A difficult day...

I have a new camera. Actually for a month it  sat in a box, but yesterday I took it down to the Getty. I have always liked taking pictures-probably no different than every other person. Leaving my Mom to my daughter and my son I went to the mall in Thousand Oaks, while Jack taught something at Cal Lutheran, and then we drove to the Getty and to have dinner with my daughter at Pomodoro's Italian restaurant in Westwood. It is such a good place to eat. I tried the camera out. The slideshow here just shows me fiddling with it.  It exceeds my capabilities for sure. However it is also wonderful. It was half price and I have gotten the same thing for my daughter's-Sony Cybershot DSC-HX200V. But all on sale. I'm not capable of writing a detailed spec kind of review or anything here or ever. It has a neck loop I really like that. Zooms so far-to me terrific because I haven't had that capacity before. These shots seem so clear.

Yesterday I watched people in the mall as I waited. TO has a very expensive mall. Many women there have very expensive purses. I looked at those for a long time. It seems strange to me but it is a symbol. The thing is I'm not comfortable leaving my Mom, she's so seriously ill now, fragile. I certainly can't shop. However I also want to make the effort to go see my daughter and Jack had to teach this thing yesterday but offered to drive me to see Syl after-I don't like to drive since the last few years. And sometimes you need to get out. I was overall out just looking at people. I'm not sure why.
A very different set of people were at the Getty, clothing very different. When you enjoy looking at people that's a good place to look too. We came home rather late.

Today I went back to bed.
I've been in a pattern of waking at 5 AM. So I was asleep until 1 or so. Because at ten I took a nap. When I came downstairs at 2 my mother was struggling to get a paper towel. She kept swatting at the roll, her right arm hung like a piece of meat. She couldn't talk, kept making the sound sa sa sa sa sa sa. Maybe she'd been trying to call me, "sarah." I'm not sure -it was shocking and I knew it was a stroke. She's had one.. Or a TIA. I got her into a chair and she refused to go to the car or to help in getting her to an ER. Fortunately my son and daughter were here. They helped me wait through an irrational stream of thoughts, as language returned. Years ago- and all of a sudden today- Mom recounted how she believed a guy, who was actually then my boss some 30 years back, someone she knew, took over her head and tortured her with threats and, well, from the time I was about 19 on she had this secret. Or I had it. A psychiatrist called it paranoid schizophrenia.
Mental illness..
It's tough to talk about. She had a severe time then, and over the years it's not far from the door.

So when she insists on decisions or control-it's tough. Today she'd look up and tell us what this guy in her head who she calls Mark, was saying right then. I was thinking about if he even understands his role in her head-if his going on to live his life he understood how she carried him as a burden, if he understood that or even thought of us. Certainly not caring enough to ever contact either of us. She was in an astrology group with him, and he was involved enough with her for me to say that his behavior then actually was a part of why she fixated on him-but...in her taking this on as an internal voice threatening her-that I don't understand. How can I?
And then she was angry with me because once again I have to say, "This isn't real, but it is real for you." Her mind broke after my father divorced her. But really I think he is responsible. He was cruel. He did things I cannot forget. And he wore her out.
Anyway today we watched slowly her pull things a bit more together. As we sat horrified and trying to get her up to a hospital. She was afraid. When she is afraid this shattering happens-it's the fault of this person in her head, she says. He paralyzes her regularly. So I learn this has been happening. And it takes loops and patterns I'm familiar hearing from years ago-and then under any stress out it comes, but my kids they are not so much used to this, maybe her odd inappropriate and even mean cackling laugh maybe, this no, -not to this degree. So I'm sure they felt sad. It tortures her. way back she refused meds and care and she didn't have ANY health coverage or anything like a "safety net" she had a hating, berating ex there to tell her what a piece of crap she was.
Mental illness is hard to look at. Harder still to talk about.
Way harder to know how to bring comfort.

After awhile my son got my husband from his ballgame-thought of how to do it and did it-he wasn't answering his phone. I thought he'd need to help me get her to an ER. But she would not go. His being here helped me without question for knowing that he could bring some strength to it-she called him Charlie-her brother's name.
I think she fears death. Irrational a lot more than I talk about. She went to her room-I went and cleaned it removing a lot of junk she had everywhere. I did do that and it was really awful. Why did I let it get that awful? Denial?  She had it so full of trash and junk but it occurred to me she couldn't lift or get the stuff out- if she wanted to- so I cleaned-de-junked. It's better. Leaving her sitting in her room is hard in the evening. Just my sitting in her room isn't so comforting to her-it's like watching a pot boil.
So I'm in the kitchen typing this thinking about how each of us on earth-this is maybe what we deal with. This, for me, is the legacy of violence, of poverty, of her marriage, of the abuse she suffered in her marriage and then...I don't know the why of mental illness. I just don't know.

I think we should talk about mental illness actually.
I feel like it might have helped me, long ago if I could have told people. Watching my kids I realized I first dealt with my Mom and taking care of her Mom dying-living with us when I was their age. I looked at them...they just had concern and worry and compassion. They looked like little kids. No wonder I didn't know what to do then.  I had no one to turn to then really. So mental illness isolates us. It's very true that people face these things in their parents-my gosh do we talk about how brave people are in aging, in facing death, dementia, strokes? It's something I see her having to take on, it is really something....

If I could I'd call people she knew, but most are dead. Or reach out to family-but my father poisoned that for me, and remains a rageful and hard person-afflicted himself. So...it's hard, not in a self pity way, just in a way of not knowing how I'll deal with the loss of my Mom. I've lived with Mom most all my life. And this is the  coming to the end of her days.
All I could see today was the junk, the meaninglessness in things, the loss of her capabilities...just how difficult this is.
Maybe tomorrow I'll see with clearer vision.

Thanks for listening.