I guess I should add just a little back story here.
My family is not very supportive in much of anything I have done or do in my life.
My father died about 24 years ago, but we wern't ever really that close. I always felt like I was a huge disappointment to him. I was never terribly athletic (my older brothers were football stars in hs) I was never the greatest in school. I mean I did ok, I was just an average student. But when you come from a family of over-acheivers well, it is sort of expected that you will be too. I wasn't.
Anyway, I have two much older brothers (10 and 12 years older than me) and never really got to know them. By the time I was old enough to know much of anything, they were leaving home for college. I always felt like an only child, only this only child had 2 siblings who set the bar pretty high, a bar I just never could quite live up to.
When I was younger, my paternal grandmother came to live in our town so that my parents could help care for her. She was fairly healthy, just morbidly obese. Her mind was as sharp as a tack though. I used to love to go over and talk to her. She could tell a story with the best of them. She once confided in me that she always knew that my oldest brother was the favorite child for my parents. So she tried to make up for that with my other brother by having him come and stay for summers - my grandmother and grandfather lived on a horse ranch.
There was never anyone for me though. I think that my maternal grandfather was pretty smitten with me, according to what some of my aunts said, but he died when I was 3. So I lived in the shadow of my older brothers never quite fitting in.
I remember how intimidating my father was to me. He used to call me things like clod, and idgit (short for idiot). I remember I once asked him for help with my math, I handed him my homework and my hands were trembling a bit. Of course he had to make a big production about it and then proceed to tell me how mathematically adept my brothers were, and why couldn't I be like them?
When I was 7, I went to kiss my father good night, he stuck out his hand and said "why don't we just shake hands from now on." My heart broke a little bit that night.
There are oh so many more memories I have that just shatter my heart when I think about them.
I was a good kid. Lots of adults used to tell my parents how they wished their kids were so quiet and sweet like me. It just wasn't enough for them.
So fast forward to adulthood. Shortly after my father died, my middle brother decided our family was not a good fit for he and his wife. I havn't spoken to them in about 22 years. I am not sure to this day what it was I did.
I stayed in our home town for many years after my father died to take care of my mother and help her out. She was a 60 something year old widow. As my mother got a bit older, she started having temper tantrums and whatever it was that she was mad at, she would somehow turn it on to me. There would be months go by that she would not talk to me and I would have no idea what I did. Then all of a sudden, one day out of the blue she would call me and say "Ok I am not mad at you anymore, we can talk."
About 7 years ago, my husband and I (I was widowed in 2004 and remarried in 2006) got a job offer that was going to take us to Florida from Arizona. We took a trip to California where my older brother lived to tell him, so he would pick up the slack and maybe someday convince her to move over to be with him.
Ultimately that is exactly what happened.
A few months ago, my brother contacted me. Our mothers health was failing fast. So my kids (her grandkids- all adults now) and I jumped on a plane and flew out to say what might be our last goodbye to her. I arrived first, she seemed happy to see me.
The next day my kids arrived. I brought them to the house and she dissolved into an emotional mess. She even felt the need to point out to everyone how she didn't even cry when she saw me. Yeah mom I noticed that.
Sadly the next day she had a heart attack and we rushed her to the hospital. Well, I rushed her. Everyone else stayed at the house to await word on what was going on. I sat with her all day, through tests, doctors, nurses, questions, more tests, results from said tests. Yes it was a heart attack. She would be admitted so that they could make sure she was going to be ok.
Finally, everyone started showing up around 7pm. I was exhausted, stressed and afraid. I also started noticing my memory was not doing well...but that is for another post.
Over the course of the next 5 days and the remainder of our visit, she spent it in the hospital. The day she was to be released, the day before we were returning to Georgia....she had a stroke. She couldn't come home.
I went back to my brother's house that night and cleaned her whole house for her, she lives in a mother-in-law apt. We said our goodbyes to my brother and sister-in-law the next morning and stopped at the hospital to say good-by to her. She was down getting a CT of her brain. We had a plane to catch. No goodbyes were said. I don't think she really cared anyway.
That was about 6 weeks ago. I haven't heard a thing from her. No thank you for taking me to the hospital, for dealing with the doctors, for sitting with her all day everyday in the hospital, for cleaning her house. Nothing.
Now I am so overwhelmed and feel so all alone dealing with this awful disease of mine. Sometimes I just want my mom to hold me and tell me it will be okay. But she was never one to do that anyway.
I just feel like a scared little girl with no one to turn to for comfort.
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