I can remember admiring my father for one thing. He was an interesting man in many ways. He could sell hot air to people in Hell. He knew more about American history than any historian I ever knew. He had the worst case of denial I've ever encountered, BUT he also took loving care of his elderly father-in-law. I was too young, too overwhelmed with family and a new baby, and too far away to really help or understand the need for help. But my dad lived close and had a tender enough heart to ensure that my grandfather, a gentle and wounded soul, got meals, bathed, and even sat and cut his toenails. He did this for several years devotedly and I admired him for that kindness.

Here I am in a rather similar situation. I'm a primary caretaker for someone that truly needs me and is my former mother-in-law. It can be an overwhelming task. It can be humorous. It can be rewarding. It can feel hollow and pointless. At any one minute of any day, my thoughts and feelings can fluctuate from one extreme to another.

Caring for her makes me look into my own future. I see how decisions she made years ago and in the present, limit her life and quality of life right now. I can certainly see how decisions I am making today make a difference in my life and it's future. I'm uncertain how exactly to address the issues that are my own, and maybe I can't emotionally take on the stress necessarily right at this moment, but it's something I need to face up to and deal with. I see how not dealing with her own issues, is definitely lowering the quality and longevity of Betty's life. I don't want to in-turn become dependant and unhealthy and unable to have decent quality of life, because of the decisions I fail to make, or things I choose not to do today. I'm not sure how to change. I'm not sure what to do exactly. But not making a decision is deciding. Apathy is no longer a choice. I'm just not sure how to move toward healthier options.

I'm off to go look at a house. But first I have to feed, medicate and wake Betty. Excitement and dread all in one package today.

I found the film. I had it developed. There was a loss. A special event and some Christmas pictures were lost. BUT, in the scheme of things, something special got found. The roll ended up being a double exposure. I'm figuring that it was first exposed about six years ago. In there were pictures that, though damaged, were still worth keeping. Pictures of my dad when he was healthy and enjoying life. He's been dead two years now. Pictures of my lovely daughter in college, with long hair and and her gaggle of friends when they were still in their late teens and maybe twenty. I regret the loss of the second picture set. I treasure the finding of a piece of the past that I didn't know I had!

The other part of things for today was a visit to the doctor with Betty. Jenny was able to candidly talk with him about longevity estimates for Betty. He gave her three to twenty-four months, depending on the number of times she ends up in the hospital. He encouraged us to make the effort to move her to a new place that would be more convenient for us. He felt that if OUR quality of life was higher, her's would be too. Jenny, Eric and I are going to go look at a house on Saturday that has some potential. Betty is beginning to feel some excitement about moving. She said today to just tell her where we were taking her so she could throw an extra pair of panties in her purse on the way out the door. It helped me emotionally to know that she has made the shift in her mind to know that moving is OK. She also signed a medical power of attorney and a living will today. We finally have the entire compliment of documentation that will allow us the best options for ensuring she will exit this life with peace and dignity.

Part of me is getting excited about potentially living in a nice living space soon. Another part of me is dreading the cleaning out, sorting and moving process that will be required. It is becoming easier to part with THINGS and just keep the treasures and really special items one accumulates in a life. I'm so glad that I'm out of the depressing clutter that I had accumulated around me for so long. There are things I need to find and rescue, but I'm enjoying my smaller space with more order. I'm still an inate slob, but I'm getting better at attempting to be tidy and organized. Any improvement is a celebration.

Funny how the little things become a crisis. I "lost" a roll of film. It became a point of internal contention. Part of me was going "You did that on purpose!" Part of me was frantically looking for it because I couldn't stand the sort of mean accusation that I'd do such a think purposefully. It resolved things to find it yesterday. The next crisis is medicine. I know I picked up some medicines during the rush of Christmas week, and now I can't find two important ones that I'm pretty sure I got, but can't now find. I live in 700 sq. ft. How can you "lose" something in such a tiny space? I've done it. It's frustrating. I'm beginning to think *I* have altzheimers. There are so many things *I* can't recall anymore. I lose words, and names, and memories of events. Is this the "normal" aging process or am I losing neurons to aluminum or whatever it is that causes altzheimers? I should do some web page development today I guess. I don't feel motivated. But time will become more difficult to find soon, so I guess I should do it. I'm lost in the details, I can't see the big picture anymore. I need to think bigger to remember the "good stuff" of life. It's really too easy to get bogged down in the details of life. I want to be able to focus on the larger issues of life. I struggle for meaning and feeling secure and hoping to see the Creator in my life. I try to engineer it as much as is feasible, but I've been failing lately. Failing in this department has impact because it diminishing the meaning I feel about my life. The first e-mail of the New Year was a prayer request for a family who's 22-year-old had committed suicide. Making sure that I keep holding on to the meaning for me is important. It's too easy to lose meaning and lose your way. I will not lose my way. But I feel it when I can't get in touch with that meaning. I probably should feel meaning as I tend Betty who is fading into the next, and hopefully, greater life. Beginnings and endings are supposed to be more full of meaning. I felt it mroe at the beginning of life when my daughter genuinely needed me. Betty needs me but it is different. I am not as good at ushering her out as I was at bringing meaning in with a child. Character flaw or socialized reaction? I hope I don't become an empty mind and needy person without purpose or meaning as I age. I guess that is part of what makes Betty's approach toward death so sad. Her mind is empty and pliable and her body is needy and frail. She wants to live but her life is a void filled only with TV and her bed. There is no meaning, no reason for her to continue other than that inner drive for life. I fear becoming that.

Today was spent getting Betty to the doctor and looking at some property. It takes about two hours to get her up and dressed with food in her and pills inside. That does not include a breathing treatment, because that would probably take another hour. Her BP was 160/70 today. What the hell kind of BP is that? The doctor seemed to indicate to me today that he thought she was in a kind of end-stage of COPD. If so it seems like moving is a torture we shouldn't subject her to. She desperately URGED, suggested and put forth the idea that she and I get one big house and live together. I think she'd make me more nuts than I already am, and that I'd make her more nuts than she already is. I don't think we can live together. Next door. In a duplex on opposite sides. In adjacent homes or condos, sure. But, together???? Would it be together for a year or together for 5 years? What would I be signing on for? I can tell she desperately wants to live near me -- she has some sense of her dependency on me -- but I just can't wrap my brain around the idea of sharing the same living area. It's not an impossible idea, but I sure have to think about it. I think we need to find the "right" house and then just show it/them to her and see if she'll go along with our plan. She's not got the stamina to do serious looking. I can't live with her cigarettes. She, surprisingly, thinks she can live with my cat!! Flexibility! What a concept for her! Thinking....thinking. It's scary and it's exciting. Central heat and air! A security system. Windows!! I miss having windows. Some things to think about. Hmmmmmmm.

I have PTSD. On the continuum from exagerated startle response all the way to paranoia and dissociation, I'm on the far end with the worst symptomology. Today I just let myself fall into the "pit." I got up too late to go to church. I couldn't find my glasses and I can't leave the house without them because I can't see farther than 5 feet wtihout them. I spent about 3 hours looking for them. Then found them in a LOGICAL place. I just didn't recall laying them down there. By then my frustrations and inner feelings of pressure and tension were rising, rising, rising. I was up til two obsessing and feeling, feeling, feeling. Inside me is a rising tide of WHAT? WHAT? Inside today I just drew myself inward and resisted the urge to harm myself and desired to just sleep, sleep, sleep. I wanted to just let consciousness fade away; to not feel alive or awake. I've let myself fall into the "pit" and it will take a while to get back out. I've dissociated and it's not working. I've slept and when I wake up, I'm still in the "pit." Whenever I've in the "pit" it's because I'm letting the abuse from the past win in the present. How can pain from the past come and steal my present? How is it that *I* have to be the one to struggle to stay out of the "pit," but my offender -- she's oblivious to the damage she's done to another life? Where was God/The Creator/my Guardian Angel when I needed him/her/them? Where are they now? Why can't I escape from the "pit" now in a present where no one is abusing me? When do I gain freedom from guilt/shame/pain/numbness? When will I have the day I can not spiral into these tailspins down, down, down? I'm on meds. I do therapy, I do all the "right" things to make my life today adequate. I don't strive for a life of luxury and opulance, free from worry. I just want to achieve adequacy and not live in the midst of paranoia, and fear and panic all the time. I want to take some dynamite and blow up that "pit," so I can never, never fall back down into it. But it's always there waiting for me whenever I quit fighting to stay out of it. I can't "float" on the top of the good will of society like most, I keep being pulled down like a drowing soul into the "pit." I have to work to stay on top. When I stop "working," I fall, and spin and crash down into the "pit" and then have to work, work, work to get back out. It feels hopeless today. I'm laying in the bottom of the "pit" and I can feel the cold flagstones against my skin, and I look upward and just see the round hole at the top looking out on a small circle of sky. It's such a long way up and there are not steps, no hand-holds, no easy way to get out. The walls sweat water that make the sides slipery. Even in my cocoon of bed with the heating pad on, I can smell the wet rocks, and the cold goes through my bones, and I know -- I know that I'm doomed to flail around in here for a while. There are no one day visits. This is a trip that takes a while to scrabble my way out and takes sweat and work and it all feels so old and familiar and I know that this is not the last time I will climb out, that I will have a thousand, thousand other times to climb out of here. I feel like that stupid commercial, "Help me! I've fallen and I can't get up." I know I can get up -- eventually, but I also know that I'm doomed to fall, again and again, and again.