This weekend made me miss my mother-in-law. I haven't given much of an update on her lately because there is nothing new, nothing good. She is locked in a constant state of not knowing who people are and has no recollection of her life past childhood. Her ability to take care of personal hygiene continues to decline and she is currently in physical therapy because she has lost muscle tone. She sleeps or sits in a recliner most of the day and her husband continues to not understand. That is the way it has been for over a year and the way it will be until her death. There is no hope of improvement.
The family dynamic itself has forever changed. Nobody has the ability or desire to assume the role of head communicator and one who holds the family together. Communication amongst the family is dysfunctional at best and the emotions are mostly negative.
I spent a good deal of Saturday and Sunday praying for my brother-in-law. A phone call to my husband Saturday from his other brother indicated nobody had talked with the brother for over two weeks.
My father-in-law absolutely sucks with communication. Unfortunately, he is the only who regularly communicates with this brother. Nobody seemed concerned about the change in behavior or about his safety. One of the reasons is that nobody really gets the number of risk factors in this brother's life, the things that should raise red flags when nobody hears from him for two weeks.
He is an intelligent, highly educated man who has gone way off course. Prior to his divorce, he had the life he wanted. He had a beautiful home, wonderful job, well-rounded wife and happy little boy. The problem was he had a drinking problem to go along with it.
So now, life looks much different. He has bounced around jobs and private contracting as he just couldn't "work for the man." He has gone years without health insurance or steady income. His ex wife hates him and treats him poorly. Recently, he lost visitation rights with his son, the only thing that meant anything to him. He has been hateful to all three of his siblings, forcing distance between all of them and leaving him very alone. He is in a position where he cannot support his home and may be behind on child support. He has tapped out everyone in the family financially and likely cannot find any more help. He suffers from depression and OCD, but is not medicated and does receive any help. He self medicates with heavy drinking.
That's a whole bunch of red flags. Anyone with this long list of risk factors needs to be checked on if they aren't heard from in two weeks.
It is crazy, I know, but nobody seemed concerned enough to check further. After no return phone calls, it took text messages threatening to send police to the house to check before he finally responded that he was indeed alive.
It was a scary 24 hours. It made me miss their mom. She wouldn't have let that go. She would have driven to his house until she knew he was ok if he hadn't responded after a couple days. It made me miss this family that has fallen apart.
My mother-in-law was never very warm or welcoming with me, but she was with her kids. Unfortunately, the way she treated me is what she passed on to her kids. Her legacy has become this family who does not know how to love each other or how to communicate. Her legacy of caring didn't get passed on to her kids and it makes me sad.
ALZ is hard to wrap your head around. We heard Glenn Campbell's song he wrote about having ALZ the other night for the first time. It is awesome that sometimes people live with this disease and have times of clarity enough to understand what is happening. It allows those around some insight into what is happening, how it works and gives a little slower decent into nothingness. We didn't have that opportunity with my husband's mom. She showed signs in November, was diagnosed in February and couldn't call her children/grandchildren by name within two months.
She may have had moments of clarity but they were extremely few and far between and were incredibly brief. That was three years ago. She's been locked away inside her body, lost to all of us for three years.
Within the family, I'm not really allowed any feelings of loss with her and I'm not allowed an opinion. They don't consider me part of the family. They know she didn't like me and treated me poorly and they continue that part of her legacy.
Despite what they think, I do miss her. My heart aches that we can see her but we are nothing to her. She has been a part of my life for nearly 20 years. Even if she didn't like me and never treated me very well, she has been in my life. It is a loss for me.
Even more, it's a loss for my husband. I feel the loss through him. My heart aches the most for him.
All I can do is pray for all of them. There is nothing else that can be done. I can pray that they will eventually live out the legacy that she would have wanted them to, the one where they love each other as much as she loved them.
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