Transparent Moment: What a year has taught me...

I have been staying with mother and year and a month. I will say, I am not built to be a caregiver. I truly don't know how people can do this for a living. But once I thought about, they can, because they get a break from it. Most only do it for a few hours a day, some for 8 hours and others for overnight. For me, it's 24/7, and I have and still do, make a lot of mistakes. Caring for someone's physical body is one thing, but to care for a person's mind is not for the weak.

It is mentally draining, and hurtful at times, especially those times when she doesn't recognize me and thinks I'm someone else. You know there are certain situations where you need tough skin to get through it until it's time for you to leave. But now, I have to tough it up in a major way. I was always one to be able to remove myself, when I know something is going down the wrong path. This time, I can't escape.

But I have come to the realization, that God has me here for a reason. With all that is going on, I am getting my prayer life back on track, doing my devotionals, both day and night. Slowly starting to react differently when her mind goes left. But I am human and I will make mistakes and react badly at times, and I ask her and God for forgiveness for my actions and move forward praying I'll do better.

Yes, caregiving is not for the weak...

Who are you...

I wish I could think in those moments when my mother doesn't recognize who I am. Lately I'm my grandmother (her mother) and other times I'm her older sister. Recently and often, I'm that "other girl" with no name.

These moments truly un-nerves me and I know, but don't know what to do. I do my best to remain calm, but it's my mother and in the back of my mind, I don't want her not to see me. Granted, most times it doesn't last long. I can go out the house and come back in to, "I was wondering when you were getting here", although I've been here all morning.

Just this morning, we sat at the kitchen table talking about the report on the recent shooting in Minnesota and other things. I went into the bathroom for a bit, and when I came out she asked me, "when did you come downstairs". Trust me, it caught me totally off guard and once again, I didn't respond to it well. I got to figure out how to get myself to not react to the switches differently, and how to meet the switches when they come.

But to pretend to be someone I'm not is so hard. I tried a few times and it was disastrous! No matter what I said, whether true or not, I was wrong and asked why I was mistreating her. It's like I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't! 

I have no clue how long this journey is going to be, but I need to figure it out, because I need to maintain my own sanity with all of this. I am giving up my life in a way to care for my mother. But I will say, I am doing more that I haven't done in a long time. But I need to get back to my crafting to help me relax more.

There's got to be another way...

All Night Long...

One night, I was awake at  2:30 am. Why? My mother had a nightmare and it took a few to get her to calm down and go back to bed. As for me, I am unable to fall back to sleep, seeing I didn't get to sleep close to midnight.  It took me a long time to settle down and when my mind was ready to go to sleep, she is awake again at 5 am, confused and thinking it was time to go.

I was able to get her to lay down again, but I'm afraid the high winds are not going to allow her to go back too sleep.

I am working to get her on a schedule with a lot of things. The two main things is when to eat and bedtime. She did go to bed close to the time I would like. I have notice, we have a pretty decent day, when she gets 12 hours of sleep. Of course that's not the case on today. I believe we will be napping most of today, at least that's is my pray.

But it seems that at least once a week of late, she has been having disturbing dreams, but it came back to me, those type of dreams are not of God. So in my nighttime prayers, I ask for calming of her mind as she sleep and rebuke satan. I learn early in life, by way of the scriptures, if you rebuke the devil, he will flee.  Of course as a child, I'm not sure if I believed it or not. But lately,  oh yeah, I believe!! I been rebuking him like crazy and God truly stepped in.

Now, I'm not saying all is back to her baseline, but we are slowly getting there. I am really working on not allowing her confused mind to upset me so much. I just have to remind myself, it will be much better in the morning.

It's a merry-go-round...