Gut Punches

This past few months, I have been angry... oh, so angry...
My mother struggled with mental health issues for a very long time. She faked a brain tumor, claimed to have been born with only one kidney, and then told us she was diagnosed with bi-lateral (both sides) kidney disease.
When the doctor suggested that "SOMEDAY in the future" she may need a pacemaker, and it may need to become part of her plans, she asked how she would know to let him know that time had come. Within a year, she had reported any and all of the symptoms he mentioned.. When he did the ablation on her heart and put in the pacemaker, she put herself at a point of no return, because he essentially killed her heart. From that point forward, every beat of her heart was artificial. Her pacemaker didn't "kick in" when her heart stopped like others who have a pacemaker.. her pacemaker worked 100% of the time...
Fast forward to 2014 when she was diagnosed, as was I, with diverticulitis. If you don't know about this disease, I promise you, you are blessed. It is PAINFUL.. it stops you without warning, whenever it chooses to do so. Some people who have it can't eat nuts.. some can't eat anything with a "hull" like peas, corn, etc. My personal trigger is popcorn.. and, of course, it is my favorite food on the planet! Mom's was never narrowed.
She struggled with this. It stopped her, as it does all who have it. She could not handle pain, at all. So, she sought a solution. 10 doctors told her she could have a colon dissection and resection, with a temporary colostomy, IF she were healthy otherwise.. my mom was NOT.. at the time she was diagnosed, she had diabetes, a pacemaker, liver disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, was 125lbs overweight, had just lost her gall bladder, had secondary diseases brought on by the diabetes, joint disease and she had the mental health issues she had always had... so, these same docs who told her what would make her better told her they would NOT recommend surgery.. she simply may not live through the surgery. ALL of them told her to lose some weight, which would help almost all of her health problems, but most notably the diverticulitis...the theory is that if you aren't so overweight, the colon has more room, is not compressed and things can "move" through more easily.. Diverticulum occur when seeds, nuts, hulls, etc get caught in the colon and inflame the tissues, causing heat and pain until they move out.. sometimes the diverticulum form pouches and the colon has to be dissected at the point of the pouch, then later, after recovery, it will be rejoined and you can go back to a normal life. That was my mother's plan and hope.. however, the doctors told her it was unlikely...
Until she went to a surgeon who told her he felt she may be able to have the surgery, if it came down to it.. so, of course, with her need for attention and her "luck" so far with doing these things, she began to research and figure out what to say to the doctor in order to have the surgery she had now set her mind to.
In 2015, she was in the hospital 6 times for treatment of diverticulitis, but every time she went, the doctors said her symptoms didnt match the test results. I told them what I thought she was doing.. researching,telling everyone what they needed to hear in order to get the surgery she was convinced she needed and wanted. One doctor found that she had enough symptoms that he would do the surgery.. December 11 was her day.Unable to wait, Mom did more research. A week prior to her scheduled surgery, she went to ER again. The doctor there told her "perhaps Dr. ___ sees something I don't, but I see NO NEED for this extensive surgery and my fear is that you will have it  and it will not be reversible and you will either NOT recover or you will have such a hard time, you will spend MONTHS in the hospital, only to find your issue isn't over and you have had no results."
I begged her not to have this surgery. I asked her not to overstate her symptoms. But, her mind was made up, the plan was set, and she WAS going to have this surgery. And,she did except she had to have it on the scheduled date of Dec 11. and things were very different than we had been told they would be..
Several days went by and she was told her surgery would NOT be reversible for many reasons
1) The person who marked my mother for her colostomy marked her incorrectly, which meant she would be unable to change her bag and care for herself, making her reliant upon home health care for the remainder of her life, once she healed enough to be home
2) The stoma formed as an "innie" rather than an "outie" meaning the traditional bags would never work for her
3) She developed an infection and had to have all her surgical wounds reopened. She would now have an 8" round wound which opened to her insides.. you could see everything if you looked..
4) She now realized she had done irreversible harm to her body and she gave up
5) This same doctor put her in a rehab facility and didn't bother to send any orders on how to care for her, so she laid there for 10 days with no medical care, in tremendous pain, until I went to the the doc and demanded they re admit her, and make her better!
Mom went back to the hospital, stayed there for several weeks and she never got better. Insurance sent her home. She stayed for about 10 days. She developed a small bowel obstruction and it never ended. No attempts to open her up and repair it, no attempts to find out what it was, she just laid there... for four long weeks.
On Monday, April 25, I visited her and she was non responsive, but I was assured by the nurses that she was simply "medicated".. and boy, was she.. Adavan, Morphine, Dilauded and Zofran/phenergan combo were ALL given within the same 2 hour time frame... Mom never recovered..
within 12 hours she was in the Trauma Surgical ICU.. she couldn't breathe, was diagnosed with respiratory failure and she woke up only long enough for the doctor to tell her "I can't make you any better. Do you want any ventilators ("no"), any CPR (no), shock (no), heroic measures (no)
She spent almost a day barely talking, then had a set back where she was non responsive. On Friday, we were told she would never come back to us and I made the decision as her "Appointed Next of Kin" to move her to palliative care. She lasted 12 hours. I was with her when the angels came. I watched that last breath. I held her hand, told her secrets I had never shared, told her it was okay to go to Heaven and be with my dad, her loved ones, etc.
For a week, I held my breath.. I didn't want to know when the cremation she had paid for was happening. My  brother had left the hospital when they came for her body and I havent heard from him since. I found out there was a hold up on her death certificate. I took care of that. I now wait to hear I can bury her ashes. ..
I am mad.. at her for doing this.. at my brother for lying and telling me she didn't want to see me for 12 days after her surgery and for TEXTING me that they had found cancer.. at the doc for not only messing her up but for doing nothing to fix her. At me, for not making her see what she was doing..
Through it all, I grew closer to God. I knew that my mother's death would hurt, but with all the pain of her mistreatment through the years, the fact that she left me to deal with people who won't work with me on her estate, that she lied about paying for her funeral, that she changed her will over and over until we keep finding new ones... but I never knew I would MISS her. I really had prepared myself to be angry, to hate, and to need forgiveness for the hatred.. but not for the LOSS..
God has revealed to me a new plan for my life. I am now looking into Ordination, am writing new songs for a new project, have taken on a new job in a new Church, and am keeping busy.. but I HURT, in ways I never imagined. I ache for an argument with her because that was the norm.
I beg for the docs to call and say it was a mistake and they can fix her..

Pain and Healing (sort of)

8 weeks and one day ago, my mother died. While I haven't had all the grieving, crying, sad times I hear you have when you lose your mom, I have changed, and I have mourned, just not in the all consuming way I did when I lost my dad. I have no living parents, grandparents, my only sibling and I never see or talk to each other and although I have felt like I was alone for almost my whole life, it is now that it is official. I am an adult "orphan" (for lack of a better word)... and I'm never going to have the family I wanted.. it's over... and I am so sad about that...I am sad that she didn't have her brother she longed to see by her side when she died. I am sad that my brother wasn't there, either, by choice. I am sad that the minute the mortuary came to claim her body, 3 of the seven adult family members I had in close proximity to me walked away and I haven't heard from them again... my step father, my brother and my only living uncle on my mother's side. NOTHING happened that caused this, no harsh words, etc.. they just didnt' want to go through it, so they didn't. I buried her alone, not at all what she expected... or wanted.I am sad that her death certificate was held up and that she laid in a mortuary cooler , her pacemaker still beating, for eight days, unitl I FINALLY fought hard enough to get it done. I am sad that her grave was dug in the wrong plot and she would have been buried in a plot belonging to another family had I chosen the path my brother and step father and uncle chose.. and no one would ever have known...
I am sad that all those she held in such high esteem abandoned her, and that I, the daugher she never wanted and never could quite care for, was all she had in the end. I believe it was ordained, however, because I did what I would have wanted her to do for me. I fought for her to be buried corrrectly and in the way she asked, where she asked under the circumstances she chose to utilize..

I am redefining who I am, now that I am not "Neva and Carl's daughter", etc.

While doing so, I am finding that my OCD is lessening. I no longer feel that I have to be PERFECT, a goal I could NEVER achieve. I could, however, keep the CLEANEST house, fix the most ELABORATE meals and have all the "go-to" answers for how to get a stain out of this or that, and THAT? That got me some level of approval. For a brief moment, I was enough! Which was so much more than I had ever been before.

I realized that where nature and beauty had failed me, I could make my surroundings perfect and I was no longer just "taking up breath and space" (a phrase I heard all too often as I grew up) but I was suddenly the person who cooked Thanksgiving and Christmas Dinners, and everyone loved the food, bragged on it. (I just realized that one person always said, "My favorite thing is that you do it all. You plan the event, buy for it, clean for it, cook for it, wait on us, send us home with wonderful left overs and then you clean it up when we leave, so it's clean when we come back"... you would think I would have seen what was going on right then, but I didn't! I thought it was high praise and for 19 years, I did it ALL, every holiday, every family gathering, making allowances for first this weight loss method one was on, then this diet for heart, this one for diabetes, etc.. no one ever noticed that I seldom sat with the family and ate. I was in the kitchen, cleaning, so they could enjoy it. But, for a day or two a year, I was a part of things, NOT the outsider... and I thought it was worth the trade off.

So, now that all those people I tried to win over are gone, who am I? What defines me?

Lately, I have tried to figure it out and THAT is what I am grieving. I don't know who I am now anymore than I did when I created this version of myself. What I want to be when I grow up has never been anything I got to figure out. Life just happened to me.

So, I have turned to my Bible and prayer.. I have studied and prayed, studied and prayed and I have gotten some answers, but I stlll haven't found what my new normal will be.

I know a few things about the new norm..

This Christmas season, I won't have to worry whether my mother will come to dinner and if she does, will she leave before it is served? Will she tell me she hates me, or will she tell me the room is too cold.. what will the excuse be for her coming, making a scene and then leaving?But, as sad and angry as this makes me,I will miss that, and I don't know how to make you guys understand it, but that was my normal, and I will mourn the passing of the way I spent the holidays...and, just like the day I heard there really wasn't a santa, I now know I can't go back and get another chance to have it.. my chances died...

Today, I was told, in anger, that I am just like my mother. I was called a bully and some other words,by someone who claims to love me, and then they said, "You are JUST LIKE YOUR MOTHER- she's not gone, she just took over your body!"... BROKE MY HEART IN WAYS I CANNOT DESCRIBE TO YOU!!!!!

No, I'm not. I don't hate my mother, but I hated the way she made me feel about myself, and I did EVERYTHING I could to treat my children so that they never thought they weren't "enough". I never say no when my grandbabies want to be with me, no matter how tired i am, (although no one ever asks me if I am tired), no matter the plans I may have made that I change to make them happy, because my kids went through being invited, then at the last minute, if another option popped up, their visit was cancelled and I had broken hearted little girls on my hands.

I've never told my children they were hated or that I couldn't love them.I've never told them they were mistakes, or that I wish I had aborted them. I try to anticipate their needs when it seems they are struggling, so I can help them, because I was told, "I didn't tell you to get married and I will not help you in any way. You chose this situation, live with it"

I have never told the girls that they can't come home, (although I pray their lives take them places where that isn't an option they have to explore), because I stayed in an abusive house just because I was told "once you leave, this is not home to you anymore... you cant' come back, so make sure you know what you are doing when you leave".

I have never told them, "You'd better marry the first idiot who asks, because I promise you there wont' be two dumb enough to ask that question" Instead, I told them to never settle, to only be with someone who helped them be themselves, who lifted them up, who made them feel good about themselves, because they DESERVE that!

I AM VERY MUCH like my mother in many ways. I am an open book. If you hear I said something, ask me.You may not like the answer, but I'll tell you the truth. I may not like having to admit it, but I will tell you the truth. I dont knowingly force my opinions on others (although I am sure I have done so) but if you ask my opinion, I'm all too ready to give it, and I warn you that you may not like it.

I would NEVER, NEVER slap a child in the face... happened to me any time I asked "why" to ANYTHING. And if I said "I can't..." oh, boy, it was much worse.

I am glaringly different from her in many ways. I value honesty in a way that is almost maniacal. I had to keep many secrets as a child and I refuse to do so, now. I kept secrets as a young girl who was abused in many ways, and as a new wife who was being abused and cheated on from the get go. Once I told my truth, I stopped carrying those things in my heart and I moved on. My mother had her reasons, I suppose, but after she died, I found out a large part of what I had always believed to be my truth wasn't. She told us her funeral was paid for... nope.. had to pay. She told us there was a will.. there was.. in fact, there were several, but because she encumbered her property, nohting can be distributed, but must be sold to pay the debt. She told us she had life insurance, and even showed us the poicy, but got mad at this one or that one, and cancelled them. She would put me on as power of attorney for her Medical issues, then get mad at me and tell the nursed not to let me come into her room. She had a living will and changed it, then changed it again and again, to the point that there was a living will made two days before she became incapacitated and it was just like the original.. I ended up being the one who made the decisions, and I was alone with her when she took her last breath because everyone else realized there was nothing to get, so they left. I never wanted anything but her love, so I stayed to see if I finally got that... in the end, I got one tear when I told her something I had never told her about.

So, I value honesty even more now than before.

I am different from her in the way I think.. If I want to do something, my first thought is, "How will this affect my kids? My husband? " and I don't do it if they don't benefit, even if I would. My mother didn't care who it hurt.. if she wanted it, she got it! No matter the cost or the consequence..

I don't look at myself and think of anyone wanting me in "that way", although I am certain there are men out there who want to be with a woman of my size (I'm not as big as those reality show women, but i am not a size 10 either) . My mother, on the other hand, thought that everyone who spoke to her was lusting after her and it made for many uncomfortable situations thoughout my life. I had boys who wouldn't come to my house to pick me up because she made them feel uncomfortable.

So, I'm not like her in that respect. In fact, I've had friends and family say, "He was coming on to you" and I never knew it! I was trained to think I am ugly and stupid and I never got over that idea, I suppose.

I told my mother I had been raped. She laughed. She said "A woman who doesn't want to be raped, can't be" and that was that. I told her it was a boy I dated. She laughed again. Two weeks later, she came to my house to tell me she had seen my rapist at the home of a friend and had danced with him at the party they were having... I would want to hurt anyone who hurt my girls!

I told my mother I was abused by my husband and was told "oh, well. You've always had that effect. People just naturally want to hit you.. you do that to people, Anita, and I don't think you even know it"

So, no.. I am NOT like her and she is NOT living in me..

We ARE alike in this way.. my mother said she had professed a belief in Jesus Christ before she died. I never got an apology or an explanation for the way I was treated, and she dind't change completely.. but I did see a change that I know only God can make.

So, we are identical in one way. We both will live in eternity with Him. I know that when I get there, she will love me. In that perfect and heavenly way, I will finally know what a mother's love feels like. The beauty of the whole thing is that she changed moments before her death.. I get to live for HIm from the day I was saved in 1985 until He calls me home. I pray you get a blessing from this

I was not trashing my mom, I was trying to show how the most awful of circumstances can turn into a blessing. Mom wasn't capable of loving me here, for whatever the reason. But she will love me there! And I look forward to that!