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Passage Into Paradise - A Caregiver's Journey - PART TWO - Page 5

© Karen Largent

And I am very grateful to her now for what she has provided for me over the years - Yet she has also been the recipient of care without hassles, protection and custodial help without confinement to rules. So we traded off: maybe not out of LOVE, but from NEED? That's probably not the ideal way to be, but she could have been much worse as a parent. She gave me shelter, a sense of protection, fed me, washed my clothes and wiped my butt. She offered custodial care, like a foster home - but without emotional openness. Today, I actually return in like kind - I do FOR her, but not WITH her. She does not know of the price I have paid to care for her needs, nor does it even cross her mind. Just like I was with her when I was the child --Care was expected, sometimes demanded - rarely appreciated. So she is my child now, and although I did feel a great surge of love and a great deal of pain on her behalf during these last 18 months, I do sense a change inside me lately. I still care FOR her and ABOUT her - but I no longer feel it WITH her. I was isolated with my mother and dying too - Now I am beginning to see the sun again and make plans for living in this world.

Mom didn't die when her own mother did - In fact, she started living again before her mother died - She got married and then had me - So her life went on. And from what I remember, for the most part, she did exactly as she pleased and enjoyed her many days. She played music, stayed home, went to dances, married again, made many friends and laughed a lot. She didn't die without her mother - Actually, I believe this was when she truly came to life and into her own. Maybe I will be so fortunate! It is not that I won't miss her when she's gone - The sad thing is that I miss her ALREADY, even while she still remains!

June 30, 1994

I am hopelessly screwed up and acutely aware of it. I have vivid nightmares that started a few days ago about Mom, and she's doing very well these past 6 months! I wake up hearing her screaming loudly, hysterically - I see her standing at the foot of my bed, asking who I am and where she is. I see her in her own bed, gasping for air, clutching me, turning first blue, then totally black - and finally the ABSOLUTE worst nightmare, one I have never even conjured up in my daytime fears, is of her throwing up pure blood, over and over, until she violently hemorrages to death. Her eyes are wide and she is totally aware of everything and I can't do anything! These nightmares repeat themselves in specific order, at least every other night - so I get very little sleep now. I have no appetite either, since the images are forever in front of me, waking or sleeping! I feel I have absolutely no control over my mother's or my own, health, life or destiny! Some days I find myself with very harsh images of a God who just dropped us off on earth and only gets involved when His OWN image is at stake. I don't know what the truth is anymore - Mom seems better and I am deteriorating! Maybe this is a delayed reaction to the year long hell I watched which she can't remember. I am afraid I will never be right again and I feel I am walking through this tunnel alone!

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