Moms just as sick as dad....

I spent a couple of days with mom.  Mainly helped with dad, he's really bad.  Hard to believe he's still here to be honest.  Shocking to see him, my daughter saw him while she was visiting and said he did not look alive.  She is right, its an awful process, being in hospice, and dying.

I dropped mom off at the doctor, and while she was gone dads hospice nurse came.  I was glad to get a chance to talk to her.  There were some questions she wanted answered which she asked in a very proper way.  Once I explained, she understood and things made sense now,  she said.

She was looking at the pictures on the wall,  my wedding picture.  She said oh maybe you look like your dad?  I said no, actually I was adopted.  She said, "Oh, your the adopted one."   I said yes, I am.  Which means my mom is up to her old tricks and telling I was adopted again.  I was surprised when I met the lady she hired to watch dad while she's gone.  Mom made a comment like oh yeah, she's the adopted one, I love her even if I didn't give birth to her.  Made this big fuss.  For once I had nothing to say!  hahaha!  She's never told people I was adopted.  I did not understand why now?

So I figured out why now while at moms house last week.  The hospice nurse told me some things that mom had told her, that were not true.  Lies.  Things that she should not be lying about.  The nurse said oh your mom loves you.  And she elaborated on this, saying how mom talks about us, and our family, as though we lived in a house filled with love.  Mom has painted a picture of a perfect life she has lived with her husband, my dad.  The nurse said how lucky I was, oh LORD I thought.  LUCKY? What does that mean anyhow, lucky?     Luck means "good fortune; advantage or success, considered as the result of chance."  

I paused for a moment, and I said to the nurse, "Yes, I'd like to be able to say and mean what you just said to me.  I'd like to feel that mom loves me, and mean it."  I told her that I was working hard, at being able to see this, to feel it and believe it.  I realized last week, it may never happen.  I may never be able to have those feelings.  I cannot think of a feeling I'd rather have, and I will continue to dig deep to be able to say the words, and believe them.  What I saw of mom last week was her pretending, and lying to the nurse and after speaking with her sister I realized she's lying to her, about everything.

I really believe when the nurse or other strangers come to the house, she paints this picture of her life, that is not real.  Maybe it makes her reality easier?   Maybe it brings her happiness to pretend her life has been happy?  Her sister told me that she asked mom what she thought she did in her life that led her down this road, to be so unhappy for so many years and to suffer this way?  What did you do wrong in your life?  Mom had no answer.   The worst part is, mom tells these people that visit that she has so many friends.  She has people she sees when she goes to church and goes to her exercise class twice a week.   She sees this lady while in church, does nothing with her afterwards or speak to her other times, just while sitting in the pew.  And she talks to people at the class she takes.  Thats it.  She has painted a picture of having friends she see's and is active with.  Makes me sad to think that she has to make these things up, and to paint a picture of a happy life that does not and has not ever existed.

Moms entire life has been make believe.  She has lived alone, and unhappy.  Yet she defends her position, and refuses to make any changes even now, when my dad is laying in bed 23.5 hours per day, unable to see or do anything.  She refused to move a box of lightbulbs to a place she didn't have to use a ladder to get, because she would not move anything my dad has in the house, or throw away anything of his.  She locks the house up like we are living in a maximum security prison, bars on the windows and she still locks the dead bolt around 7pm, locking us inside as dad has done 30 years.   My moms mental illness is like my dads, she IS mentally ill.  This is something I have grown to realize in the past year.  She is just as much to blame for the abuse and neglect I endured as he is.  She is his partner in crime, so to speak.  This is going to require a lot of review in my head.  

Mom is a sick lady, she is not mentally well.  How will I process this now that I am certain that she is as much to blame, if not more to blame for years of abuse?  The times I thought it was just dad, turns out to be that mom was in the drivers seat.