950s. She called with condolences. She also called with an offer. She invited my mother to come and live in Atlanta, saying she would help her setup and find a place and start a life there.

Mom: “At 66, she’s ‘fast.’ She’s taking anatomy and physiology classes and trying to get into a 2 year RN program. And her dream is of having a home health care agency like I had. I told her I’ve had enough of that. I only want to do Theology when I come there. Maybe teach some classes at a Bible College or something like that. I think my allergies will be better there. I think I’ll let the WHOLE THING go and just start over.”

Internally, I’m flabbergasted. Externally, I’m as silent as I have been for the entire conversation. My mother again abruptly rips into my sister.

Mom: “Your sister has to move out of her apartment by Feb 28, I’ve already given notice there. She hasn’t called to talk about it. She has said nothing about where she’s going or what she’s going to do. And I’m planning on giving her that apt down there. But she just hasn’t called to say anything about it. And the offices will be cleared out, so she will have no reason to be down there in {the small town my mother forced them to relocate to when she was running away from drama a couple of years back}. Hopefully I can get something out of all this and move to Georgia. Hopefully I have a few thousand dollars left to float me until social service starts in March. I may just become a consultant for Mary and get a few dollars for helping her with her nursing business. I could be the RN or be the consultant whatever she needed, do some assessments for her or whatever. (under her breath) No more responsibilities. I’m definitely going down there soon to look around and see if I’d like it. I’ll send for my furniture later. So I’m getting ready to leave, yup. I’m getting ready to give up the business. I just couldn’t find anybody to try to take over the business. I thought about putting everything in your brother’s name {the younger of the two who has seizures and the girlfriend with many children}, but…

(she became incoherent here, I could not understand what she was trying to say here; my guess is because she was spouting bullcrap and could think of no logical reason why she could put the businesses and real estate in the name of someone who was on disability and other government assistance programs.)

ALWAYS BAD NEWS

She then went on about my father and how at some point he said he would take over the church building and the apartments associated with it, but she decided against this because “things were not working out when it came to him and me. And I’m ready to have a separation. It’s stress when I’m with him. But down in GA, it turns out, I’m finding out that I know more and more people there. Mary heard about my mother, so she gets the news. And if something happens to me, she can let somebody here know. Mary sent me a lot of pictures of her house inside and out. So I think I’m going down in March. My friend, whose friend has a condominium there, is driving me there next month. Your sister says she’s not coming back here to live so... I guess it’s always bad news when you call me, huh.”

Me: “Not all bad, I guess. Looks like you’re going to settle your tax stuff and that should make you feel good in the long run.”

Mom: (with a slight acknowledgement towards my comment, a high pitched “Hmmm”, I believe), I tried to ask your sister to help me help her. Like coming to help me pack, like helping me with the realtor, like helping me pay bills, and such. But she won’t answer the phone. She came to town to get her W-2 paperwork, but that’s it. She hasn’t said what she’s going to do or where she’s going to live. Your father wants to move everybody into a four-bedroom apartment in {an adjacent county} for $1000 a month. They can all contribute to rent and {my niece} can stay in the school she just came to. And your brother is still running around with ‘that girl’ even with the FOR SALE sign in the front yard…”

(An abrupt update on my brother who continues to embarrass my mother with his girlfriend, The Mother of Many.) The 18-year old daughter of my brother’s girlfriend showed up suddenly and unexpectedly to live in the cramped apartment they call home several weeks ago. Surprise, surprise, no one saw this coming but somehow a baby was born. So there are now 9 children in the one bedroom apartment, “drinking and fighting,” as mother puts it. My brother’s goes to his own home, (well, it won’t be his own home for long if it sells) at night because he can’t take it anymore. His girlfriend harasses him when she’s drunk cussing and screaming, per my mother. Recently, she had a “little money” from somewhere and in a drunken plea, she explained to my mother that she was going to give her “few dollars” so her kids could have somewhere to stay.

My mother: “I’ll give her a few days, but then, I’m calling the Health Dept. and let them do whatever they decide to do, condemn the house or whatever… (under her breath) no more responsibilities.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on June 23, 2009, 09:45:40 PM: Sister “Sucks”

“Ann,” my oldest brother’s new lady friend, “sucks,” per my sister. It’s because she provided commentary on a statement my sister made about jeans my sister’s 11 year-old daughter was thinking of wearing. “Don’t hate…” said Ann jokingly implying that tight jeans are great and that her own frequent wearing of them should be celebrated not discouraged.

The younger of our older brothers also“sucks” because he’s considering going to {his girlfriend’s new town} to live with her leaving behind his own three children. “He seems to have a lot of ‘pent up anger’” according my sister. He had an altercation with one of our male cousins who, when he said something disrespectful about brother’s girlfriend. Brother put cousin in a chokehold and pressed a broken beer bottle up to his neck. Brother’s pretty angry.

Oh, and younger-of-the-two-brothers’ girlfriend “sucks,” because “she’s a drunk…”

I “suck” because I’m our parents’ ‘gold standard’ child. (my sister’s words).

My sister’s sorority “sucks” because they are upset and disappointed with her. They think maybe she’s not ‘mentally stable.’ (their words).

My sister’s daughter, the 11 year old, “sucks” because she’s “crazy”

Me: “What do you mean crazy?”

Her: “I mean the stuff she thinks of. It’s crazy…”

I ask no questions. Scared to, actually. Silence. And then we get to meat of the matter with my sister…

She even speaks with a little pride about her current predicament.

“I’m having a baby…”

She’s pregnant and unsure of who the baby’s father is. Ex #1, her daughter’s father, is a convict. He is not suspected to be a potential father, however, he has suggested, in no delicate manner, an abortion or a visit to see him in the Regional Correctional Facility where he would stomp the baby out of her belly in person. He’s not pleased to say the least.

She speaks with contempt about this Ex’s, son’s mother, with whom she had had a verbal conflict recently. They were arguing over visitation between their children who are half siblings. There was “discussion” on their being allowed to have a relationship with one another in the future. This “discussion” led to a heated debate with yelling and cussing. The woman died several days later of a heart attack at the age of 37. It was said that she had been a smoker and was experiencing a good deal of stress around the time she died. My sister told me this without one intonation of change in her voice. She went on…

Ex #2, possible unborn baby’s father no.1 is soon to be an ex-husband, or so my sister hopes. Yes, he is a married man, clueless about possible father no. 1 and who brings her ice cream, his favorite flavor, not hers, to her apartment on occasion. He has no real intentions of leaving his wife, according to my sister, but he’s not too terribly upset about the prospect of a baby.

Ex. # 3, possible unborn baby’s father no. 2, is an ex-convict… And did I mention that he is possibly our second cousin? DNA tests have not been performed to confirm or deny whether or not this 26- year old man, who has always believed that our 48-year old first cousin was his father, is indeed related. Ex #2’s current girlfriend just gave birth to their three month old child, and Ex #2 also believes my sister should have an abortion.

That “sucks.”
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on June 23, 2009, 09:47:08 PM: Big Brother Working the Steps

Life is good for my oldest brother. He is having visits and reconciling with his sons (per the Steps)

Even some of his ex wives and girlfriends are flirting with him per my sister.

But his heart belongs to his new love, Ann, also an addict-in-recovery who has a heart-of-gold and a temper that could bring a house down. He loves and fears her at the same time.

My brother is clean, sober, healthcare-seeking, exercising, dieting, having dental work done, etc.

Because of the nature of his crimes, not barrier crimes, his recovery/treatment agency was able to help him restore his caregiver certificate and license with the State Board of Nursing. They’ve lined him up with a possible job in rehab therapy when…

My mom: “… but he decided to start off working with me. That answers an awesome prayer for me. ‘You can do coordination work for the business.’ I called the landlord back and told them that we would stay longer and not end our lease as I had told him the month before. I think I’m going to try to hold on to your sister’s part of the business a little longer and let your brother work along with her to help save it and bring it back… Besides, she isn’t doing anything to help save it, anyway. She doesn’t communicate well with people the way he does. He can help by giving me some breathing time and taking away some of the stress. Maybe I can get something out of this.”

Me: “Mom there are no guarantees. I think that he should consider the other job as well. It will help give him an appreciation and a work ethic. I also consider the potential for resentment on sis’s behalf for having her brother come in and potentially take charge of a situation she was once responsible for. Something that was promised to her to do with as she wished. “

Mom: “well the only reason I would want to hang on is because I’ve got this plan. I want to get whatever I can from this business. I’m hustling with this. I cannot pay the rent anymore. I need them to work to pay the bills. If your sister really wanted to make money and be off unemployment, she would get off of it and get paid for what she does. Bottom line: when I get the taxes squared away, I’m not going to worry about the business anymore.”
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on June 23, 2009, 09:48:19 PM: Brother OVERHAUL

My mother’s financial fallout has necessitated in each of her “children” a complete review of their current living status and a complete overhaul, particularly in those who are still extremely dependent on mother for daily living. The younger of the two brother’s, D, is living in one of my mother’s rental properties (one that currently has a large FOR SALE sign in front of it). And he is the de facto live-in caregiver for our great aunt with Alzhiemer’s, who along with my father who occasionally stays the night, all live in this home and need to find alternate living arrangements once the house is sold. Besides the incredible stress of caring for an 87 year old woman who curses like a sailor, smears feces on the wall to let you know her incontinence brief is soiled, and wanders whenever given the opportunity, my brother is under great pressure to move in with his girlfriend, who after being forced out by my mother, recently moved to a city an hour away to her own mother’s hometown.

My brother’s dilemma is that he does not wish to be so far from his own children, however he realizes that now is the time for him to make a decision about his living arrangements. His girlfriend has, in no subtle fashion, put a significant amount of pressure on him to come and have a life with her and her children. Several of the older teenagers have remained behind, homeless, near where Brother lives. They occasionally come to him for a little help with money or a place to take a bath, or help with court appearances, etc. In a sense, he is already doing what his girlfriend is begging him to do, help her care for her children, however, she wants him there with her to help with the youngest of the children while she attempts to go to classes in hopes of getting a job as a health caregiver. Brother doesn’t appreciate his girlfriend’s tone of voice when she requests his presence. She’s been using guilt trips and verbal assaults to his manhood in order to spur him into action. He mentions that she likes the drink. That her older kid’s have disclosed to him that they don’t respect her. All of her teenagers stayed behind and didn’t move to the new town because they didn’t want to just up and leave without any certainty as to what type of life they would have. They would rather stay where they have relationships and be homeless than to trust their mother to provide for them. This adds to my brother’s dilemma.

In an earlier conversation with my mother, she spoke of brother being under pressure by his girlfriend to move away.

My brother’s language sounds like: “ I’m tired… It’s a headache…Mom expects… girlfriend expects… baby mother expects… I feel pulled in many directions... I feel trapped…I want to be driving again... I need parents help to get started…I wanna do what’s right, but I’m like what’s for me... It’s like I can’t have a life b/c I have 3 babies.

He talked about needing to get his car out of the dusty garage, having an inspection, getting the registration, taxes, and insurance and that it would cost $300.00 to do that. It was $90/month for the cell phone and the rest of his monthly income is “change” he uses to buy soap and “help” his girlfriend. “All my little money is gone by the 15th,” he opined.

About Aunt E., the live-in maternal great-aunt with Alzheimer’s, our Nmom says to my brother, “This is an unfortunate family tragedy…”

“But I’m the only one who cares for her!” says brother, “Dad lives with us but he won’t help out with Aunt E nor will he help me get my transportation back in order because he’s too busy “helping” Mom with all her “stuff,”

Just then, Mary, Aunt E’s daughter breaks through at this point in the conversation. According to my brother, Mary has just been diagnosed with a disease that will probably take her life. She was calling (to everyone’s surprise) to just “check in: on her mother, something she hadn’t done in months, maybe never. My brother told her “Call back later, I’ll get her to the phone…” and returned to me on the waiting phone line.

He continues, “Aunt E says, ‘F*#k You’ when you say Good Morning to her. Why do I have to take care of her if I’m going to go through all this? And yeah, she’s my Great Aunt but this is beyond that! Mom doesn’t want her to go to a nursing home, she says it ‘would be like putting one foot in the grave. nI couldn’t take it anymore; I needed a break. So I went to visit my girlfriend in her new place for a few days. While I was gone, apparently there were issues with Aunt E’s care.”

The agency aide took Aunt E home with her when no one, namely, my father, came to relieve her once her shift was completed. No big surprise, Aunt E began to wander in this strange town 50 miles from her own hometown. She wandered near a large off-the-road ditch and was found by the police who brought her home to my mother, her primary caregiver on record, and aide agency owner responsible for the aide’s behavior, more’s the pity.

My brother: “So when this stuff happened. I didn’t come home right away. They called me while I’m visiting my girlfriend to come home to care for Aunt E immediately. I didn’t come straightaway. So mom’s pissed. Dad’s pissed. I’m pissed because they expect me to take such good care of her. But she’s terribly foul-mouthed and bitingly mean at times. It irritates me and I just can’t stand it. Some days I can but, when I am home, Dad leaves the house. If I came home, he would be gone right away, and I would have her 24/7. She knocks on my door late at night. And we have to bolt the doors and stack things in front of them to keep her inside the house. I won’t be miserable like this. [His baby’s mother] keeps getting on my nerves. I’m frustrated and unhappy with myself. I gotta go ahead and do what it is I’m gonna do. I’m going to file paperwork with social services, get a one bedroom of my own. Get my car fixed. I’m tired I want to live my life. I’m in the house, trapped because I’m being responsible, taking care of our Alzheimer’s aunt, and not driving because of my seizures. In the meantime, all my “car stuff” expired. I’m stuck. “

“She (his children’s mother) told me I’m an unfit father. She’s getting money from my check. I’m getting my kids when I can. The reason I’m not getting my kids the way I’m supposed to be is because I’m not driving. I was having seizures back-to-back and I was not going to risk my kids’ and my own life. I tried to explain this to her and she said I was selfish. ‘K [his twin son] is slow or something,’ his children’s mother keeps saying.

Brother: “He’s four and not potty trained. He’s still in pull-ups. He needs to stop wearing pull-ups in the house. Take him to the toilet every few hours! I did it 2 weeks ago and he went potty into the toilet for me. I can’t afford pull-ups! I used the bathroom and he stood there and peed, he peed all over the place and I needed to wipe everything down afterward but he did it. And I didn’t put pull ups on him all weekend.” My brother is tired from his rant… He abruptly changes the subject to something our mother said to him during their heated conversation about him being away when Aunt E nearly fell in the ditch.

“I see that you can go all the way down to see {his girlfriend} but you can’t come over a few miles to visit with me once in a while.”

Brother: “Who am I going to get to give me a ride over to your house? Out of respect I haven’t been asking [cousins, godforsaken, ungrateful, and selfish-per mother] because I know you don’t even like to have them over to your house…”

To me, he continues ”I’m the last one to beg her for money out of all of mom’s children. And that’s how it is. I don’t go to her for help unless I really, really need it, so I don’t know why she won’t help me get my car paperwork taken care of. “

[A staccato break in the ambient sounds indicate another party on the other line of the telephone]. “This is {my brother’s children’s mother} calling now! She wants to know if I’m going to get the kids tomorrow. “ He is beginning to sound overwhelmed. He continues, “I’ve got to come home tomorrow. And I’ve got to calm mom down.

Me: Calm Mom down?

Him: “Because the home aide cannot be the caregiver anymore now due to the negligence investigation… Now Mom needs me to come home to care for Aunt E until she gets a new aide started in the home. Mom’s upset because I wouldn’t come back right away even though they offered to come and pick me up from my girlfriend’s house. It’s my duty to be there because I get to live in the house that my mother pays for.”

Me: “Sounds like you are at a crossroads.”

Him: “Yeah, I’m at a crossroads and it’s mostly concerning Mom. People call me a Mama’s boy but there are certain things she expects of me. And now, I’m doing things she didn’t expect me to do. I’m not trying to be held down…” My brother’s mind is clearly on multiple but similar factors as, without warning, he meanders into the topic of his children and their mother. “…and I love “my three” up there in {where his children live}. And I think I threatened the children’s mother. It was completely out of my character. I became really angry when she said she would not allow me to see the children if I moved away… I told her if she ever said anything like that again, I would come to {where she and his children live} and do something to her… I didn’t say what I would do but I was so angry I think she got the picture.

Me: You can’t do that…

Him: I know. I wasn’t myself. I’m not myself. (This violence towards women theme would rear its ugly head again)

My brother ended our conversation telling me about a disturbing dream he had about the Prince from Africa. My brother and the Prince were in a room. There were 3 or 4 guys in the room. Dr. Prince shunned my brother and asked one of the other men for a cigarette. Dr. Prince started smoking and brother woke up suddenly.

Later that month:

Brother called with tightness in his voice, distraught-sounding with rubber-band tension in his vocal cords. He was crying a low growling cry intense and attention grabbing. “Brother!” I was worried, “what’s wrong, are you okay?” He could not articulate what was wrong particularly, he said in a jumble, “I need help, sister. You got a room for me? I know I can go to God… I need therapy. I need some anger control classes… There are times when I think I may be violent…”

I ask: towards whom?

Brother: “Aunt E. It’s her monthly income that’s covering the mortgage in our house. But she says things… And I’m sick, too and I have to have my anti-seizure meds. And I have the sleep apnea so I don’t get a good night’s sleep even with my CPAP machine. So you have two people with diagnoses… living in that house. Somebody’s gonna lose… Some or both of us have impulse control problems. It’s crazy”

Me: “Well, where’s Dad?

Brother: “He’s gone constantly and he refuses to help me out by taking me to the bank or DMV or the social security office so that I can follow up on the child support for the children. I can’t even get him to take me to get some new underwear. He’s always gone and when he’s there he doesn’t see all the changes Aunt E goes through in a typical day.”

She has transient moments of clarity where it’s hard to know if she’s in the present or not, but she certainly seems alert and oriented to herself and her surroundings.

“I can’t tell if she’s playing or going in and out of her right mind. She’s laughing one minute and then nasty, disrespectful the next. I feel she’s laughing at me and ridiculing me.”

Me: “You feel you are the one bearing the brunt of her abuse?”
Brother: “Dad gets in his car and he leaves all day long. If I had my car I would leave her all day long, too…” This thought leads him to the reason he called crying. “We just had a family me about Aunt E; about what we are going to do with her. I told them that I needed to find another place. I also told Mom I thought that I was going to lay my hands on Aunt E. and land up in jail on an impulsive reaction.”

Me: “You told her that?”

Brother: “The other day, I called Dad and I said, ‘If you don’t come here right now and get me, I’m going to jail. I need to go. I need to pack my bags. You need to come home, now.”

Me: (quietly crying with muted phone where brother cannot hear me. I have to think later about why I am crying at this place in the conversation. I collect myself as he continues.)

Brother: “I went up to Grandma’s house and took a nap on the floor. I get so now I don’t care where I lay my head. I don’t care if they kick me out of my house. I don’t want to hurt Aunt E. And I ‘m so disgusted with Dad! He needs to stop trying to minister with everyone when you got chaos in your home, your own bed.

Me: “What do you mean?”

Brother: “He needs to clean out his own closet, before he tried to solve other people’s problems. Why you gonna leave your house on fire running to someone else’s house to mind their business.:

Me: (quietly laughing with muted phone where brother cannot hear me. I get what he’s saying but I’m also loving how he’s butchering these clichés.”

Brother: “He’s trying to look good. To show off.”

Me: “For whom?”

Him: “I don’t know but it’s somebody. But when I try to share stuff and explain things he doesn’t try to understand. I say I cannot stay with Aunt E because I cannot take it, physically and mentally, the nagging, harassment, yelling, screaming, cursing, we gone argue and fight and the police will be involved. So I’m having a conversation with myself. David, they don’t care about you. I have no key to my house. They changed the locks when I went out of town the last time. When a man doesn’t have a key to the house he doesn’t live there, right sister?”

Me: “ I suppose so…”

Brother: “And I got a woman, begging to me to come to [her new city] and start a life with her. And I don’t want to do it. And I know it’s not right…”

Me: “What’s not right?”

Him: “It’s something spiritual and there’s something about her personality I cannot take. She’s been hurt so much that she treats me like the old men in her life. She talks to me really badly. She’s automatically disrespectful. I ask her ‘does she know me?’ If she knew me she would know I like to be respected as an individual. I liked to be talked to a certain way and I hate to be talked to the way she comes off at me sometimes. If you want respect, you give it. You can’t just say whatever’s on your mind. You gotta hold your tongue. Think before you speak. ‘You have to be careful,’ I tell her. If I don’t take her anywhere, she cries that I don’t take her anywhere. The reason is that she doesn’t know how to hold her tongue and talk like a lady. She’s quick to go off talking about an individual’s sex life. Someone else’s sex life...” My brother sounds disgusted. “I’ll just have asked a simple question about the waitress. “
“She wants me to marry her but I’m not ready for that. I wanted to get myself straight spiritually and financially. She’s going to school and her kids are acting up. Things happen for a reason. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. I’ve got my own three children I’m responsible for. I’ve also got to take care of myself, physically and mentally, so I can be here to care for the children.”

I finished this conversation promising to come by and visit my brother on the next week to see what I could do to help him secure a new place… He thanked me profusely and said he would line up a few appointments for the next Tuesday.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on August 12, 2009, 07:34:38 PM: Mom of late

Most of this entry is transcribed verbatim from shorthand taken during telephone conversations with my NMom. I find it easier to to record and relay our conversations in this way; it both, blocks emotional damage (by taking dictation dissociatively ) and more accurately, re-produces the sentiments (albeit absolutely insane at times), of our conversations.

The telephone conversation began with Jordan (my little one, now 9) and my mother talking (this is rare). She (J) played the violin aloud and my mother gushed audibly. She made J promise to come for the summer at some point and stay overnight for a visit. Mother also promised to take to Jordan to the mall to buy things just as soon as she “got her money together.”

Then to me: “Hey, have you heard of the new incentive programs from Obama? [My sister] heard that some girls in her neighborhood were going back to school on these incentive programs? Have you heard about that?” To this I truthfully state that I’m not sure how the new single parent education programs work. I assume she’s asking this for my sister’s benefit. I quietly wait to see where she’s going with this line of questioning. Then…

Mom: “How’s work going?”

Me: “I’m about ready to move on,..” I hear myself say. I continue, “I’m getting to a place where I’m feeling some physical burnout and it’s time for either a break or a change of environment…” I hear the little voice in my head, you know, intuition, warning me, “Be easy there, Tiffany…” I shut up quickly before I give away any more.

Mom: (all too eager to pick up where I leave off), “I can relate. I starting thinking like that after nursing for many years. That’s when I decided to get my Nurse Practitioner’s degree and then go into business for myself. I want to see you do more, Tiffany, maybe get your Master’s in Nursing, or maybe something in writing, or maybe something with teaching.” The voice inside is saying, ‘she’s reaching… she doesn’t know you are in a PhD program already, she’s going on the hodgepodge of data she’s serruptitiously and passively heard over the past few years.’ I tell myself, ‘She’s your mom, she knows you well enough to be able to guess your next move…don’t give up the goods, too soon. She’ll use your good news to manipulate you in some way.’ I throw out a bone.

Me: “I got a teaching award at work for my work with some nursing students in [local community college] and [university] and for work on the unit education council.”

Her: “Oh, really, they’re hiring RNs at [local community college]?”then quickly, “That’s great, Tiffany! So you can teach, huh?”

Me: “Well,…”

Her: “I was just hoping you could do something that used your writing, maybe a master’s in writing, of course you should go to school somewhere close so you don’t have to move all the way to [city, in which my PhD program’s campus resides].

Does this witch have a crystal ball, I wonder?

Doesn’t [local Medical College and Nursing School] have a Master’s program? I would like to see you doing something with writing. You have that way with words. It’s really a gift. You are just a natural. Your command of words is a gift….

ALARM BELLS ring in my head!!! ALERT ALERT ALERT: my brain is telling me. From what I know about my mother: A gushing of compliments normally precedes a significantly selfish and narcissistic act on her part. What is it this time? Will I be verbally reprimanded, will my self-esteem be attacked, maybe my character or morals, maybe she’s got a grand manipulative scheme up her sleeves and needs my assistance to accomplish her controlling goals, maybe she’s setting me up for something… whatever the case, her words of praise are coming off like fingernails scraping across a chalkboard… I cut off the flattery as she is just starting to go on about how my love for the sciences and for studying and reading is another reason why…

“Yeah, mom, I guess I’ll decide what I’m going to do next at some point this summer…”

Her: “I can see that once you make a decision, you’ll do well. You’ll do well. You’ll probably become a workaholic. (nervous laugh) and with slight disappointment almost, she says, “Yeah, man I really see you coming up great.”

Me: “What do you mean when you say work-a-holic?”

Her: “I can see you doing more than you need to do when you do things and really getting into it. Like in school you worked day and night trying to make it personal…”

I am startled to hear her say this as she NEVER seemed to notice and definitely NEVER mentioned even noticing before today. She’s working a number over on on me because my feelings are bubbling up and I’m confused and completely vulnerable and without emotional armor. She’s touching on some of the core reason’s I overachieve and never feel satisfied in my accomplishments. I believe she’s always known this and I get angry thinking, ‘How dare she do this, now?”

Her: “Sorry I’m rambling, It’s just that you are so intelligent and I can relate to you and it’s different. You’re deep.”

I want to barf, but I change the subject and talk about my work and the cause for emotional burnout on the oncology unit and the way we nurses relate to one another and the multitude of complications with cancer, and the unexpected deaths and the blessed privilege we nurses have to be in such a sacred space in another human’s life. I go off on a wistful departure. Eventually, she interjects.

Her: “I’m relating now to my own mother’s death from the perspective of a daughter and it took a month for me to change from seeing death from my mother’s perspective. It was very rough for me… I was an oncology nurse, too and it sounds like I did a lot of what you did. Of course, I was a Nurse Practitioner in a Clinic, so I wasn’t shoveling poop like you, I was more or less, doing assessments and giving chemotherapy. But I can relate to going into something that gives you satisfaction. Go ahead and live because life is not promised. You have to work in what pleases you. Your sister was talking about having more of an appreciation for parenting now that she’s expecting twins…”

Silence
(the silence here is to pause for what I call ‘shock-check:’ for Mom to see if my jaw is dropped open or otherwise ajar). My mouth remains closed, this time, as I happened to have heard this piece of gossip about the twins in an earlier conversation with my sister.

Mom: “Your sister is trying to find herself and is looking at her past and planning for her future. She’s beginning to think that some of the parenting decisions I made were because that was the best way to do it; I was doing what was best for the family. In between those times, you run into moments of frustration. I would get up and make a move that was not always the right move. It was out of anxiety. Like when I thought the IRS was coming to padlock everything, I moved all the furniture out of the house into storage so they wouldn’t take everything in the house.”

“But, now, I’ve moved on to another phase. I’m going to clean up all my old furniture and sell it and let it go and bring my nice furniture back into the house. I’ve got a really nice cherry dinette set that I pulled out, I’m thinking of putting in the big Yard Sale they have here where I live. And I’ve been lugging this Queen Anne set around… Your oldest brother’s girlfriend has taken over living in the apartment where your younger brother’s girlfriend lived before she moved to another city.”

“[Oldest brother’s new girl, Ann] was living with her own mother and they had an issue, I’m not going to say what she said the issue is, but…” and she pauses…

Woooo, I think. Why’d she bother to say that? Am I supposed to prod her to tell me anyway? I don’t. But I do make a mental note for later. Either “the issue” is something huge or something minor that she’s making seem huge as to establish the semblance of a special or unique relationship between the two of them. Either way, I don’t prod. It would make me look like I made her tell me some awful gossip about my brother’s lady. Mom continues.

Mom: “But because of the ‘issue’ with her mother, she asked me if she could rent the house under short notice and without a down payment. So I let her have it. She put in new windows, new doors, new carpets and painted in there. All on her own! It looks great! She put tile on the kitchen floor and it is really something. Your brother is working and still living with me. They’ve got a handyman whose helping out with the repairs at no extra cost to me.”

As an aside she noted that this handyman looks like he still “messes with a little dope” but quickly adds, “it’s working out well. I don’t care what he’s doing, really. [Oldest brother] is going to be staying with me and he’s helping me now, but I know he’s going to be there with her a lot or at least until they are married. They’re going to start paying rent at some point and Ann said she wouldn’t mind having the cherry set, so I’m going to give it to her.”

Silence. She pauses to give me time to protest the giving of such furniture to a newcomer. I don’t have a houseful of furniture, but I do remain silent.

Then Mom goes, systematically, into the other events of her life to include her own home repairs, her return to the church of my childhood, her young adulthood. She has a lot of old, unresolved drama there. She declares that she has decided to, instead of trying to be a clergy-member per se, she was going to be called Teacher. She would hold seminars and workshops on various subjects and would do this via online, live group, and local church programs. Her plan was to remain in her home, complete an application to get a “reduced house note, ”and to take her home off the market. Besides, she told the realtor she would give her 90 days and it’s been 90 days. Not one single person looked at the house. (Big surprise, given the market).

Mom announced that my sister would be coming back up from her remote city to live closer to my mother. “She’s lonely,” declares my mother. “She’s excited about the last months of the pregnancy with twins and she expecting that they’ll be premature. So I’m going to get her a 3 bedroom rental or apt so that my grand-daughter can have some privacy and the twins can be together, and I can stay overnight with her when she needs me to.”

Mother goes on to say that the children and my sister could not live with her in her home because she didn’t have the immediate funds needed to “fix up” the backyard with a fence around the man-made pond. She figured the same for Aunt E. whose living arrangement status is also in question and who also wanders constantly. And here is where she quickly mentions, “We are having a problem with your brother and the Aunt E situation.” She pauses for a moment and a convoluted story begins to evolve. It begins this way…

Mom: “Your Aunt E, (84 years old), she gets up and down the steps better than me, and I am not able to take care of her, I need pain medication just to climb the stairs. (Mom’s 64). So I can’t take care of her even with nursing aides coming in all day 8am-8pm. Even if I could hire someone else to sit with her… But when you sit and think about it Aunt E can actually bring resources IN to the household…unfortunately no one wants to be in the household with her.”

“Your brother doesn’t want to be responsible for taking care of her. And he’s kind of taking it out on her. He’s not so much upset at her. It’s his other issues, but she causes him to go over the edge with his anger and aggression. And as for Aunt E, she’s very fond of your brother, but she’s forgetful. She’s not good with new people, she knows [my 21 year old female first cousin] and [a 23 year old female friend of the family]. She gets along with them. They are both working a 9-hour day, 7 days a week (as aides/sitters for Aunt E and employees of my mother’s nurse’s aide agency). I can also get additional billable care-giving hours through my agency for weekend respite care.”

“But your brother had a ‘fit’ the other day and went off on your father and your father had to go over and sit with Aunt E. I believe your brother was agitated because he was hungry and no one had brought him anything to eat for a while. He’s hungry… I asked him to come over to my house to vacuum, maybe scrub my shower, pick up when I drop things in my closet and can’t reach, get my clothes for me. I told him I would pay him what I pay [indigent cousin who cleans house very well for a small fee] he can have some extra money to have something to eat, maybe get some cable. Otherwise, your oldest brother and Ann keep the rest of my house clean. But anyway, [younger brother] can come and visit me on Wednesday evenings because that’s the day I was planning on meditating. He and I could talk a little bit and catch up when he visits.”

“So we talked about him getting paid to come and help me, I also gave him $100 for keeping an eye on Aunt E. a few times recently when his aides didn’t show up. He came by to clean the first day, but I told him that he would have to come back the next day to really earn the money I was paying him. Do you know what he did what his money? Tiffany? He paid [the 21 year old female first cousin] to take him down to see his girlfriend where he stayed for a few nights. I figured, OK, he didn’t tell me. I called him, he didn’t say where he was. That’s his choice. When he came back he had no money, no food stamps, he didn’t tell anybody. And there was no food for Aunt E. because your brother ate all of the rest of her food, I suppose.”

“If we keep Aunt E., a significant amount of her income can go back into the house, you see. I’ve been trying to tell your brother that income from billing care hours for her and income from her monthly check can help make his living a lot more comfortable if he just listened to me. He can do some of the respite hours and between him and his father they can split a shift… So, anyway, I called a meeting… How do we want to handle the Aunt E. situation?

Me: “What do you mean the Aunt E. situation?”

Mom: “I can sit with her when your brother cannot and we will use the billable agency hours. I can use the profit from billing the hours to complete repairs on her home and have someone there with her at all times. When I said that to [brother], he just ran out upset and… He just burst out with all of his ‘issues.’” There is another abrupt change of subject at this point in the conversation.

Mom: “Your Aunt E. dresses herself, feeds herself and goes into the bathroom by herself. She wets her incontinence briefs but she pulls it off and puts in the trash, (she gives a small chuckle here). She goes to the bathroom on a bedside commode and the ‘girl’ comes and bathes her, er’ I mean, comes and assists her with washing up…the real problem with Aunt E. is that she has a slight blood pressure issue and of course, her memory…one of the ‘girls” [she means the 21-year old cousin/niece she hired through the agency to be one of the healthcare providers for Aunt E.] claims E. scratched her. ‘What do mean scratched you, she ‘s not combative?’ The ‘girl’ said Aunt E needed a bath and that she was trying to get her to take a bath, but you mustn’t pull on her and yank her and agitate her. Sometimes the ‘girls’ do it too much and she cusses at them…”

Mom: “But today, I ‘m sitting with her and when she just wants some water, she gets up. She’s on a single level home, I just let her walk. She takes her time and holds onto things. Like last night I watched her for 3-4 hours… but then your brother came in and his need to watch the basketball playoffs with the TV playing loudly, the sound of the ballgame sounded like the city sounds of Baltimore to Aunt E., who became extremely agitated. But in a moment of clarity, she (Aunt E) asked me (Mother) ‘Who’s paying the rent?’ to which I told her ‘I’m paying the rent out of your money.’ She seemed relieved and thanked me for being her Power of Attorney and making it so she didn’t have to worry about her bills…And this is what I’m trying to teach the ‘girls,’ that if Aunt E. keeps asking the same question over again to keep saying re-assuring things and she’ll come around. Aunt E. has a pleasant laugh and she’s not combative or mean.”

Uncomfortable but necessary silence on my part… That was a particularly long diatribe particularly chock-full of innuendo and inflammatory language.

After realizing I’m not going to bail her out with a question or interesting statement Mom: “…but I see why Aunt E. would get on your brother’s nerves. Last week I let them bring her over here during the evening while your brother went over grandma’s house [now inhabited by about seven squatting family members] to watch the playoff games while lying on their filthy floor. During the family meeting, [Oldest brother] said he would take his turn watching Aunt E. Today and tomorrow, I have her and I am going to pay [friend-of-the-family-gossipmonger and housekeeper extraordinaire] to watch her for me.”

Mom: “Everybody’s on their own wavelength right now, and even I’m getting on people’s nerves…
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on November 24, 2009, 12:48:14 AM: Just Perfect…

Via telephone conversations with Nmom, (they happen every one or two weeks now, particularly when I’m’ on the hour-long drive to the university campus where I’m pursuing my graduate degree), she and I have been communicating.

She’s particularly “proud” of my academic accomplishment, “more than proud,” she says she told a minister from the church. “It’s the feeling that you’re children are doing MORE than you ever could.” She has more than once intimated that “yours is the degree I SHOULD have gotten not the PhD in Theology." She’s trying to convince me that I have achieved more than she ever did because of her limitations and lack of access that I now have. I am amused by this comment, given my many challenges, particularly those challenges crafted by her. I cannot in good faith respond to her flattery with anything other than contempt.

…I suppose this has something to do with why I still stay in touch with her when I had every reason to have completely cut her off a long time ago.

What is it with me? Why can’t I just leave her alone. Why do I feel it necessary to weigh in on my life with her?

In a conversation with her about how my school is going, we began a conversation about this health care concept I’m developing. She made me promise to call her often to share with her what I was learning and what my experiences were like and she seemed honestly intrigued by the types of projects on which I was working. I began to break down the concept in layman’s terms and as I did, she, like the textbook N she is, likened the concept to her own health and began to EXPLAIN to me how my concept could be viewed with her as the case study. Part of me appreciated her willingness to understand where I was going with the idea, but another strong part of me said, “Uh, oh, she’s too into this.”

Anyway, we finished the conversation in the typical way of late: I hurried, off the phone while trying to rush to catch the parking lot shuttle to campus.

Two days later, (another Uh, oh), she calls, I ignore the call. Two days after that, she calls again. I ignore the call, but I check the voicemail. She says, “Please call, I have to tell you something.” It takes two additional days to brace myself, and I return the call during the typical time on my way to campus.

She is excited. She speaks of a conversation between herself and my childhood pastor, (she recently returned to the aforementioned cult-like church where her and my dad neglected, I mean, raised us four children). I vowed never to return to that church when I went away to college at 18. This, before me, was never done. Women, if they went to college, went to the one university in the hometown, where they often “backslid” into sin and somehow ex-communicated themselves based upon living a “loose lifestyle” which generally consisted of wearing jeans, makeup, and pierced earrings. Boyfriends and babies of naturally followed. What whores!

My vow never to return to the scene of the crime was called into question several times, particularly by my father who insisted that I come back on various occasions when he would be a main speaker/preacher during a church event. I would ask him if there was any other way for me to appease him as I really never wanted to ever go back to that place. He would say, ‘you just need to get over that period of your life,’ “That period” he’s referring to consisted of sexual abuse, pre-teen pregnancy, constant undermining, evil hurtful gossip and backstabbing, and persecution for being different, all before I was 17.

After a decade of declining my Dad’s invitations, my mother, who recently rejoined the membership, because, per her, she’s “getting old and is in need of somewhere to settle down”

The important thing she had to tell me: My childhood, her now-pastor, would like to offer me open forum to come and discuss my health care platform with the people of the church in some kind of gathering. “You can pick the date. He’ll probably let you do it during a [regional] meeting!”

She’s clearly impressed by the pastor’s carte blanche invitation and could never see how this, the new potential source of her narcissistic supply, would be anything other than the bees knees to me.

She excitedly says, “Well, you think about it and maybe we’ll plan for something in December when you’re on break. I could help you enroll people in your study, and you could use me as your case study…”

Perfect. Just Perfect.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on January 11, 2010, 10:49:22 AM: Broken Promises

NMom: Mood: Hopeful, happy, excited, post-depression

She’s been unable to sell the house, however, the Internal Revenue Service has ‘slowed down’ on sending the collection and lien notices, and since there are no lookers for the house despite two whole months of being on the market, Mom’s seeing this as a sign that God may mean for her to keep the house and take it off the market. And maybe the IRS will lay off.

NSister is pregnant and needs to move back to house with mother but enjoys her independence and is not looking forward to moving back. She does send her daughter to mother’s house occasionally to help her with chores and be another presence in the house so Mom isn’t all alone, particularly when oldest live-in brother is spending quality time with his GF or at his AA meetings. Anyway, Sister would rather live in the house in which younger brother lives, an older family home. Dad stood in a very long line to apply for Section 8 subsidy housing for sister, where he was told, the applicant needs to be here in person, herself, and that Dad could not come in and sign her up for an apartment. So in missing that deadline, she missed her opportunities for independent housing and will be living with NMom, something Mom isn’t altogether upset about since she wants to be actively involved in helping with the twin babies.

Neice,breaks into conversation with a question for mom… Mother shoos her out of the room, quickly saying “I’m on the phone, not now…”

Oldest Brother, in recovery, living in mom’s house upstairs. His desire was to who stay in house with NMom and not to move right in with his, also in recovery, girlfriend who managed to finagle one of mother’s rental properties, (one placed in Sister’s name to help facilitate the sale of the property). He expressed feeling the strong need to consider alternate housing if pregnant sister was coming to live in Nmom’s house with neice, both notorious for having filthy living habits and nasty, attention-seeking behaviors. Oldest Brother, like Sister would ideally like to live in the house where Younger Brother lives, who’s been promised the ownership of the house despite the fact that after house had been paid for, a new mortgage was taken out recently by NMom which has caused it to convert from an asset back to a liability. Despite Older Brother’s worry about co-habitating with Sister and Neice, he is exited about having another chance at the family business and he is anxious to do well and succeed in both his sobriety and the promises he made to family about his dedication to recovery.

Dad and Mom are supposed to re-marry in July at the pastor’s house as a public declaration to the old church (yes, the blessed cult of my joyous youth) that they are a reunited front. Mom, newly rejoined the church, because she now feels physically debilitated to the point that she can’t “get away” into a better situation. In this situation, she’s able to “teach” but not “preach” (women are not allowed to be ministers in this organization) other women in an all women setting, which suits her at times, but innervates her as well. She feels her rejoining is a “win” for Dad because it’s his lifelong wish to have his wife and family back together as one unit wherein he can show the church members how great a leader of his family he is. Per my mother, and brothers, Dad just wants to “look good” in front of everyone, so that he can be in line to one day inherent the church from his beloved Pastor. A thought, Mom believes is delusion since the Pastor has 5 sons, 4 of whom are ministers and themselves, already locked in competition with one another for rights to the church their father built. My father has still found a way to draw the ire of all the brothers as a group, helping them form a unified front against in at least one thing, him. With my mother’s return to the church, for the sake of husband/gender parity, my father has been asked to speak at more and more preaching engagements now that Mom is being asked to teach at various women’s events. With this, my father feels, now more than ever, that he is in line for the pastorship, if the pastor, 84, were to retire or die. He’s putting pressure on mother to remarry him soon and to study the ways of the pastor’s wife, as mother will need to be like her in order for this to work as he desires. According to mother, this is submissive, shy, with no control.

Mom: He’s asking me to forget all of my ‘understanding’. All of what I know! If God hadn’t placed this thorn in my side, this illness, I wouldn’t have come back to this church in the first place!

Younger Brother is depressed because he, too wants to live in the house where he’s lived for the past 10 years. He reminded my Mom that she said she would put the property in his name several times before. Mom told him: Well then, get out there and fix it up and I’ll put your name on it! Brother: well it costs money to fix it and I need some money to do repairs. Mom: Just look at your older brother’s girlfriend. She fixed up the rental really nice and now she can live in it! (the rental in my sister’s name). This rental is also a sore spot for younger brother whose former girlfriend just moved out of (after being evicted by Nmom) the same rental, with seven of her eleven children, and went back to her hometown to live with her mother 2 hours away. Younger Brother has been told, by mother that he can have the house in which he resides, (the one coveted by oldest brother and sister) if he would just, get this: begin to take more responsibility with the daily care of the Alzheimer’s aunt who was now being haphazardly cared for by agency aides (my mother’s agency, mind you). She proposed that he could get some of the payroll funds generated by billing State Medicaid home health aide hours. My brother is not a licensed aide.

Per mom, once they (Younger Brother and my father, who also lives in the house with YB along with Alzheimer’s aunt E), got satellite cable in all the rooms, they pay no attention to Aunt E. and she’s basically the one paying for the cable since income from her SSI and from billing Medicaid for personal care and respite hours are the primary source of income to the home. They complain because Aunt E. gets up and then sits back down repeatedly. She paces back and forth to the back rooms and she’s always talking about going to work . She thinks she back in Maryland in the 60s. In a desire to get a break from Aunt E and to work on his broken relationship with mother o’eleven, Younger brother “snuck away” to his GF’s hometown, leaving Aunt E with the day aide from mother’s agency (Note here: This very aide was an employee of mine when I ran the business for a couple of years. She was one of the few employees I could not get to follow the policies on showing up to work on time and reporting her time properly. I had to terminate her after repeated disappointments with my clients. Mother, uncharacteristically, came to me before hiring her and asked if she should give her a chance. I, vehemently discouraged my mother from hiring this girl for this job, not as much for the aforementioned reasons, but because, additionally, this girl would be a liaison between my mother’s business and a former office manager, who, angrily broke off from my mother and formed her own home care agency, taking half of my mother’s clientele with her. The anger was the result of repeated promises made by mother to give this woman training and credentials and raises and opportunities for her family that remained unfulfilled over the years. Well, Mom decided to hire this employee, despite my strong warnings, anyway).

Once this particular aide realized that my Younger Brother, who had just “snuck away” to be with his GF would not be returning that day to relieve her of her care-taking duties, she decided to take Aunt E home with her to a town about an hour away from where Aunt E lives. (this happens to be the same town where Sister lives) Somehow, (surprise, surprise,) an agitated Aunt E. began to wander about the town and was discovered in a ditch by the Police who eventually deduced that Aunt E was under the care of the aide who left Aunt E alone, locked in a house, while the aide attend a court-ordered drunk driving DUI class of some type. Once she realized Aunt E “got loose” she, came to the hospital to collect her, only to find that the policeman who discovered a dehydrated, delirious Aunt E in the ditch, was the same officer who arrested this aide for aforementioned DUI and who felt, the DUI-classes were too lenient a punishment given her repeated offenses. And her disgustingly flippant personal attitude at the scene of these crimes was an assault on this officer’s sensibilities. Hereafter, the officer pressed the issue of the aide’s arrest with my mother once she’d been contacted. Mother did not want to mention to the officer that this client was in fact her own Aunt (a possible ‘red flag’ with the state Medicaid offices for conflict of interest or with Adult Protective Services for neglect). Sensing my mother’s reluctance to press charges on the aide, the officer threatened to take matters into his own hands and initiate an Adult Protective Services investigation and this ultimately led my mother to voluntarily ‘give up’ the aide to be arrested. Once the aide was jailed, she sent messages and calls to my mother that she would take her down with her and that the only reason she had her Aunt in her home was because she didn’t want to leave her alone in the house for the weekend with my brother gone to see his GF. She also threatened to tell Medicaid that Aunt E was receiving care from unlicensed workers and that my mother’s entire agency deserved to be investigated for fraud. This worried my mother, given her shady business practices over the years…
Now she needed to find a new sitter for Aunt E. Mom: Right now, Aunt E is money in the hand…she’s paying the mortgage and the cable and the water on Younger brother’s house and I’m not able to pay that rent all on my own these days. So, although I know they’re sick of her and she cusses them and wanders and what not, they need to realize that she is their source of income. And they pretend she’s so bad…but they say lies to her and cuss her. When she says, “Gimme a sandwich.” They lie to her and say, “You had a sandwich already.” And she starts cussing them. They lock the bedrooms during the day so she won’t take a daytime nap and be able to sleep at night. This sets her off.

Bottom line: somehow NMom has promised all three siblings rights to have property in their possession, a oft-made promise that has become more and more elusive over the years, as properties begin to fall in value and mother’s net worth begin to dwindle. Mom has also promised former employees parts of the business and other fruits of their labor that remain unkept and ignored. Mom has made promises to her debtors to her children to her employees all wrapped up in the selfish manipulative hopes of personal gain. Years of broken promises are piling up like bones at a barbeque with nothing left to show for them but resentment and disappointment…
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on February 07, 2010, 10:00:03 PM: The Aunt E effect

Telephone conversation with NMom; mood: depressed, frustrated

Mom: “I’ve missed some services at [the old cult church Mom recently rejoined] lately. I was asked to speak at the Women’s Day program and I said I would do it even though I was struggling with my allergies and whatnot. Your father’s also been getting some extra preaching appointments and he’s been pulling for each and everyone of us to come to his events… even when he doesn’t come to all mine. He still wants me to remarry him for the gospel’s sake, not for love. He wants me to go to Milwaukee with him to visit his dying brother after we re-marry and then go with him to the annual church convention. But I’ve been taking care of Aunt E. sometimes. And while your brothers and I have been rotating shifts, your father hasn’t been anywhere to be found. He takes the time to drive to city, 50 mils away, where sister lives to get [11 year-old neice/granddaughter] to take her to his preaching events, but he’s spending NO quality time with me. “

This she opined, days before her and Dad were to remarry on the anniversary of their first wedding date.

Neice: On a recent trip to grab some toiletries from Bath & Body Works, Mom sent [11-year old neice] inside the mall alone with her debit card to grab the soap and told her she could also get a ‘cheap dress’ to wear so that she could look nice when she went along with Mom to hear her present at the Women’s Day Program at church. Instead of one dress, [11-year old granddaughter], bought two dresses, a pair of high heel shoes and some additional toiletries for herself from Bath and Body Works. She ran up quite a tab. More than M had to spare, really.

NSister: was angry and depressed over the situation with her twin babies’ father considering, she wasn’t quite sure if the father was her, now incarcerated, distant cousin, with whom she was in a several years dysfunctional relationship or if it was a married man she’d been dating for the last several months. Either way, she was upset. It seems as though she became pregnant around the time of grandmother’s death, when she was visibly missing from the Death Show, and spending a marked amount of nights in hotels, a great bone of contention with mother who felt let down by sister during this time.

Dad: booked a preaching engagement around the same time Mom had a scheduled teaching engagement. Dad thought his event should take priority, so he insisted that both Mom and [11 year-old granddaughter] be there to support him as he delivered his message. He recently told [11 year-old] that her mother, because she was a sinner and not saved by the Holy Spirit, would go to Hell and that if she didn’t come to church with him, she would be like her mommy. This was incongruent with what her grandmother, NMom, told her: that if you are a good person, you go to heaven. Either way, it convinced the 11 year old, at least for now, to attend father’s event in attempts to avoid a hellish fate and it consigned her to worry deeply about her mother’s eternal damnation.

Regarding Older Brother per Mom: “I don’t know sometimes I feel like I made all the wrong moves when I raised my children. I mean, your oldest brother is OK, now. He makes my bed, does my food, goes to the grocery, cleans, and he is trying to fix up the house, goes to my former church building to pray and is working with the business. But last week he said he was overwhelmed by so many responsibilities especially having to staff Aunt E’s caregiving around the clock, covering shifts himself, when no one is available. He took an anti-anxiety pill and got some rest. Me: that sounds healthy, to slow down, and take a mental health day… Mom: Well, the bottom line is they all want Aunt E to go in a skilled nursing facility, a locked Alzhiemer’s unit… pause. Silence… But the house is leaking at the windows and nobody has any money to fix it.”

Regarding Younger Brother per Mom: “At another one of the rental properties the ceiling is leaking. Someone wants to rent it, but it needs quite a few repairs. Your [younger] brother could get $400 from me if he painted the houses. He could get a little money to get the work he needed done on his car to get it back on the road, if he came over to my house and did some housework for me, some cleaning and painting.” Mom mocking [younger brother], “ He has no money, he wants his car back, he wants to see his kids, he can’t get around to take care of himself, nobody would give him a ride, he’s hungry. He can go pick up his kids for bi-monthly visitation, but he has to use my money for gas and groceries. If it’s Sunday, he takes your father away from being able to help me and we need our time together. He’s always enraged. He says things about hurting Aunt E. And he’s always on the verge of a seizure.

My later talk with brother re: Aunt E. His words: “When both her [Aunt E] and I haven’t had our meds, it’s a bad situation. There are times when I think I may become very violent and think of harming her. And Dad just leaves me in here with her for days on end with no break. And I can’t get anyone to give me a ride anywhere, not to get something to eat, or to go to DMV to get my car issues straight, or to the social security office to get my money straight, or even to get some underwear. I can’t get any support for anything. And Aunt E., you don’t know what it’s like. She cusses, and she’s cruel, and nasty, and even though I know she’s not in her right mind, there is but so much I can take.”

“They won’t help me get my car because they know I would just do what Dad does and leave in the morning and not come back all day. There have been times when I’ve called Mom and them and said, “Look, you need to come right now because I feel like I’m getting ready to hurt her. I’m going to bring harm to Aunt E.” And I don’t have a key to the house I sleep in, (the locks were changed when brother went to visit his girlfriend who recently moved 70 miles away, for a few days, leaving the care of Aunt E. to the rest of the family), so if a man doesn’t have a key to his house, he doesn’t live there right? pause… And I’ve got a woman just begging me to move in with her and start a life with her…”
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on March 12, 2010, 03:24:17 PM: NMom:
Mood: depressed, money’s tight & there was a recent emergency room visit:

Mom: “I have some type of infection, and there is increased fluid swelling my legs and abdomen. My blood glucose levels are fluctuating wildly, I am short of breath, nauseous, and I have some chest pain… and the family is not moving fast enough! Your father asked me, ‘What do you think they are going to do for you? All of these symptoms are associated with your Congestive Heart Failure. You know what they are going to tell you already.’ I told him it might not be the CHF, it could be a blood clot or worse! And there’s so much stuff going around. I need to go and get checked out.”
“The emergency room doctors thought I might have been non-compliant with the care recommendations they gave me and checked the microchip in my CPAP machine to see if I had been using it properly. That’s when the physician gave me an analogy. He said my situation was like using more and more blankets to deal with a problem of there being a HUGE gaping hole in a wall of one’s house that was causing severe cold to come inside. Instead of repairing the wall (i.e. losing weight and eating the prescribed diet), they were constantly increasing the CPAP settings and medications to deal with the problem. They sent me home on the CPAP and told me to raise and lower my bed in certain ways to decrease fluid buildup in my tissues. The doctor also talked about the lack of oxygen during sleeping leading to my depression and snappiness and the weird dreams.”
“I’m also having problems with making payroll, paying bills, the family, and all that stress. The stress is causing the gastritis to ‘act up’ and I can’t get the doctors to prescribe Nexium (Medicare doesn’t cover it). So the doctor upped my Prilosec prescription…I need to start taking on more responsibility. I need to find ways to save money and we need to rely more on family to get things done.

Me: “What do you mean?”

Mom: “I mean we don’t need to outsource jobs that the family members can do themselves, like washing the cars or cutting grass… (then, suddenly and in a rage) I mean these grown men aren’t even able to pay their own light bills! And your sister’s government money is about to run out soon and she’s going to need help paying for those twin babies, diapers and formula and such! And Nexium works better but costs more than Prilosec and I am having so much difficulty I need another inhaler!” (quietly, almost inaudibly,) “Your sister was not feeling well and your oldest brother had been feeling a little down earlier on, but they both feel better now, and I am the one left feeling down, way down, now.”

To me: (in a more chipper tone,) “So what are you doing? Where are you going now?” (She can hear that I ‘m in my car)

Me: “…to a research-related meeting for school.”

Mom: “Well, it would be nice if you shared with me your experiences and what you learn about research along the way. I mean, you don’t have to teach me what you are learning per se, just tell me about your experiences. You know, I always wanted to do research and write on my research but my PhD program was not as rigorous as yours. (She then goes into her long ago intended plans to conduct research on the role of “the mother” in the church and the disconnect between mothers and daughters that has evolved over the recent years.)…

Niece:She, 11 years old, was left alone with her 3- week old twins while their mother, NSister, went to visit “alleged babies’ father number #1”… during which time, mother’s ATM disappeared and money went missing from Mom’s bank account.

NSister: The babies were born before their prenatal records could be transferred to the new OB doctor. Sister moved back into home with Mother from an apartment in a city an hour away. (With Nmother’s recent health issues and reduced income, she wanted sister nearer to her, for both their sakes). One day, after both Mom and Sister had the same disturbing dream, one in which only one of the twin babies was born and it had serious complications, Mom and sister went into high anxiety and both insisted, during the scheduled visit to the new OB doctor, that sister be admitted the hospital and evaluated. The labor progressed very quickly and a neonatologist was called in from the Level One Trauma Center to assist. One of the babies was born with a double-knot in the umbilical cord and the other needed mechanical assistance to breathe for several days. The babies, after coming home, had, {second cousin & suspected babies’ father #1} visit them at mother’s house outside on the front porch. Due to previous horrible encounters with my mother, he didn’t come inside to see the babies. He had sister bring the twins out onto the font porch to inspect them. When he was done inspecting, sister had her 11 year-old take them back in the house, while she sat out on the porch for hours. She and niece were thought to have taken NMom’s ATM card after she “left her pocketbook sitting around.” Mom asked [oldest brother] to get the ATM card back from Nsister. Per mom, “They [sister and niece] just walk around not saying anything to me, eating/ordering whatever they want...”

Dad: Needless to say, the remarry date came and went. Dad, a month later, was reacting to this by being “cold and callous” per Mom, when she reported her symptoms of shortness of breath, chest pain, and swelling. Dad didn’t respond quickly enough Mom’s insistence that she be rushed to emergency. His point of view: She already has so many thousands of dollars outstanding from previous emergency room charges and that they were not telling her anything different each time she went. To him it was simple: settle down, reduce your stresses, lose some weight, and maintain the proper diet.

Brother, older: He’s having problems with his girlfriend because he’s been spending so much time with NMother, helping out with the business. And he seems to be the only one who helps her. He’s been scheduling, billing, handling payroll for all the offices, basically running the business. When sister wrote some checks from a business account last week, it offset the payroll and caused the employees to have to wait and receive their paychecks on Monday instead of when they were due, the previous Friday. Brother had to troubleshoot the barrage of complaints. He is also being asked to help Mom with household chores like cleaning, washing clothes, paying bills and collecting the ATM card from sister/niece when they steal it. And when no one [Dad, sister, younger brother] would respond to her Emergency Room-worthy symptoms, big brother was called in to take her since the Ambulance service is such an expensive bill. Brother is beginning to 'cry uncle', saying that it’s too much being placed on his shoulders.

Mom: “Your [oldest] brother is overwhelmed. You know what I really need? I need YOU to be the RN for the agency…Just for a little while…"
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on January 17, 2011, 10:03:26 AM: “May I help you folks?” asked the hospital employee as he adjusts the drawstring on his scrub pants.
“We’re looking for the third floor-the psyche floor. Is this the right elevator?” I’m with my husband, and my 10 year and 6 month old daughters.
“Yes, just get on the elevator and follow the directions,” says the man who disappears around the corner.
I notice that the hospital in which I had volunteered as a teenager and pre-medical student in college, had had a cosmetic makeover since I’d last been there. The old corn-blue vinyl design schema had been replaced by taupe and rose colored draperies and chair covers. The hospital, itself, however, had not changed much. The second floor looked abandoned with an empty nurse’s station, no patients on what looked to be a medical/surgical unit, and only a few unused stretchers and empty sharps container peppered the hallways.
We get on the elevator and select the black Three button. Nothing happens. The sign indicates no children under the age of 14 on the Behavioral Unit as well as a host of other restrictions.

My husband selects the button with the telephone icon and we wait for the disembodied voice to answer.

“Yes? May I help you?”

“I’m here to see my brother, ________ __________?”

“Do you have his code?”

“It’s 3416.”

“Okay, hold one moment,” says the voice.

The elevators begin to move and the doors open.

A short, solidly built male orderly stands just outside the open elevator doors. With hand still holding the elevator key into the stainless steel lock on the wall, he gestures towards the sign inside the elevator indicating “No children under 14. You don’t want your children up here with this bunch. There’s a waiting area in the lobby on the second floor” he says.

My husband says, “ You go ahead, I’ll wait with the kids.”

I step off the elevator to a drab, cinderblock walled unit painted white with no accent colors. No artwork adorned the walls; and as I followed the stocky orderly down the hall towards the nurse’s station, I notice that I’m walking between patient rooms. Each room has two headboard-less beds, some occupied, and nothing else. The orderly nods his head towards one of the rooms on the left side indicating my brother but continuing his stride towards the nurse’s station. I notice my brother stooping over to pick up a small Styrofoam cup from the floor. Ice and water are spilled in front of the cup. The orderly waves me towards him mumbling about the sign in sheet. The unit is a vapid void and my presence alone offers stimulation to both the patients and the personnel. Thoughts from my clinical psychology rotations from nursing school jump to the forefront of my mind and I think “show your patients respect, look them in eye, don’t infantilize them” A man in a robe worn over pajamas stands in the doorway of one of the rooms, watching me as I walk up the long corridor towards him and the nurse’s station. He smiles. I say, “How are you?” He responds loudly, “FINE, HOW ARE YOU?!” And laughs.

Laughing guy with pressured speech standing in a doorway with pajamas, robe, and slippers… How cliché, I think. I keep a straight face, but laugh inside. At home with the crazies, I must be.

After mentioning that visiting hours actually begin at 6:30 pm (10 minutes from now), the orderly hands the clipboard to me, then a pen, and I sign in.

Brother is thinner than when I last saw him, he’s wearing a pair of long shorts and a white turtleneck. Walking back up the long corridor from the nurse’s station, I see him leave his room and head towards a white table just across from the elevator. When he walks, his gait is unsteady and when he speaks his words are slurred.

“What brought you to THIS floor, brother?”

Well, A few weeks ago I had a seizure. Around that time…

Dec. 18, 2010 Dad, [OB], and Mom’s joint account

Younger Brother [[YB]] begins his account of the events of December 17, 2010, three weeks earlier, when an altercation between him and our father escalated into a family ordeal that left one brother in the emergency room and the other, eventually in the adult psyche unit of the local hospital. I just happened to have called my mother the morning after the event just as my father was bringing my oldest brother [OB] back home from a night spent in the Emergency Department. I was placed on speakerphone and along with NMother, NFather, and recovering-addict-oldest-brother, they give a frenzied joint account of the incident.

Mom begins: “[YB] had a rage on your Dad last night, OB heard about it and he rushed over to help. Your Dad had called me when everything was happening, so I was on the telephone when I heard the phone get thrown and the line went dead. Aunt E (89 year old Alzheimer’s great aunt whose social security income covers the costs of living for [YB] and father, all of whom live in one of NMom’s properties) was in the house and I feared for her safety. [YB] was choking Dad, his hands around his throat!!”

Me: “Why would he do that?!” There was a silence, followed by a combined grumbling of voices, each saying something different under their collective breath. The gist: “Same as always, [YB]’s rage comes from out of the blue.”

OB exclaims, “I don’t care about why he did it, you all can talk about that at some other time. All I know is I [YB] knocked me over, hurt my back so bad I went to the emergency room, only to find out that I have a spiral fracture in one of the bones of my hand. I felt like a woman, being abused. I couldn’t get up. He had me pinned down, he stomped on me, kicked me, all I could do was to keep kicking him in the knee, while he was blindly punching me. I’ve been in fights before, but this time, I actually feared for my life!”

Mom interrupts, “empathizing” with OB, obviously shaken from his frightening depiction: “I know how that feels! Your Dad pinned me down, when he beat me up that time. I’ll never forget it!

I assume Dad, whose voice could not be heard over the speakerphone, was still standing there.

Me: Did he seem sorry?

Dad: It always takes him several days to be repentant, then he’s crying and sobbing all over the place.

Mom: maybe, we need to have David committed…

OB: “He just kept saying 30 years! He’s got 30 years pent up in him! That for 30 years I haven’t been a good brother, or role model. He talked about me being out there doing drugs and not being there for him.”

Dad: “You know the one good thing that came out of it?”

OB: “That nobody got hurt?!” He chuckled, but I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not.

Dad answers: “Yeah, that…but also, that he can’t just go around handling people like that. He got it himself this time.

Me: “What do you mean?”

Dad: “That he can’t just go around putting his hands on people. That maybe somebody’s got something for HIM, sometime.”

December 20, 2010-Mother’s account three days later:

NMom: OB and your sister want to institutionalize [YB]. And I tried to talk to them about why your brother would behave like that, but it’s just too soon for them to talk about it. They want him put in a home or something. But after talking to YB, I think your Dad needs to move on… I’m about ready to put your father out. But OB and your sister don’t agree. [Sister] wants her Daddy to stay at the “family house,” as she calls it. Do you consider that house “the family house?”

Me: “No, I always thought it was [YB]’s house. That he lived in it for many years after you moved out and before Aunt E and eventually Dad moved in with him.”

NMom: “I didn’t tell you earlier, but, a week before the choking incident, [YB] began doing some work for me for pay. Just odds and ends around the house, moving some stuff around, answering the telephone, stuff like that. OB was trying to give [YB] some advice on how to answer the phone correctly. OB also corrected his younger brother on some other small task that [YB] considered easy enough to handle on his own. [YB] expressed himself to his older brother, saying ‘Look, I think I can handle this, brother. Back down.’”

NMom: “During the fight between your brother and father, your father called me so that I could hear just how terribly [YB] talks to him when I’m not around. It was pretty bad. They were fighting about your father’s hoarding. There was a fridge full of stuff. The den is filled with fridges, and this was a reason why [YB] would not be able to have his three kids in his home for Christmas. [YB] was going on about the filth and telling his father exactly what was on his mind and heart. He was really rough. Your father said to [YB], ‘You talk to ME like that?! I’m NEVER taking you to see your children again!! And in a triumphant ‘gotcha moment,’ Dad revealed to [YB] that I’d been listening the entire time.”

NMom: “I could hear your brother coming closer and closer towards the phone before everything just cut off, it just went dead. I didn’t know what to think and I had no way to get over there myself, so I immediately called your sister to go over there and find out what was going on. Well, she wasn’t getting over there soon enough, so I called OB to go over there and intervene. I told him it sounded like his brother was about to kill his Daddy. When your older brother walked in, your younger brother was hovered over your father with his hands around Dad’s throat like he was about to choke him out… They want to put [YB] away in an institution.

Me: “In an institution?”

Mom: “Yes. They think we need to call the authorities so that they can come and get [YB] to take him somewhere and be observed.”

Me: “Exactly one week ago, we were talking about this very thing for [sister]. What ever became of that?”

I was speaking of my mother’s efforts to have my Nsister, who during a conversation with NMom about how nobody cared about her, threatened suicide and harm to her twin girls, evaluated by a mental health professional. My mother, a RN of 35 years, and former supervisor of a state mental health hospital, knows the protocol for assessing threats of harm. When she came to me for input regarding the next course of action, I asked my mother if my sister mentioned having a plan for her suicide, or if my sister seemed emotional vs. calm with resolve. At the time, I reminded my mother of my sister’s children’s fathers, both of whom would use the threat of suicide to manipulate and control her. I urged my mother to have her evaluated by a professional because the threat is so serious, if she didn’t do something about it, she would regret it if something terrible happened to sister or the babies.

Mom, (in an increasingly irritated tone): Well, we have bigger fish to fry, now!! Plus, like you said earlier, she was probably just faking the suicide threat. She even admitted to saying it to get us to pay more attention to her. She said, ‘Mom, look at what lengths I have to go to get you to pay more attention to me.’

Quickly she returns to her story about YB. When I spoke to your brother, he told me he was trying to clean up to prepare for his kids coming over for Christmas. He became disgusted by the state of the refrigerator and he began to get on your Dad about the mess. Dad remained calm in demeanor at the time, but his words were reckless and mean, saying he would never see his kids, knowing that YB has seizures and cannot drive for six months at a time, depending on his Dad for a ride everywhere. Your father’s hoard is becoming huge with multiple refrigerators in the den where YB wants to put up his Christmas tree. And the smell and mess is not sanitary for young children. And your Dad has a way of tearing you down with his mouth. He degrades you and makes you feel small. He praises everyone else but you. I was never a good mother. Other kids were perfect and he would tell me that they must be doing something right and me something wrong. He would tell YB, he would never amount to anything.

Me: Two weeks ago, when Dad lost his job, you mentioned feeling extremely sorry for him. Do you still feel that way, or no longer?

Mom (stuttering): I…I…I.. don’t know. I guess it’s my compassion for people in general. When I got your father to move in with your brother he was living in a 1 room studio apartment with a turned over sofa with a blanket, a jar to pee in, and the bed… He had a smell about him. He brushed his teeth in the kitchen sink. One time, when he was still pasturing that church, he stayed in a hotel after he lost our old house, then he stayed in his car for a while, then he started sleeping in the back of the church. They had to have a meeting to have him removed from the back of the church. There have been some pitiful times where he’s been like a homeless bum…
And sometimes I feel like, he’s your father!! How can I let him be homeless?! I mean he had holes in the bottoms of his shoes and his clothes weren’t taken care of!
How can you let your children’s father be a bum on the street? It’s my compassion, I guess… But I do think your Dad needs to move away from [YB] because whatever they are going through is not good. Dad with his problems. Aunt E and her problems… It’s too much for your brother.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on January 17, 2011, 10:05:09 AM: Dec. 30 2010- Mom’s recant

Mom: I was just sitting here crying?

Me: Really? What’s wrong?

Mom: “I was just talking to your father, he’s all sad, despondent and ready to move away from here. He says that everything’s so bad with the kids and he’s not helping any. I had a dream last night, about these large worms, and Daddy was trying to kill the worms, that were not deadly, but a nuisance definitely. He was doing it to protect the kids, your sister and her children, mostly. I found myself surrounded by a few worms and I realized I would have to fend for myself. Because he was busy helping the children… I woke up upset and later in the morning, I called him to come to my house and help me with putting on my shoes. [YB] had to wake him up because he was sleeping in. He was obviously sad and depressed, because he never sleeps in. He told me he just couldn’t find any peace in his home. And [YB] trying to choke him left him feeling terrible. He said he thinks he might move to Arizona to live. ‘If the kids wanted to see him, they could come out there and see him.’”

I don’t say anything, but I think to myself that this is not the worst idea I’ve heard.

Mom: “But I think about how life would be if he were to leave. I feel like your Dad really helps to pick up the slack when the children can’t be here for me. But am I supposed to give up my life and my peace?!”

Me: “You think you would lose your peace because Dad would leave and you would have no one to pick up the slack with [YB] and [NSister] and her children.

Mom: “No! I think I would lose my peace if your Dad were to come to live in my house?

Me: “And THAT’s the alternative to his leaving for AZ?

Mom: “Well, he doesn’t really have any money to go anywhere. He’s struggling with the money he’s getting for social security. I figure, how much am I supposed to give up for these kids? And I’m having a hard time dealing with [YB] trying to choke him to death. I’m having a problem with that! [YB] is saying he’s sorry and all that kind of stuff. But how can a child you raise and take care of bring himself to want to hurt you? And did you know, [YB] took the keys and drove up to a town 2 hours drive away from FOO’s hometown, [a town] unannounced to visit the old girlfriend with 11 children. We had to go get him from up there. He fooled his Daddy, said he was going to take his kids to the movies. He ended up in [a town]. Then he called your sister and told her where he was telling her he was dizzy and that the old girlfriend didn’t have very much food with which to take his anti-seizure medication. He just took the car after being bored and laid up with the children for two days. And he had just had a seizure on the previous Tuesday, but nobody told me. So, I decided I was going to get down to [a town] and get him.

Me: “Nobody told you?”

Mom: [YB] had been in a fight with your sister and her oldest daughter about caring for your aunt. Your sister is working as a home aide for Aunt E now, and she was supposed to be getting paid to ‘watch’ Aunt E while [YB] spent time with his children. I guess with all the fighting going on lately, nobody wanted to tell me that [YB] was still having seizures. They didn’t call the ambulance or anything. He was telling his father about the argument with your sister and niece when he went into another seizure. He knocked down the Christmas tree, bent up one of my old walkers. Your Daddy let him lay there and have the seizure and didn’t call the ambulance. I’ve been trying to get myself together because I didn’t want my BP to go through the roof. The next thing I know, [YB] is in [a town]. So when your sister told me where he was, she said, ‘Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll take care of it!’ But she didn’t move fast enough. I had your father to drive me down there because [YB] was like a loaded gun with those babies in that car! I just felt like it’s my fault if anything happened. So I jumped up and asked your Dad to take me down there. He didn’t want to do it. He’s nervous, you see because his son almost choked him. It’s really bothering him how [YB] did him. And it’s bothering me that Dad saw him have a seizure and didn’t help. And when I did find out about the seizure, Dad made it seem like it was my fault because I didn’t put [YB] out of the house when he choked him. I asked him, ‘Why didn’t you call for help?’ Dad said because they were just going to keep him in the Emergency Dept. for a long time, only to send him home without doing anything. So he really didn’t want to drive to [a town] but I made him…But he’s ready to leave [FOO hometown] now, and if I don’t let him move into the house with me, he’s really praying about leaving. The kids are begging him for money all the time, won’t leave him alone, Aunt E is cussing and carrying on and he just can’t get over your brother choking him.

Me: So it sounds like you empathize with both sides of the story.

NMom, (in an increasingly agitated tone): I do, but I don’t want to threaten my own peace. I want a couple of years where I can live in my house and enjoy my home. I really don’t want anybody to come in here and live. But I also know what Dad is going through and he’s in a situation where he can’t afford to go elsewhere. So I guess he could come over here for a few days and pray and not bring more than a change of an outfit.

Jan. 2, 2010- [YB’s] account

Me: Hey brother! What’s all this I hear?

[YB]: It’s been tough for me with Daddy and his refrigerators and his squash and beans and all his stuff. I’ve been frustrated with living in the house with him.
Every month I say, ‘Dad, the fridge is nasty. It smells. I clean it over and over and it just gets worse and worse. Once I didn’t clean it just to see how long he would go and fur was growing all over everything. You know he’s always pulling stuff from gardens and he brings them home and don’t clean them. He leaves the vegetables there to rot and mold. And he also has a refrigerator sitting right in the middle of the den. And I’ve been telling him he needs to move the fridge because my kids were coming and I wanted to put the Christmas tree up… We get into a heated debate and then “The Supervisor” showed up. I call [OB] “The Supervisor” because every time he comes around, he’s trying to supervise everyone. I was in my room trying to calm down.

Me: “So, you weren’t engaged with Dad when [OB] showed up?

[YB]: No. Dad and I had finished. I was in my room. I was very upset. I found out that Dad called Mom and she called [OB] to come over to see about the situation. [OB] came after everything was over and was saying, “What are you DOING, [YB] to me, yelling and such. He and I got to scuffling and [OB] got his hand broke. Sister, it’s like this, you fuss with me I tell you to leave me alone. I tell you once. I tell you twice. I tell you three times…Next thing I know I’m grabbing somebody. And they look like they are scared…

Me: “So it’s like blind rage?”

Him: “Yes, it’s like that. It’s like, ‘Can you clean the fridge, Dad?’ Or I’ll tell our niece to stop playing so much with me. Then, the next thing I know I’m yelling at her and she’s jumping out of the car. So I went to a doctor and they are going to give me 6 weeks to have some counseling. The best thing to do is for Dad to move out. And Mom gets mad because I have been disrespectful to Dad. So it’s best for us to separate. Before he moved in, I had fuel assistance for both the summer and winter. When he moved in, he insisted on taking care of the water and electricity bill. So he won’t let us get a clothes-dryer or to turn the lights on because he’s covering those bills. So the regular home aide that comes in washes the clothes and then leaves them outside to dry until someone takes it out of the rain or snow. “

My brother then recalls what life was like inside the house we were teenagers in. He complained of newspapers being everywhere and food, tvs and furniture being locked up in closets. “ Now he’s stockpiling expensive furniture and fixtures outside in the elements. I don’t know where he gets the stuff. But he gets a lot of stuff and there’s all this stuff out in the yard and there’s trash spread among it. He covers things with tarp held down with cinder blocks. Well, you know how Dad is…
But when I say something about being tired of living like this…The only way things are going to change is if Mom comes in and specifies which of these things have to go. And I know I wouldn’t be living like this if I lived by myself. So I got my own fridge, to put in my room because when I clean the fridge in the kitchen, in 7 days it’s completely nasty again. And I am thinking about getting one of those small electric stoves to go in my room. I’ve already got the big TV y’all gave me last year, a stereo, and my CPAP machine. With my $150 in food stamps and my disability check, I get a little money to get myself a t-shirt, and my toiletries.

Me: So you had a seizure recently

[YB]: I was playing on the piano a couple of days after the incident between Dad and me happened. I felt the seizure coming on and I tried to walk fast to the living room to be with Daddy and out of the sight of the kids. I didn’t make it. I fell. I woke up in the living room. It was a mild seizure. I think it came on because they recently changed my meds, plus, I’ve been very frustrated, and a little overwhelmed. They (Daddy) took the keys away because I had the seizure the week before. But I made Dad give me the kids Monday, because the kids and me wanted to see [mother of 11 who now lives in ‘a town’] for Christmas. When I went to her house, last Monday with the kids for a couple of days, I started to get a little dizzy. I stayed an extra day because I wasn’t feeling good enough to drive back home. Mom insisted on coming to get me after day three and she took the kids back home.

Me: What do you think should happen?

[YB]: Dad should move out and take his trash and fill it up somewhere else. And let Aunt E. stay and let her get old or whatever. I can live with her now, with the aides coming in to help her everyday. I was doing just fine until I let [mother of 11] move in with all of her children. I let them move in for a while, but they had to get out of the house, because of Mom putting a for lease sign in front of my house, trying to make her sign a rental agreement, and because of the incident with her daughter cutting me in the arm with a knife. Once they left, I had a seizure and when I came back home after the seizure, Dad was living here. And I know how he lived before, in filth. But I know how I want to live. It seems like the more I clean up, the more mess he leaves. Its like chaos.”

Me: So, you’re going to talk to a therapist?

[YB]: Yes, I have a prescription for 6 weeks of counseling.

Me: What do you think you’ll talk about?

[YB]: Lack of quality time with father growing up. It affected me that I had so little quality family face time. Dad was in church every day of the week and after a day at work, he would come home and sleep all day. I really lost control with Dad, I remember the look he had in his face, like a helpless child. Sometimes I catch myself and I think of my children.

Jan 5, 2010-Dad’s account

Dad: “Your Mom and I had had a spiritual day at church this Sunday past, her first time back in a really long time. Service was beautiful. We ate at Golden China. And we had gone to Staples to get some supplies because she wants to get the new year started off with work tomorrow. Just the day before [YB] had apologized and committed to attending therapy. But then Aunt E had a really bad day. One of those days where she keeps saying, “I wanna die! And she hits herself and cries. When I get home, your sister, who was there to watch Aunt E, started screaming at me. ‘Whose going to take [niece] to school tomorrow? She’s so used to depending on me. She’s got a car, and she’s working. But I have to be up at 6:40 in the morning bringing [niece] down near where your mother lives to catch the bus. But this is a new yeae and I’m not going to be…And your brother, he wanted so badly to go to [a town] to see that girl with all the kids. Do you know he had the nerve to ask [OB] for some money after what he did to his hand? [YB] was demanding the car keys from me again. With all that noise coming from every direction, I just grabbed my grip and came back to your mother’s house.”

Me: Sounds like a lot of stress…

Dad: “And all [YB] wants to do is to get together with [mother of 11]. He told me that he wanted to take his children to a movie or something and the next thing you know he was off in [a town]. [Mother of 11] was not expecting him. It was the end of the month and she had hardly enough money and groceries to feed her own kids. [YB] had a little money because your mother gave him money to buy his children Christmas presents. When we went down there to get them, all he wanted to do was stay and let us take his kids back. The round trip to where the children live from your brother’s house is 130 miles. And it’s mostly me going to get them.”

Me: Do you have a problem with [YB] getting together with [mother of 11]?

Dad: No, I don’t have a problem. He can chose to be with whomever he wants to be with. (After a pause…) Well, I DO have a problem with her because she’s got all those kids and because one of her children almost sliced your brother with a butcher knife!

Me: Sounds like a lot of violence going on there…

Dad: Well, in one of your brother’s blind rages, he made it so that he can no longer get into his children’s mother’s gated housing community And me too because we have the same name. That night he had snuck off with the car and ran out of gas and I had to go and get him anyway. When he took his kids down there to [a town], he threatened the kids not to tell their mom. If these people find out that D’s been having all these seizures, we might be liable.

Me: Would it be okay for [YB] to go see her if he didn’t drive?

Dad: Yeah, but [YB] can’t keep his own kids. After 3 days, he’s debilitated, he’s wore out. And there have been times when he goes to get his kids then he gets someone to keep his kids. And he’s having falling out seizures. He’s free to go. He’s is own person. And I don’t want to see him in Central State [Mental Hospital]. He’s on a breathing apparatus. And he forgets to take his medication. [YB] will sit in the car, with the trees going by and it will trigger a seizure. How is he going to fare? He’s getting worse!

He’s going to have to deal with [mother of 11] and her kids and with his children’s mother and their kids. And he snaps in a minute and he’s ready to fight. I recently attempted to help cash a check for [family friend] from the pastor of the [YB’s} church who paid the family friend for cutting the grass. [YB] got mad because some time went by before the check was cashed and [YB] went down to his house, snatched up [family friend] and demanded that he take care of the issue promptly. [YB] was trying to protect his reputation with his pastor. [Family friend], your sister, and I had already discussed how we were going to settle it. [YB] snatched [family friend] and dragged him into the street and down to our house. [Family friend] stormed out and called the cops and your mother. She agreed to hire [family friend] to do $30 worth of housework. [YB] has a short fuse. When I walked into the house after church Sunday, [YB] and your sister were both at a heightened level of rage and they both were acting exactly the same. And your Mom’s talking about a change that has to happen this year.

Me: It sounds like a powder keg.

Him: It IS a powder keg! And we are going to fix it.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on September 06, 2011, 01:05:14 PM: NMOM IS SERIOUSLY IN THE RED

The current state of affairs with my Nmom’s retirement and finances are that the business tax liabilities accumulated over the years now total about $650,000. She is past due in the amount of $12,000 in her business back-taxes and $22,000 in personal property taxes on the homes occupied by her adult children, my siblings. Her current monthly business bills include a recently re-arranged consolidated federal tax payment ($3,000/month), state unemployment taxes ($1,031/month) and a ($3,000/month) payment arrangement for penalty repayments of government monies sanctioned from a previous government agency-directed audit. Bi-weekly payroll accounts for 75% of the monthly income billed for the work of the nurse aides who work in the community. In a nutshell, she does not have the income to support her monthly payroll and tax obligations. That is to say nothing of her personal expenses, e.g., prescriptions, car costs, and costs of living.

I point out to her the ‘writing on the wall’: that government-sponsored home care is experiencing federal cutbacks (in anticipation of the Baby Boomers moving into the 80+ years demographic, making them the largest age-segment of the US population, threatening to break apart Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) and are simultaneously cutting home nursing care and other healthcare services driving home healthcare consumers to find their own in-home help and reduce the benefits of those who require more extensive, skilled care.

When faced with the prospect of giving up the business she’d built over 25 years, Nmom’s take: “If I didn’t give the business a final chance, I may give up on the last thing I have to fix this IRS problem! They might forgive the federal/business IRS stuff, but what about the personal stuff that’s in my name!?! With that and my 8 recent hospitalizations…” Her voice fades into incoherent mumbling.

With a change of tone, she directs towards me, “I needed you to visit some of my clients, but I managed and made it out there yesterday…”

In lieu of her frightening financial status and her strong desire to keep the business going, I have now found it nearly impossible to continue to deny her requests for me to help her. She wants me to provide monthly nursing assessments for her clients and employee in-service training for her home health aides. Reluctantly, I agreed to give her one day per week to make nursing visits to 20 clients and in-home training to 25 nurse’s aides. NMother has promised that I will be able to have some flexibility in making these visits as my full time graduate school schedule will allow.

During our talks about the viability of the business and the possibilities for improving the profit margin, I’ve often suggested that she consider increasing training opportunities for nurse’s aides by re-establishing her nurse’s aide education program. She, completely uninterested in the idea, told me that I was free to do whatever I wanted to do with what remained of her training program, which hadn’t offered a course in over 2 years.

I later approached the state agency that provides accreditation for these programs and she informed me that my Nmother’s school had actually been defunct for the last several years, as the agency was unable to reach my mother by telephone or mail regarding her school’s status. If I wanted to start a new nurse’s aide training program I was free to do so, according to the accrediting agency, however, my Nmother’s program was no more. But before I could tell NMom of this discovery, she called me with a concern. Her concern was about me remembering to “cut her in” on any forthcoming business ventures resulting from or related to her companies.

NMom: “I’m just so tired of people always taking from me and not giving back. Your sister thinks you ‘messed up’ things with the business before and your brother is concerned you won’t show up for me and give us what I need. They believe that you will take from the nurse’s training program and won’t give back.”

Without explaining to her that not only would I love nothing more than to remain completely disconnected with any of her business affairs, especially since there is nothing much left to connect to, but that I have every reason to be bitter and angry about the evil, destructive role my Nmother played in making sure I went out of business 5 years ago. I was at first, very bitter, however, at this point in my life/career, while the scar of the experience remains, the pain has subsided and I attempt to maintain an awareness that it could happen again. Forgiving her for that offense was made easier because losing the business eventually led me to where I am now. I do find it quite rich, however, that she is worried that I may possibly have some success with her now defunct nurse aide training program and is now putting in a word of concern on behalf of my siblings and herself. Very rich. I don’t bother to reveal what I learned about the defunct school to my mother when we talk. My gut tells me it may end up being better to be discreet about her former school particularly, as she cockily demands “a cut” of my future profits. Nonetheless in my sheer worry about her impending financial doom, I suggest she develop a written proposal to present to the IRS representative detailing why he should negotiate a plan with her in return for letting her keep her business doors open and try to turn this financial downward spiral around. Fast forward a few days, the proposal is successful; Nmom gets to keep doing business if she pays them $3000 in backtaxes and $1500/month…

The MEMORIAL DAY FALL

On Memorial Day, I called my mother’s home to check on her and [Older Brother-OB] picked up the line. He told me our mother’s home calls had been transferred to her cell phone, which he was answering because she had been admitted to the hospital. Two days ago, in the morning preparing to go to church NMom fell in the bathroom. She fell on her face. Her words to me on what happened:

“Your Dad’s been pressuring me to go to church. And with all the stuff I’m thinking about and going through with the taxes and business and all… It was my desire to go to church especially because your Dad has been making me feel so guilty about not making it to church on Sundays, so I was in the bathroom getting ready to step into the shower when, I don’t know what happened, I just fell, there was no water on the floor, I didn’t black out. I just fell…”

[OB] who was seated in the hospital room with an open textbook when I arrived at the hospital quickly dispersed upon my arrival. His youngest son and namesake was in town to visit him when Nmother fell and their time was interrupted as my brother ended up initially answering her distress call and subsequently sitting vigil at her bedside as the blood gushed from a broken artery in her nose for 24 hours. Once the initial hospital to which she was taken transferred her to another regional hospital they were able to stabilize the bleeding, but they kept her overnight for observation on the cardiac floor because of her medical history. Once I found out what happened (yes, no one called me to let me know for 48 hours), I went to visit her. As I arrived, my oldest brother rushed quietly and purposively from the hospital room as my husband, daughters and I began exchanging awkward words with Mom. She seemed extremely pitiful in her blood stained hospital gown, and gauze packed left nostril. Her voice was much weaker than normal and while straining to hear her speak is commonplace, it was particularly creepy having to put my face so close to hers to hear her words.

Her affect changed precipitously throughout the visit ranging from extreme pitiful-ness when I arrived to upbeat cheerfulness when everyone left and it was just her and me in the small shared hospital room. Nmother, who admitted to having had a “rough night” the evening before gave notice to the nightshift nurses that her daughter had her PhD in nursing…

“Mom, I wish you wouldn’t do that!”

“Do what?!

“Tell people that I have my degree when I haven’t completed it yet. It’s probably bad luck or something.” I don’t point out to her that it is also a blatant lie.

“Well, you’ve completed your coursework so you’ve done the hardest part…”

“Not true, there’s still a long road ahead through this dissertation. Do you know how many people are walking around here ABD? (all but dissertation). There’s a lot. Like 50% of those who enter PhD programs. Graduation is not a given.”

“Well, they know you are a nurse and they probably have talked about it to each other.”

“Well, when they come in today is there something you want me to talk to them about, your pain control?”

NMom: “I just want them to meet you. You can talk to them about whatever you want. You know your father sat up all night holding ice to my swollen forehead. I thought I had broken the bones in my face.”

When she fell, my Dad was upstairs in her home. He’s been staying upstairs recently because she wanted someone in her home to keep her company and to aide her in her activities of daily living. Activities like dressing, transporting from place to place (she is a morbidly obese woman who uses a power scooter to move about) and fetching things for her and her children like cash from the ATM, fast food, or what have you. Dad denied hearing her when she was screaming and calling out after the fall. So she slithered in a low-crawl on her side using her elbows to drag herself across the floor, bright red blood gushing from her face. She said she heard an audible crack when she fell and watched her blood pulsing in time with her rapid heartbeat as she cried out to my father. After sliding over to her bedside stand from her bathroom, she used the house phone to call my father on another house phone, which he also did not answer.

What could he have been doing? The cavernous ceilings in Nmom’s home create such an echo throughout the house, it would be difficult not to hear a scream, much less, a whimper. A clandestine walk upstairs in my father’s space (ordered of me by my suspicious Nmother) earlier that week when he was out running errands only revealed a junky, cluttered couple of rooms and a mysteriously locked door with the door handle torn, ripped, cut off, which, I couldn’t tell). As I crouched down to peer at what was left of the sawed-off door handle, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I chuckled at a sinister thought that quickly ran through my mind and called out loudly to my mother, “Just a lot of Dad’s stuff and locked door!” She, who was sitting in her scooter chair in the great room waiting for me to return downstairs, called back, “Well, I know I hear him making a lot of noise up there at night, and he’s always acting like he can’t hear me when I call. What good is it having him around if he can’t hear me when I call.”

On the day of the fall, Nmom called [OB’s] telephone next. He rushed over, called an ambulance, went upstairs and found Dad, and took on the responsibilities of the first responder. Nmom smiled as she described how intensely rude Dad was to the EMTs barking orders at them to be quick and careful when moving her. He was in an almost-panic fervor once he saw the degree of her injuries with all the blood on the white tiled bathroom floor. She seemed to appreciate his level of concern despite her earlier misgivings.

My mind flashed to what must have been a similar scene two years ago when one of my Dad’s twin infant granddaughters fell face-forward out of her infant carrier/carseat and suffered a brain injury while in his care. My sister similarly described how intensely rude he was with the hospital staff, and how that somehow signified his remorse for his inattention. I can recall several similar instances throughout my family’s history, (e.g., a set of brakes that went out on me when I was teenager and a blown out tire that went out on my younger brother [YB], both of which instances happened immediately after my father performed maintenance to our albeit, clunkers).

I also think of other trips my Dad has made with his family to the ER with [YB] and his seizures, with the elderly, Alzheimer’s-stricken Aunt E., when she fell on the sidewalk in front of the house and when [OB’s] arm was broken in two places recently when an enraged [YB] assaulted him. I shudder to think of how well the personnel at the local Emergency Department know our injury prone family.

I try to push out of my mind thoughts of foul play. But I can’t help but wonder: Could these accidents, these slippages be my Nmother’s way of garnering attention, rallying the troops to her as her business comes in for its final descent. I think back to a hospitalization last year this time. A hypertensive crisis that immediately followed a tax lien being placed on the home in which she lives and the subsequent anxiety and stress that caused. I ask myself how likely is it that her fall was not a complete accident before feeling shame for being so suspicious. Besides, it’s a little out of character for her to intentionally bring harm to herself. Munchausen-by-proxy is more her type of manipulation. So, while I don’t have all the details my feelers are up…
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on October 01, 2011, 10:09:40 PM: The Elephant in the Room

During an early morning visit to NMom’s, Dad comes into her bedroom with a bowl of thin, watery oatmeal accompanied by a boiled egg. After placing the breakfast on a side table, Dad asks me about my one-year old daughter, his granddaughter. He is quickly shooed away by Nmother who is multi-tasking: tasting food, talking to me, and shuffling work-related papers and forms from desk to crate. She tries the oatmeal, frowns, slams the bowl down onto the saucer and yells to Dad that the texture of the oatmeal is not right. “It’s too soupy!” He returns, she yells, he walks away leaving me standing there alone with her. As if looking at me standing there alone jars her out of her narcissistic rant, she stops and gingerly touches her nose grimacing. Like a wounded animal she skulks and licks her own wounds. I stand still and find myself trying to disappear.

Dad returns shortly with another bowl of oatmeal, this time it is semi-solid in consistency. He cheerfully puts the bowl before her.

“That better?” He says smiling.

Mom, with furrowed brow and agitated disposition, says “Forget it, I just won’t eat. You just can’t get this right! I like my oatmeal soupy but without so much milk!”

Dad says, “Okay, well that’s what I tried to do. If you don’t want it what can I do?”

He then turns to me and says, “I like that dress you’re wearing. It’s not like the flimsy stuff you see girls wearing these days.”

A bit uncomfortable at the sudden shift in attention, I say, “What this dress? I got it when I went on a trip recently…” NMom, rubbing her sore nose and face, frowns again and begins to whimper. Daddy skulks away. As I stand there quietly, she begins to complain about how she’s feeling. She talks about how she’s been feeling “invisible” lately, like no one is really listening to her, about how she cannot get anyone to come and regularly stay with her and bring her food and help her with her medications or take her blood sugar or blood pressure when she feels out of sorts. I hear this 20-minute monologue but find that I, like the rest of the family am not “really listening.” There is a tone in her speaking voice that actually makes me want to run away or disappear. My composed veneer is hiding a true desire to scream in frustration and leave. And to be honest, at this time, I am not really sure why I feel this way, but in the months that follow, I will come to identify my frustration and I will leave. But for now, I am here. I am trying to help my mother in her time of crisis. I am trying to be supportive of her healthcare needs and her business needs. I am now doing what I once thought I would never do again, I’m making an attempt to work with my NMom in her business. I’ve agreed to do a few nursing visits.

While visiting NMom’s clientele and getting a feel for how the business is run, I have a conversation with an office worker, [Pamela]. My brother, [OB] has dispatched [Pamela] to my aid in navigating the confusing highway routes to complete an initial home visit for a new client. She is driving me, in my NMother’s work vehicle over rural roads familiar to her, but foreign to me. The new clients are a result of [OB’s] renewed marketing efforts and his strong desire to help prevent the business from going under. He has a lot of interest vested in the business’ doing well; he is approaching 50 years of age, and has to make up for his many wasted years of being a hard-core alcohol, cocaine, and heroin addict. His Bi-polar disorder is being held in check by his medications and he is going to 12-step meetings religiously.

Because the finances were so bad off, [OB] and I, the two individuals most familiar with the daily goings on of the business, are doing everything we know to do to support NMom, neither of us taking a paycheck for the work. [OB] is making money in the form of rental income from two buildings my NMother lease but allow him to live in and sublease. My brother, an entrepreneurial type, is now trying to parlay Nmother’s unfulfilled possibilities into opportunities for himself. Secretly, I wish him luck with that…

On the ride to visit the clients, the office worker explains, in so many words, how stressful it is working with/for [OB], how he often has her to perform certain work-related tasks (e.g., enforcing the late policy, correcting timesheet errors, etc.) that are later counteracted or reversed as a result of the field employees circumventing her and complaining to my mother. As I glimpse at her countenance from the passenger seat, I detect that familiar nebulous aura of frustration, which, in this case, is misdirected towards [OB]. In her eyes, the crap rolls downhill and her most immediate higher-up is my brother; Nmother is not on her radar as the likely source of her frustration. As we meander through the serene countryside, the office worker, an energetic young single-mother chats about how she once had goals of becoming a registered nurse, but now, after talking with my mother, she thinks it is a bad idea.

“Really?” I ask her. “Why?”

“Because, your mother talks about how difficult the schooling is and how hard the work is and she is always complaining about her business and the aides who work for her. So I figure I should just keep working with her as an office worker and maybe get my nurse aide license instead.”

I resist the urge to say anything about how sharp, articulate, and capable of being a registered nurse I think she is and how my Nmother can be a real dream-killer at times; instead, I comment on how beautiful I think the dairy farms are. Too often I’ve made the mistake of contradicting my mother in this way and paid the price. No good deed goes unpunished, and the like. Preparing for the task before me, I ask the office worker about the new clients we are about to see.

“I notice the two clients we are seeing today have family members working as their home health aides. Are there many like this?”

With a slight look of worry, she responds, “Yes, maybe 10 or so.”

“So about half of the clientele?”

“Maybe a little more than half…”

Within my Nmother’s agency, there are home aides who are being paid to care for their own mothers. Some have the same addresses file. [Pamela] also tells me about an aide who used [Pamela’s] name to complete employment applications at other jobs so that she could make additional income on her mother’s care, essentially committing Medicaid fraud.

I think of my Nmother and Aunt E and I think the employee apples don’t fall far from their boss’s tree.

Later that month, I called [OB] to wish him a Happy Father’s Day. When I asked him if he was doing something special to celebrate it, he says, “No, the work here never stops. We have six new clients in the last 2 weeks. We really need a nurse to do some ‘backup’ nursing now that Mom has had a fall.”

Even on his day off, [OB] can only worry about our mother’s business. He has three sons by three different women, with none of whom he raised his children. And because [OB] had no relationship with his own biological father (a much older man Nmother met and lived with when she was just out of high school), [OB] had no real interest in commemorating Father’s Day. I’m thinking of this and how proud I am of my brother’s sobriety when I respond with, “Well call me, I’ll help.”

I ask him about his sobriety and he reveals a recent almost-relapse following a series of devastating events with the family that had him telling himself, ‘Well, let’s just take all these problems and situations and sprinkle some crack on top of it!’ He remembered the date, it was Friday, April 22nd. He had just found out from a female cousin that our sister told her about his girlfriend’s positive HIV status. My brother was infuriated because he intentionally did not tell my sister about his girlfriend as she was a known gossiper to the people of our family’s small town. [OB] said he told only two people about his girlfriend’s health status and his decision to stay with her despite it. Our mother and me. He called me to ask about the scientific possibility of him having infected her with HIV, while remaining HIV negative himself. He’d admitted to being unfaithful at a point during their relationship. I told him that wasn’t exactly the way it worked. I told him if he was HIV negative and she had contracted HIV during their three-year relationship it was likely a result of her own infidelity, not his. Despite the suspicions and later confirmations of his girlfriend’s trysts with a former lover, known by others to be HIV positive, [OB] decided to stay with her. [OB] said jer HIV counts were undetectable and they were having protected sex. Somehow, he told me, his sobriety was closely linked with this woman, who despite advice to do otherwise, attends the same Narcotics Anonymous meetings as [OB], and despite her seductive and manipulative ways, the likes of which [OB] has admitted to finding intriguing, he cannot leave this woman.

Enraged upon hearing that his business had been spread among his community, his first inclination was to scold Nmother. He told me he removed the business keys from his keychain and handed them over to her, quitting the business because he could not believe she would tell our sister, who was known to spread hurtful gossip, no matter who it hurt. When he went home that day, he seriously contemplated relapsing. “But I just turned out the lights and went to sleep that day.”

“Wow, [OB]! Are you going to be okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay, and I’ve since come back to the business. But, I have to go now since I’m studying for an abnormal psych test.”

“Are you learning anything about our family in that class?” I joke.

“Yeah, I learned our sister is a sociopath!” exclaims [OB] with a laugh. I don’t laugh, though, because this is something I’ve known for a while now. And I don’t mention that additionally, I think our Mom is a narcissist, our Dad, her co-dependent, abusive soulmate; our brother, a depressed victim of our Nmom’s Maunchausen by Proxy; our niece, a sociopath-in-training; and me an avoidant, overly anxious, overachiever. [OB], diagnosed with and currently taking meds to manage his Bipolar disorder and at one point, given the psychiatric crimes moniker, “Severely Mentally Disturbed,” knows he comes from a family with a host of mental health issues.

[OB], however, feels the huge elephant in the room is our sister. He complains that while he currently gets no paycheck, our sister receives, (or commandeers, rather) two paychecks per month, and additionally asks for cash advances on those checks and daily borrows $20 dollars from anyone she can find. She also steals Nmother’s ATM card and draws cash from that when she hasn’t driven those accounts into negative balances. And, either by example or by direction, she has trained her oldest daughter, 13, to do the same.

[OB’s] frustration is about to spill over the top when he mentions that he now has to figure out how to make more money in the business, because in order for him to finish school and make an independent lifestyle for himself, he would need to pay out the terms of the new agreement he just made in his own name on my mother’s rental property taxes. I think about what my [OB] says and I tally the toll. He’s not getting paid a paycheck, his growth in the business is limited by Nmother’s micromanaging and undermining, and he is personally, now ‘on the hook’ for thousands of dollars in property taxes on Nmother’s buildings. I would say the real ‘elephant in the room’ is not my sister, it is our mother. And she is not an elephant, she is something far more devastating and cruel.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on August 11, 2012, 08:24:20 PM: The dizzying cycle

A recent telephone conversation with [YB] initially reveals his desires to settle down and be married and his attraction to a tall beautiful woman at the church where he plays the piano. He also reveals his frustrations with the family. After his recent week-long trip to the mental health unit at the local hospital, [YB] was feeling trapped by his epilepsy (of nonspecific origin) not having a stable means of income, not having a vehicle, and having to live in his Nmother’s rental along with his [Nsis], her three young children and his 89 year-old Alzheimer’s-riddled great-aunt. He began seeing a mental health therapist, but stopped when the therapist changed the dosage on his anti-seizure medicine prescription.

Me: “Why would he do that?”

[YB]: “I don’t know”

Me: “Did he put you on new medication as well”

[YB]: “Yes, something to help me with my anger management”

Me: “So what happened?”

[YB]: “I started having the seizures again. When I went back to the doctor who first prescribed the seizure medicine, he told me not to ever let a doctor change the dose of my medicines and so I haven’t been back to the therapist.”

Me: “What is it like when you get angry?”

[YB]: “It’s like I’m okay and then something flips my lid and I turn into “The Hulk” That’s what I feel like, “The Hulk” you know the way he does. And when it’s over I have to apologize to people. And it’s not me. I can’t make it 6 months without a seizure. This time I only have a month to go. Not too long ago, I felt a big one coming on, so I called the ambulance and they gave me medicine through the needle in my arm and I didn’t have the seizure.”

Me: “Do you have a plan for getting yourself together?”

[YB]: “I plan to get help from the Department of Social Services & Social Security to be able to survive on my own in this house. Maybe get a side job playing the keyboard at churches for money. Mom doesn’t think it’s right for Great Aunt E to go into a nursing home, so I guess she will stay around.”

Me: “Actually, I think Mom’s thinking of letting E go into a nursing home.”

[YB]: “Yeah, I think I heard that somewhere, too. But I don’t believe she wants that. She really wants to see E taken care of by family. Recently, [Nsis] and [her 13 year old daughter-niece] and myself got into altercation over being in house with Aunt E. The way they live really rubs me the wrong way. The way they talk to people and argue loudly with each other really gets to me. I’m trying to change and upgrade and they are always pulling me down. It’s a struggle, a setback. And [Nsis] takes up for [niece] even when she’s caught in the act of doing something wrong. I caught her stealing $75 from my wallet! I have no desire to stay I this situation. I can’t just jump off without a platform. Sometimes when [NMom] is stressed, she lashes out at me and I have to take that. So I have to help keep her stress low. Meanwhile, no one trusts me to do anything and everyone expects me to be sick. They let me drive [NMom] around town, but not myself. That’s frustrating. It would be nice to have someone on my side. A cheerleader to help get me to be where I want to be. I’m not asking for much, right?”

Me: “You sound like you need to get out of your rut. Doesn’t the Scripture say your gifts will make way for you? You should use your musical gifts to make money. And have some faith in yourself. I seem to remember when we were teenagers in high school my girlfriends would sometimes tell me you were cute and ask if you had a girlfriend. Of course, I told them “Ask him yourself.” But you know you never seemed to have problems attracting women. There’s a woman out there who would make a good partner for you.”

[YB]: “I love talking to you. I always feel so uplifted. It’s like I get a “charge” or “charged up” like a battery. You give me things to think about.”

The next day I check in with NMom who is taking care of work-related business from her home office with [OB’s] help. At this time, she is fixated on NSis, who is experiencing some mental and physical health issues.

[NMom]: “Your sister was here yesterday to borrow some money. And her kids were out in the car. I felt like she was hiding something from me and told her to bring in the kids so that I could see them. [Niece] had hives all over her body and nobody was sure what caused them. She didn’t know whether to go to the ER or to schedule’ a doctor’s appointment. The twins’ hair was extremely matted and they both had a thick, severe case of dandruff that required a special $35 prescription bottle of shampoo to treat it. On top of that, your sister has been calling me telling me she has chest pain and wants to go to the emergency room one minute, then says it’s just gas pain the next minute. This is an opportunity to have a mental health professional see her, Your brother’s doctor could see her about her anxiety. She doesn’t have health insurance. So we will have to cover it. We can take care of the babies and take her to the doctor and spend some time tending to her. I had a disturbing vision of seeing your sister whispering to someone that she wanted to kill herself. I want to help her. Give her a break. And I thought I would help her. If we can take her kids while she goes down to see her friends or something like that. I would like to find out how to help. It’s time for us to do something on the medical side.”

I can hear [OB] in the background muttering something to [NMom] about a conversation he has going on another phone line: “They say they are still missing one of the three payments…”

After an awkward silence NMom reveals to me that she is going to pick up [NSis] and together, they will be making the nursing visits [OB] had previously arranged for me to make. He and I had spoken earlier about ways I could help our mother and the business as she recuperated from her fall a couple of months earlier. I agreed to be on-call for a few home visits, if needed.

Me: “So I won’t be needed tomorrow?”

Her: “Well, I’m anxious for you to do your school stuff.”

Me: “Well, I guess I need to call brother to tell him I won’t be there tomorrow”

Her: “No need. He’s in the next room. I’ll tell him.”

Me: “I’m here to help. I came in because things seemed really bad with the tax creditors and all…”

Her: “Well, let me work on that. Let me work that out with [OB] Were going to take care of it. It’s something I need to think more about.”

Me: “OK”

Two days later; it’s a Friday morning. I spoke to brother on Wednesday asking him if he still needed my help. After speaking to NMom, she told me she would take care of the initial home visits of 2 new clients. She had been complaining about being in hypertensive crisis earlier, and about [Nsis’s] most recent issues with anxiety/depression, so I figured she probably never made the visits.

She lets me know that she’s in a good mood today, whatever that means. She says she is feeling “charged” after running into a city council member who remembered her from the community development center (CDC) I began immediately following graduation from my Bachelor’s program 15 years ago. I began the CDC as a project, something to do after not getting in medical school, something to fill my days with while I applied to and awaited starting my Master’s program. [NMom], who was at the pinnacle of her wealth at that time and thrilled with the idea that I would not be going across the country somewhere for medical school and staying close to home/her, agreed to help me acquire a rental space and paid me a $10/hour salary to do whatever I had the inclination to do. I could have done like my brother and worked in administration of the home care agency, but I decided to start a non profit, grassroots agency with a soup kitchen, clothes closet, and welfare-to-work job training program. It was an overnight success, featured in the local newspaper as an energizing new thing to be happening in the small industrial town. The notoriety piqued my mother’s interest, although she had never come in to check on how the non-profit organization was doing prior to the publication of the news article. [NMom] naturally took all the attention and ran with it, turning her attention towards the non-profit CDC, completely taking over my efforts and ideas with her own self-driven ideas about the directions in which the organization should go. She eventually made the recipients of the CDC services her target church and formed a congregation with the grateful community citizens. Not exactly my idea about how non-profits should be run, but I lost creative control over this CDC relatively quickly once people began to pay attention. This female council member whom [Nmom] saw earlier thought for sure, [NMom] was going to eventually run for council and unseat the old incumbent who was still serving as councilman and often described as quite senile. NMom was flattered by this. This bit of N supply “charged” her and you could hear it in her voice.

The specific word “charged” was used by my brother and I two days before. So, I figured she must have talked to him, particularly after she said, “Well, Tiffany, I know my gifts will make way for me…” the scripture I referred [YB] to when trying to encourage him to hang in there. Minutes later, she mentions taking the family out to dinner the evening before. Family being: [YB], [Nsis], her three daughters, and Dad. She said they had a “good time.” I never seem to be invited to these family outings, but somehow, my presence is often felt.

We finish the conversation with her rushing me to talk about my school, basically all but saying, “Look, you deal with the school stuff and stay in your lane.” But when I begin to share my school experiences and tasks, it is not long before she’s usurping the discussion to dream about finishing her own scholarly work. She is now talking about doing things that sound eerily similar to what I’ve told her I am planning to do with my dissertation. I cannot seem to win in the validation department. And my frustration is growing and growing.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on August 11, 2012, 08:27:35 PM: So for the past few mornings I’ve awakened with the thoughts, What am I doing here? How did I get back here? I feel like I am almost forcing my help on NMom, who I sense really doesn’t want me to swoop in and help her save her business. She is instead directing her energies into her scholarly work taking online short courses and figuring out how she can write and conduct research. She also seems to be neglecting her financial obligations while catering to a co-dependent [NSis], who is admittedly stealing her ATM card, forging checks, and receiving a paycheck from NMom’s business. Meanwhile, I am getting behind on my comprehensive exams and finishing three manuscripts and a grant proposal that will help fund my dissertation research.

A few weeks, later she calls me in a completely different mood…

Her: “I am thinking of hiring another nurse to help me with the visits. The old nurse we were using before just got a new job, so she is no longer able to do any more visits for me. And I’m getting behind.”

Me: “The last few times I called, you didn’t seem to have very much for me to do along that line.”

Her: “Well, there’s so much to be done, actually… I don’t know where to start.”

Me: “It would be nice if you could retire and just do the things you like to do.”

Her: “How is that possible?! I have to work for everyone else! I wish I could get it so that I didn’t have work so hard either.”

Me: “According to developmental psychology, at this stage in your life in your 60s you are thinking heavily about retirement and bringing your career as you once knew it to a conclusion and are finding new ways to bring meaning to your and your family’s lives and share the life lessons that you’ve learned with the forthcoming generations.”

Her: “Yeah, but how do I do that?! When your brother, Dad, sister and her children are so dependent on me to live. For example, I just got off the phone with your sister who wants me to let [Niece] come over here to my house everyday for the rest of the summer, so that she can avoid failing the 7th grade. Not enough kids signed up for summer school so an Internet-based summer school program was the only option. And she does not have a computer nor a phone line. But [Niece] complained and gave me attitude when I was reprimanding her for almost flunking and it pissed me off! If you don’t know how to listen and be quiet when I rant, I feel sorry for you. She couldn’t just sit there and listen! And everybody knows that I will try to do anything for you but you have to sit there and listen. So I just got real and I said, that’s it! She’s going to have to figure this out herself. And your bother, (YB), I heard he had been asking your sister if he could drive her car to go to [a town two hours away] to visit the old girlfriend with 11 kids. I told him I would take the car from [NSis] if I heard he was driving it. And he did. He went to [two hour town] and they all covered for him. [Niece] and a cousin were looking after Aunt E while [NSis] allowed him to use her car to drive to [two hour town].”

Me: “Isn’t he stable with his seizures?”

Her: (irate) “it’s not all about whether he’s had a seizure and is able to drive for 6 months or not, but about being stable within his own life?”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Her: (silent, then, in a more irate tone) “I mean, he’s in no position to be driving down trying to see those people. He’s not compliant with his treatment plan. He’s not stable. And I do not want him going to [two hours town]! Last year we had to go and get him from down there. He stole away and went down and nobody knew where he was. And he came home and fell out with a bad seizure. It’s just one thing after the other. We discussed this. And they did it again. The big question is “who told me?” But if everybody can remember…The Lord lets me know things in a flash. He brings it to me. Nobody has to tell me!”

Me: “Why didn’t he just take the bus?”

Her: “I’m tired of thinking for them. And putting up with every reason they give me. I’m just tired. He does whatever feels these days and I put up with it all year long. And because of my mercy… I’m trying to get your sister to understand how you have to get [Niece] to be a big girl and to help you.”

Me: “Why is [Niece] slipping in her grades so badly? She used to get such good grades. She’s a bright girl.”

Her: “I think I should let her suffer the consequences. And deal with the consequences throughout high school.”

Me: (awfully uncomfortable, needing to change the subject and tone) “What about [OB’s] nursing visits?”

Her: “I think he wants me to visit someone today, but I’m just having a hard time. I think I’m gaining weight in my legs and stomach area.”

Me: (realizing she’s saying her illness is keeping her from being able to make her visits, and thinking of the implications thereof, try another line of questioning) “What happened with [Nsis’s] situation last week? Didn’t you schedule an appointment for her with a mental health professional?”

Her: “Yes and she just didn’t go.”

Me: “That’s it? You seemed so upset last week with the dream and your need to get help for her.”

Her: (bitterly) “And I overheard [YB] talking on the speaker phone justifying why he left to go out of town to see that girl! I heard him tell someone: ‘Mom had no business leaving Aunt E in the house alone with me at night because I have these seizures and am therefore not a reliable or eligible caregiver for her.’ I told him: ‘You may just remember that once you were having a seizure alone with Aunt E in the house and it was she who went to the door and called for help when you needed it! And besides, who is he to stand up to me saying I shouldn’t be leaving him alone with Aunt E! I tell you everybody is just being disrespectful to me!”

Me: “Why would he say that?”

Her: “He was trying to justify going out all night long with those people. It’s like you said. If he wants go down with that girl for the rest of his life he can take a bus and get him a cab from the bus. For Aunt E, the alternative is the nursing home, but I’m not going to do that just for [YB’s] benefit. I’m just ready to give up. I don’t know. It’s just going deeper and deeper and deeper. And the IRS man is calling, blah, blah, blah…”

Me: “About what?”

Her: “About the $4000 that was behind? I’m not finished with that yet. They are trying to say they need some more money. That wasn’t the right amount. His call is never good. Tiffany, I haven’t been telling you everything that’s going on with the finances.”

Me: “Well, what are your priorities?”

Her: “I need to get rid of Aunt E to a nursing home and try to struggle out there and see her on a regular basis. And then [NSis] and [YB] will have to take care of themselves. [NSis] will not have a way to eat… [YB] will not have money for his seizure medicine… they really don’t realize how much Aunt E provides for them.”

Me: “I’m worried about the business and the monthly nursing visits. You were saying you were behind.”

Her: “I’m worried too! Other than that, I’m trying to work on this new policy and procedure manual that is being required of me by the state Medicaid department. They are really cracking down. The real deadline is a month from now. So I need to finish it or I will lose my contracts entirely and Medicaid is no longer accepting new contracts.”

Me: “So that sounds like a priority.”

Her: “Yeah. Like without that, none of this matters. And I haven’t filed last year’s taxes and they are due next month and it’s a struggle just trying to meet payroll.
[OB] has been billing claims that we don’t quite have the paperwork to cover trying to make ends meet. And my conscious is whipping me about it. And I do care as a nurse, but I just don’t have the strength! And I’m sick all the time. And [OB], he’s showing signs of frustration especially with your sister, who is borrowing from me every 5 minutes. I’m going to see to it that Aunt E goes into the nursing home for 30 days and let ‘em survive however they can and let ‘em see how it’s a blessing to have her around. Then, I’ve got to make a decision about your father. He’s supposed to be helping me but because he’s always tending to your sister’s problems, he can’t help me to get out of the house and things like that. He doesn’t bring me ice water and I have dry mouth all night long. When he finally comes home, he tiptoes upstairs to his room with his smelly old books. I struggle to prepare for bed and I lay up all night. And he leaves early in morning and he has these potted plants and flowers he likes to water. He gets on me about not eating healthily but he’s always bringing in food that I’m not supposed to eat. And I throw it away. It just doesn’t work for me. So I’m not pleased with him being around. And because I’m sick, I can’t put up with it. And life is just so miserable. I’m so sick and tired of people talking to me any kind of way, just total disrespect! And I’m not going to deal with that child [Niece] being a smart-mouth and talking to me any kind of way. It’s not my job to raise her. And all time, she won’t study. She failed most of her classes. But her and her mother (NSis) didn’t tell me that. They said she was doing okay in her classes. The teachers gave her what she deserved! When [NSis] calls me, she cries and yells about how she needs help and you can’t get a word in edgewise. And I’m sick of it, literally. No joke. And with all these bills I have to pay… Tiffany, recently they applied garnishments to my bank accounts. This was a few months ago. They went to my payroll accounts and they also wiped out my personal and savings accounts. They didn’t get anything from payroll because it is not in my name, it’s in the business’ name.”

Me: “Who did that?”

Her: “The IRS… I’m not telling you everything, huh? I guess I’m telling you pieces. Right now the IRS man just calls anytime he feels, every time I look up. I was supposed to send $1500 then $1100. Then he called talking to me like I had done something wrong and had broken my promise to pay. But I reminded him that he must have forgotten what he told me earlier. He ended up saying, “It must have been a misunderstanding.” So he owned up to it. But I cannot just up and get another personal account because my name is mud. They check your credit. And Medicaid has been steadily decreasing the number of billable hours you can get as well as the hourly rate, so less money and more bills! I’m encouraging your brother [OB] to hang in there and am letting him get some profit from the business to make his ends meet. He’s the only one hustling in that place which is falling down to pieces. I told him, if you want it, and can make something out of it, you can have it. That’s how he’s surviving. [YB] is crying about how he wants his car fixed but I told him not to try to drive your sister’s car or I would take it from her. I told him not to go. He’s just sitting around whining.

Your sister keeps getting early advances on her paychecks… every pay period. She doesn’t even come to work sometimes. She never has gas in her car to go anywhere. [Niece] is failing school. I have no idea how the twins with their severe dandruff are doing. When I fell a couple of months ago, I called [Nsis] because I was naked. I think I dialed you or her, I don’t remember… But anyway, she never answers her phone in the mornings no matter the emergency, so it doesn’t matter. Your father eats all the food I bring into the house that’s worth anything. He can’t contribute to the household. If I have something made and it’s not eaten in a day, then he eats it. He bought an old 1991 custom van that had been sitting up for 4 years. It took 2 days for him to drag that van here. The back seat pulls out to a bed. I don’t know what kind of shape it’s in. He’s running behind this thing saying to me, “You and I are going to go to travel to a church convention in this van.” Tiffany, you know I’m not going to ride anywhere with him! Like that, in a ’91! He said he got a good deal for it paying $1000 for a vehicle they wanted $2400 for. I told him I already have a van that’s a 2007 and I already have the wheelchair ramp on it. Yes, it’s broken, but once I get it fixed, it would allow me to use my wheelchair and to go out sometime.

Tiffany, this is why I don’t tell you what I’m worried about. I tell you enough. Just don’t get… umm… discouraged. You see, I have always been there for my kids… when they were behind bars and everything. Like I told your brother [YB] not to take your sister’s car. I told him to make arrangements to get himself a car now that he can drive again. I told him, if I work hard, I can make the sacrifice to get him a vehicle. I will see if I can help you move around. They just take me for granted. And they won’t even hear anything I have say. It’s disrespectful. Believe me when I say when I shut down, I shut down. It’s upsetting, Tiffany, this stuff. Physically I’m not feeling that well.”

An endured silence lingers like a dark mist for 3 very long minutes. I did not make one sound. Only the banging sounds of my little one playing and the shrill laughter of Elmo from an episode of Sesame Street playing on my small bedroom TV could be heard over the speaker of my cordless phone. A cheeky song about family blasts loudly on the TV. “Family is up in a tree! And in the sea!” After the three minute silence, Nmom mumbles almost inaudibly.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on August 11, 2012, 08:28:46 PM: It never ends!

NMom then re-enters her diatribe re-recalling Dad’s recently acquired conversation van. I told him, ‘Why don’t you get me a nice wheelchair if you want to take me somewhere out of the home. Nah, he can’t do that! That van! It’s not something I want! He keeps saying, “Look, we can travel to church conventions! But he really wanted that van for himself! It’s his dream! And when I beg him to take me to make one client visit, he always tells me he has to go somewhere and he walks around watering flowers. But suddenly when I want to do something, he’s gone. He’s not helping with one thin dime! There was a terrible thunderstorm yesterday and he got out and ran to check on your sister or something and left me in here by myself. He didn’t even check on me before he left, he just bolted out of here as soon as the storm started. Who get’s up and runs out at the beginning of a storm?! He must have started on his way and somehow realized he wasn’t going to be able to make it anywhere and he turned around and came back home. When he got back he said, (she imitates him using a saccharine, patronizing tone) “I got up the street a ways and realized I couldn’t leave you here in this storm.” But, Tiffany, what really happened was that a tree fell in the road and he couldn’t pass it. So he came back for his own self! Not for me. I’m sick of people using me, all the time. It’s hindering me. And you know what?!! (stopping abruptly). I’m trying not to talk badly about your father to you. I said I wasn’t going to do that anymore. (disconnecting, again) Everything is alright, is what I always say to myself. (she is talking more to herself than me at this point in the conversation) I’ve been trying to be positive. And to be different than before and to be nice. I’ve been trying for a while now! And nobody would even believe what I put up with… If they keep on treating me like this… I think more and more about it and… Whatever happens to everybody just happens!
Then I have your brother [YB] telling me that I’m so wrong because I make Aunt E stay with him! He doesn’t hear me! I asked him, “What care do you take of Aunt Edith” He says: “Well you have to watch her, she’s always trying to get out. I say, What about the adult latches? He says: She figures them out….(silence again) All right, I guess… So whatever… But whenever they get ready to, they can foreclose on all of the leased properties occupied by [NSis], [YB], and [OB] at once if they want to. Because they are all consolidated on one property tax bill, now. The properties are run down terribly. But no one has any energy. The outside of [NSis’s] house is peeling and needs painting. Dad’s constantly putting his junk on the properties. He is still going to it with junk after junk after junk even sneaking some junk upstairs in my house. I’m starting to have house-itosis (a family word N-mom created that combines the meanings of the words house and halitosis, which means bad breath so in essence, bad house smell). ‘There is no sense in having you live over here!’I tell him. He wanted us to be ‘mums the word’ about our living arrangement so the church doesn’t get wind of the fact that we are not re-married but are living in the same house. But, I invited one of the church ladies to go with us to dinner after church one Sunday and I can tell from talking ith her that the people at the church already know. I’ve been praying asking God. Things that are going on that are wrong with me. Every time it’s time to go to church, I get sick. I get up in the morning and I’m sick all day. I say, Lord, what are you trying to say to me? I woke up a couple of mornings with a message, you have to be careful what you say. That people can speak curses on you. And people can speak curses by talking negatively about you. I’ve been trying, myself to cut back on being negative. Your Dad just speaks it all the time. I try to cut back, but with so many people speaking negative, it’s just a struggle trying to get over that negative talk. I try to get out of it, but I just fall back into it.”

“When I think of Aunt E and consider sending her back to the nursing home, I look at how they are doing this stuff to her and I wonder what are they going to do to me? They don’t even call to check on me. Your Dad sneaks in and out of the house and doesn’t always hear me when I call upstairs for him. [OB] is frustrated with me. Your sister ignores my phone calls. And your younger brother can’t help look after my only surviving family? I’m looking for an angel. I know I’m not perfect. But I sacrifice so much. And no matter what, I want you to finish school. I know whatever you do, it will go well for you… That’s why I’ve sacrificed so much to help you. And I would hope that you would remember that. And when the time comes, I won’t have a problem with living in a nursing home. My conscious is clear. I took care of my aunt and my mother in her last days and my conscious is clear.”

Me: “Have you thought about the possibility that everyone will turn out OK?”

Her: “Well, I know you’ll be OK and [OB] will be OK and Dad will be OK. But I’m really not sure if [NSis] and [YB] would be OK.”

Me: “Have they not told you, themselves that if something happened to you, they would be OK? [YB] said he would get SSI/disability to live in a group home or assistant living environment. [NSis] would start out on government assistance, but will eventually would be able to get a job since she does has her Bachelor’s degree. [OB] would land on his feet, as well.”

Her: after a dramatic silence “Well, maybe I forgot… Maybe it slipped my mind that they told me what they are going to do without me and my help? (Deep melancholic tone overcomes) Umm. Maybe…

At that moment (my baby let’s out a loud, happy shriek characteristic of pre-verbal one year olds. For the first time in the hour-long conversation, Nmom seems to notice her grand-daughter and says): “Is that [the baby’s name]? Well, Tiffany, maybe that’s something I needed to hear. That everyone already said they would be alright if anything happened to me. (long silence) Maybe that’s what I’m going to think about… (slowly) Yeah, you’re right, mumble, mumble. Yeah, I guess your right… (disappointment then silence) You know that can keep me going. That’s a good start. I can do what I need to do. I can’t do anything about it. Well, something’s gotta be done.”

Later that month in a conversation with [OB]:

[OB]: “I really need your help to do the nursing visits. They haven’t been done in 2 months and I am really starting to worry.”

Me: “In 2 weeks the business is in jeopardy of closing, right? Especially if that compliance paperwork isn’t completed, I thought.”

Him: “No, we are compliant. We just have to file a “Ready for site visit” form by Oct. 1. Mom has a lot of fear, anxiety, and control issues, and she will only let me go but so far in the administration of the company. I try to advise, but she does what she wants to do. So we are limited. There’s also some paranoia on her end. I know exactly how the money comes in. But I don’t know always know how it goes out all the time. Our sister has a lot to do with that, but I have no control over how she gives resources to her.”

Me: still wondering why she never mentioned Oct. 1 as the deadline.” Why would she tell me Aug. 1?”

Him: “Maybe she was trying to shock you into realizing how bad the situation really is. She needs your compassion and your empathy, right now. And the nursing visits would be the best way you could help.”

Me: “Why would she tell me she didn’t need me last week when I offered to come, then?”

Him: “I don’t know. But I do know what she needs now. She really needs for us to look out for her mental health as well as her physical health.”

Me: “OK, I’ll be in town later this week to help out…”

That night I toss and turn, not quite sure of what I’m worried about. Something, a tiny little voice deep inside, shouts at me, “Watch out!” The next day I call to NMom’s home to arrange a time to do the visits. Nsister answers cheerfully, but her cheerfulness quickly turns solemn as she, without greeting, hands the phone to my mother, whose initial cheerful mood also quickly changes as she begins to bark verbal orders at what seems to be many people in her bedroom. At a point, she yells, “Find the stuff, somewhere! Look over there, look in my purse, I’m on the phone with Tiffany, right now!”

To me she says: “So yeah, Tiffany, how’s school?”

Me: “Well, I have a big paper due Friday, but I should…” (I was going to say, be there Saturday to do the client visits).

She cuts me off mid-sentence, to yell at someone, “Just hand me my clothes!” She directs towards me: “Your sister is here helping me get my stuff together for the last consult for the bariatric (gastric bypass) surgery.

Me: “Have you had a chance to…” (I was going to say, work on your stuff for the state Medicaid)

Her: again, cutting me off, to yell at the others, “Move!”

Needless to say, we don’t get around to talking about or scheduling the nursing visits that brother so desperately wants me to make. A week later I find out that the bariatric surgeon said no way to the gastric bypass, that he might consider the lap-band, but he first wanted her pulmonary function to be re-assessed to assure she could withstand the anesthesia.

[NMom]: “So, I’ve decided I don’t want either surgery! I’m going to go on a liquid diet and live or keep things the same and die! But I will do the pulmonary function test, just to see what the status of my lungs are and what I can do to make that better.Like you said earlier Tiffany, state Medicaid is really cracking down on agencies, now limiting our weekly hours and requesting more information about caregivers’ income and employment verification and schedules. “I should really consider giving up the business, like you said”

She goes on detailing how she should just consider giving up the business, and focusing on the less-stringent consumer-directed contract and ‘like I said’ run the occasional class to keep the clients staffed and have the coordinator, [OB] do the monthly visits. With all the “like I saids” I was feeling a little suspicious, hearing the little internal voice crying out for me to, “Wait!” Why am I right all of the sudden? No one has ever listened when I portended the changes in the industry that warranted her consideration of her voluntary closing its doors.

But by the next day when she calls me as I am commuting to school for a meeting with my dissertation chair/advisor:

[NMom]: “I feel much better today. I was down yesterday, but I’ve been thinking about it and we can really make this business run. I am going to get serious about this diet, or I’m going to die, just face the facts! But I feel better today! Your brother and I are putting together a form that will make your home visits run smoothly, all the information you need is listed out clearly with directions to the patients’ home.”

Me: At this point, I am completely frustrated with the wishy-washy-ness and I express my real concerns about putting my license at risk by being joined with hers and the potentially fraudulent practices. I say, I want to be clear before I begin meeting clients without her that I am representing myself appropriately in terms of the proper contract status (for example having the proper insurance and bonding required of an independent nurse contractor). I have reservations about being rushed into doing the visits alone without a proper orientation and with clients who if asked later on audit who their nurse was, would most certainly raise a red flag implicating me, the daughter of the owner, whose paperwork is severely lacking.

She fumbled around the subject of my unfounded fears while I sat silently listening. She stumbled from one subject to another dismantling and contradicting the previous statement with the next. Finally, she says, “So you are worried that this could mess up your license, then?”

I once ran one of [NMom’s] offices for 6 years under my name and, with [NMom’s] help, or lack thereof, had it go down in a ball of flames, I’m worried that my name will be the one that goes if some type of investigation of the office takes place while I am on record as the RN. Likely, I would be the fall guy, as I was back in 2006, as was my sister at one time, as is my oldest brother, right now. It’s as if we adult children are there to be the fall guys for her ventures gone wrong.

She then rambles on about how just about anyone could come in a “whip the business back in shape” and it would make enough money to take care of itself.

[NMom]: “I know I told you that things seemed bad, but I feel better today. I think if I did what I needed to do, we could make this business work. Especially if I cracked down on the way the money goes out.”

Me: “Mom, I’ve got a meeting in a few minutes and I need a moment to get my head together for it.”

Her: “Okay well I just want you to know that there is still some value to the business” and she goes on for another 9 minutes.

I tune her out to focus in on a folder full of documents to be presented in my meeting. It doesn’t occur to me at the time to just say, Mom, WTF! I’ve got to go to a meeting! We’ve talked during the entire one hour commute. Just give me two minutes to think before I go into this important meeting!” But I don’t say anything. I just tune her out and pull things together.

Me: “Mom, I’ve got my meeting now. I say with 1 minute till meeting time. I’ll catch up to you later.”

In this moment, it becomes clear to me what I need to do. I decide this is a good time to implement a period of very low/no contact. Let them figure out what to do with the business and her health. At a point after the Memorial Day fall, I tried to make myself available to her to help as she was recuperating. I actually felt bad for her and ashamed of myself for being so aloof in the past. But here I find myself again, sucked into the Nmom-vortex, not quite sure how I got here, but most certainly ready to be free again. Maybe she will leave me be. Maybe she will sense my desire to withdraw and dig her claws in deeper. Whatever the case, I decide if I am going to get through the next set of academic tasks (completing my comprehensive exams, re-submitting a grant proposal to the National Institute of Health, and working on manuscripts for publication) I may need the help of a mental health professional to help me break this dizzying cycle, grasp hold to my sanity, and stop this roller coaster of drama and distraction.
Title: Re: The story of "Tiffany"
Post by: jordanspeeps on January 17, 2015, 03:58:29 PM: Prologue

In a conversation while standing in the parking lot of a nursing home several years back and more recently, when she was first considering putting Aunt E into a nursing home, my mother looked me square in the eyes and said, “If something ever happens to me and I have too many medical needs, you guys do not hesitate to put me in a nursing home and let the professionals take care of me. Just come and see me every once and while and check in on me...

A year of no contact with Nmom has passed… During this period, I completed my comprehensive exams and am in the ABD (all but dissertation) phase of my PhD program. And I write… papers and proposals and the dissertation… in iterations. I am enjoying my two daughters, 11 and 1, and my husband/friend of 14 years. With hubby as stay-at-home Dad and myself only teaching part-time, we are poor but we are happy. And hopefully, we will not be poor for long. At a point during this year of low contact (quarterly telephone check-ins) with my NMom, I hear through various grapevines, (i.e., Younger Brother-[YB], Younger Sister-[NSis], Older Brother [OB], and Dad), that everyone is at a heightened level of stress, on standby status while (currently hospitalized) NMom is experiencing acute bouts of anxiety, refusing to leave the hospital until she gets firm answers regarding her health condition. Fearing her impending death, her anxiety won’t let her resolve to go home; she (a nurse, herself of 30 years) proffers various scenarios for her current symptoms including a possible malignancy in her abdomen, liver problems, perhaps a kidney infection. However, anticipating her discharge from hospital, subsequently rehab, and potentially the nursing home for 24 hour care, the siblings and Dad hold a family meeting about how best to manage her day-to-day care. And for the first time in a year, I feel a tension, a pressure, a force tugging on me, pulling me into her field of gravity. The gravitas of the NMother dying… …and the oldest, daughter (also a nurse) nowhere to be found. For me, questions surround this phenomenon from both outside and within. I cannot confirm this, but I believe that when physicians, nurses, nurse’s aides, family members and visitors from the church ask her about me, Nmom, implies that my life is consumed by my family and my schooling and that it is difficult for me to find time to visit/care for her. To my siblings, it seems as if she puts me on a pedestal, idealizing the pursuit of the doctorate degree (one of which she also has), and being married and in a traditional nuclear family setup. Each of the siblings have personal struggles with their children’s other parent AND/OR their respective significant others. I believe this is largely NMom’s doing as she has never accepted a potential spouse into her fold. My husband knows with whom he is dealing and loves me despite my NMom and how she treats him, though it has not been easy. My siblings, particularly, my Nsister, has some resentment for the way NMom places me on a pedestal, particularly now that I am aspiring to the higher degree. She has no idea, though, that Mom never brags about me to me; that if it weren’t for my siblings resenting me, I wouldn’t know that my mom even thought anything of what I was doing. I cannot get too caught up in what others may be thinking of me. That drives me crazy with guilt and shame. I do think about what I am thinking of me. Internally, I am imagining the conditions surrounding NMom’s death and I am struggling. In my fantasy of her death scenario I wonder... Will I be attentive? Will I want answers? Will I understand that I probably won’t get them? Will she expect round-the-clock care from me? Will she let up on me? Will the family hate me if I fall short of NMom’s expectations? As these thoughts invade, my anxieties step into overdrive, my belly flip-flops and I note the increase in my irritability. Welcome back to NMom’s stratosphere…

My first instinct is to call the therapist that helped me think through things a year earlier, when I was at my wit’s end. Six sessions of thinking through my priorities and life goals. Six sessions during which I see an improvement in most, if not all of my anxiety/panic symptoms. But somehow, before I can sign up for another six sessions, I get a call from [Hometown] and NMom’s gravity pulls me in closer...

“Why won’t they explore those 6,000 cc of fluid I passed when they catheterized me?!” NMom is upset because though she took no diuretic, she mysteriously passed 6 L of urine when she was in the E.R. after a bout of abdominal discomfort.

“I had a young nurse in here yesterday and [Older Brother] was telling him that I was a Nurse Practitioner and she was telling him that that is what she wanted to go to eventually go back to school for, so I gave her an assignment to go look up the word “ascites” on her computer when she got home from work and let me know what she found when she came back in today. She printed out the symptoms and I gave this printout along with a list of my other symptoms to Dr. Majeeb this morning. So he’s getting a scan of my stomach later today. The Dr. didn’t read the info she gave me but I had [her ex-husband, my Dad] sit down and write a letter for me. And I didn’t show it to anybody else and he’s acting upon that. And I’m going to be discharged this evening after the scan.”

Me: “They are going to discharge you?”

NMom: “That’s the plan. I’ll come back to see Dr. Majeeb in a week. But I am still a little weak. [Younger Brother] just called to check on me and [Older Brother] is going down to get us something to eat. Your daddy is over there in the chair sleeping. I was just here reading the information the nurse gave me and I was reading all of the symptoms of ascites. I think that fluid is ascites. ‘They’ were talking about maybe it’s liver damage from all the medicines I’ve been taking. Could be damage to my kidney. And my blood sugar won’t go down, the lowest is 290. I drink a little bit. He just gave me a forkful of eggs and a piece of beef sausage patty and I’m full. And Dave has been eating the food from my tray for me…”

Me: “Aren’t they keeping up with what you eat?”

NMom: “They should be…This young nurse is real concerned and she is working on my behalf. The doctor ordered two more tests before I’m discharged. This is good, right. I’m going to read about all the symptoms I had.

-Weight gain of 24-32 kilos in four days
-Pain in sternum on left side and/or back at night
-Swelling of legs, abdomen
-Wheezing
-Increased shortness breath
-Irregular heartbeat with pounding
-Urinated 7 Liters of clear, whitish fluid
The nurses are focused on my blood pressure. When I urinated, my blood pressure lowered and my stomach got softer without any emergency treatment. I am sending the doctor information for consideration and further testing before leaving today. And I sent him online information on ascites. He didn’t look at that information too much but he knew… and he paid attention to my letter. And he said, it may be my heart…So that’s where I am now.”

Me: “Have you seen your nurse?”

“She came in this morning. She was thinking it might be liver damage with all this medicine. So the test will be a scan looking for fluid in the abdomen and checking my heart to see if it’s weak and something’s going on.That’ll be good enough for me.”

[OB] comes in the hospital room to tell our Dad, “You should go down to the cafeteria. They have grits. Go ahead and eat Dad, you need to keep your strength up. You’re almost 68!”

Mom interjects: “I’m so weak and wobbly.” To me, “You know I was in isolation don’t you? Go ahead downstairs and eat Dave! [OB] wanted to know if you knew. The tests came back and they took me out of isolation. [NSis] came down here to give me a bath yesterday. So many people were here, she didn’t give it to me but I managed.”

[OB] mumbles something I cannot hear, but NMom does. She chuckles. “[OB] you didn’t have to say that. Then to me she says, “I feel weak , but I feel better. This morning I had a 1000 cc’s out and I don’t feel my bladder, it can’t tell me I’m full.”

[OB]: “It can’t?”

Mom: “No, it can’t.”

[OB]: “Mom, I got to go to work…”

Mom to me: “Well, how are you doing?”

[OB]: “Mom, I got to go to work…”

Mom: “Huh, well we need to pay the quarterly taxes. I’ll pay that when I get home (from the hospital). Will the girl be there when I get home? To [OB]: How much money do you owe her? I thought you paid her Friday and gave her $10 extra. Well then that’s a red flag isn’t it. Don’t call her back. She’s desperate. She came on to [OB]. You gave her money $100 on F. So she’s already in your pocket! So call her up and tell her we’ll call her. And find me somebody. I’m not going to lay in that house, even over the weekend without having a female. I want Pioneer and I want her to get paid like a nurse’s aide. Okay, [Tiff],. I don’t need to hold you up…”

Me: “So what’s your next move?”

Mom: “I’m going to go home and regroup and take a sabbatical and get somebody who can help me get on my feet and get to these doctor’s appointments and stay at home and decide what I want to eat and don’t worry about going out to do this and going out to do that. When I was sick I was confused and couldn’t focus. This oxygen, cirrhosis, pancreatic ascites, they can’t deal…”

[OB] speaks up suddenly talking about work issues. You’ve got a call from [receptionist] saying that someone can’t go to work or something.

Mom: I just want to go home and get in the bed, (more weakly than before)

[OB]: So, don’t worry about that, alright?

Mom: Yeah, so I had that fluid so I couldn’t urinate right, I just couldn’t get that fluid off me. The liver may be… weight gain, swollen ankles. Umm-hmm yep, I had all those symptoms. A couple of times I got cramps in my leg. And I asked about the potassium and they gave it to me for the first time yesterday.

Me: “Well the blood tests they ordered will tell you what you want to know about the fluid balance. When do they say the tests will be back?

Mom: The nurse says I won’t be discharged until the tests are done. So discharge is on hold right now. I’m OK

I begin to tell her that I will check on her later when she offers: “Oh, I knew you were busy. Wow! Wow! Wow! I’m just hoping and praying for you. Don’t feel obligated to be here with me… This is very important to me. For you and family to move on and reach your dream. I’m so proud that you stuck with something in spite of…I tell you you’ve got a dream. You’ve just got to go for it one piece at a time. You’ve just got to work for it. It was a good feeling when I got my degree in both places but in the back of my mind I always wanted my Bachelors and my Doctorate degrees in nursing. It seemed impossible. For a lot of people that seemed smarter than you were, it comes easy to them. But there is something wrong with their brain. It takes a special kind of person to be an entrepreneur. There’s something special about them. People say how did YOU make this business work? And the entrepreneur says, I don’t know! I just work hard . It’s something special, they just strive and push their way.

When I got my doctorate, professionals came to eat dinner with us and they asked if we had questions and I asked how do you deal with people who haven’t sacrificed like you have (to earn a doctorate a ministry)? And he said when you both sit on the pulpit the way you carry yourself everyone is going to know it and you’ll be so proud of what you’ve been through so you won’t be cocky and it won’t be because of your strength but because of what God took you through. I don’t have much to give you, but I can encourage you with these words. But the Lord is going to let you have it earlier (in life) because you know m-more. You’re supposed to let ‘em fly. Let ‘em go. Let ‘em do everything that they think they can do. And that’s what you are doing? I don’t care if things aren’t going right. I don’t want you to stop pursuing your degree. We can communicate and pray and let God take us through. Even Jeremiah… When you feeling like you can’t share no more and you don’t know what to do but you… I know you’ve got this nervous condition. This type A personality. You get things to go your way. You’ve got that stomach condition and it works on your nerves. But I pray that you hold on. And you will. And you will. (The words seem encouraging; however, I cannot help but hear disappointment in her voice). I keep thinking about that computer I want to get you. I just… kinda… It’s moments like this. I think I should do something special for you.

Me: No, you don’t have to do anything for me. If anything I owe you for helping me out with some money to pay a bill recently. I appreciate what you have done for me and my family

Her: No, you are spiritual enough to know that it is the ENEMY [Satan], not the person that is trying to get you. And you know that God wants you to forgive and for you to keep on going and to trust and rely on God and realize it’s not the person, but the ENEMY that’s against you.

I had that brain. And God let me know that that was a camouflage and God showed me that that was a healing. And she goes on about her miracle healing taking place in the lungs. And then she began to reconcile how the doctor looked at the lungs but decided that he needed to order to tests for my heart and abdomen. SO I believe it’s in God’s plan. It’s kinda hard getting around to what you need. But he’s supplying your needs SO we are supposed to keep going around. The Lord loves you and he’s with you. Your Holy Ghost is still there. And if you are not doing what you are looking to do, He has you going where He want’s you to be. Look who he took, Jesus, but at 33 he began to minister. He was an ordinary person moving around, nothing spectacular, just a good boy a good man, getting ready to mature. But all the time God was talking to him. Getting him ready. That’s what God is doing for you. He’s getting you ready. You still gotta go through your problems. And the way you handle it puts a smile on his face. Your acting like your heart is. You have a good heart. The more you do that. The more he will fight your battle. You’re a good girl. You’ve always had a good heart. You have a tender heart too. You’ve gotta protect yourself. If I could help…

Me: I appreciate the words. I’m trying to keep it together

Mom: It will be the happiest moment for me. For you to walk in and show me that degree. Don’t worry about me. You have a supportive family and I think he gave me more care, more attention with the rest of the family. And [Dad] has been sticking with me. And I’ve got you working hard over there and if you need money for tuition. Just make your way down here and I can always squeeze something out.

Two weeks later (August, 8), another hospitalization I don’t go to visit her because I am taking comps, and afterwards am sharing a vehicle with my husband, a vehicle that minutes before indicated to him a check engine light.

On this hospitalization, she has 4 CT scans. Then, I go back on no contact for four months. By December of that year (2011) I find myself having a family meeting with the entire family including all siblings and Dad:

Dad: She does not want the nursing home! She wants to stay in the house and have the family and caregivers provide 24-hour round-the-clock care. She speaks of being at odds with herself about wanting us to have our independence, her having hers, and feeling like a burden or a worry to us.

In the family business, she doesn’t want to deal with the day-to-day problems being brought to her and having to worry about her employees and childrens’ income issues.

When someone is with her in her house, which helps in her anxiety about being alone, she complains about the lack of quality time spent with the person. Perhaps they don’t engage with her enough. Or they spend too much time talking about their own lives. She is also feeling some pride about exposing herself to the men. And she cannot afford a home aide full time.

So from this dilemma, Plan B was hatched by [OB]: ‘The Aunt E Plan’ of long-term health care with some considerations: [OB] will arrive for early morning setup on most days. Let Aunt E’s Medicaid caregiver cover the daytime hours for the both of them and bring E’s retirement income into Mom’s house, splitting it between [NSis’s daughter], and the expenses for the house in which NSis lives.

[OB]: The house would need to be re-arranged. [The current housekeeper/cook]-needs to be let go. She has a problem coming in close contact with Mom’s bodily fluids or her medical equipment and supplies. And Mom only eats sandwiches, so she doesn’t need a cook…

We could get a personal care aide to do the catheter care and to change the dressings and to do the stuff that would burn out the family members.

I hear myself say: “I may be able to come four to six hours each week to provide some respite to her usual caregiver.” I hear myself say this despite my very low income, my car being on its last legs, and myself being in a final, intense push to graduate in May. I add: “I’ll check her vitals, do some catheter care, and other nursing stuff and stress/mental health support. Mom said something about paying her personal bills but I suppose [OB] would handle that.”

The elephant in the room is NSis considered a lost cause. [OB] thinks she should stay at where she is and let her figure out childcare when she has to go to take care of Mom. [NSis’s daughter] was also being incentivized to cover a few hours with Mom with a few dollars a week.

It is also decided (by NMom and [OB]) that [YB] move in with NMom to help monitor her and keep her company. [OB] will teach [YB] his daily process with Mom and the importance of spending the time with her and doing things that are needed quickly. But importantly, sitting with her for a little while will make the quality of the time with NMom better and should be done before running off to do other things.

I mention to [OB] to let our mother know that [YB] needs his "[YB]-time" and that sometimes he needs to get in the van and get out.