Mommy's Mommy

Remember my mom? I only ask, because she pretty much doesn't and my kids sure as hell won't. Damn. Yesterday she and my father went to the electroshock doc (I know they're not actually called that, but it would be cool, wouldn't it?) finally after a year of first my father not wanting it (not your head, Dad, not your head) and then my mother not wanting it ("I just don't." Oh Jesus) and now the shock doc (okay, it ends here) tells them that he suspects more dementia than depression. Crap. Oh Double Crap and Damn. Because while these two conditions are similar and can fuel and/or disguise each other, and they quite frequently present together, the prognosis, folks, the outcome is waaay different. See, depression can conceivably lift, either via meds or procedures or talk therapy. Depression only feels permanent. You know how in the middle of winter you try to think what it's like to be outside in shorts and you can't imagine how that's ever possible? Feels like winter is just constant, so weighty and opaque and bone-aching. In truth tho, odds are good that summer might just show up again. Depression is like that sometimes. And dementia (crap oh crap oh crap.) differs from depression in that it is a veritable Ice Age. Don't nobody go looking for the shorts and sunblock because Summer has left the building. End. Of. Story. Okay, so there are twelve types of dementia, not including pseudodementia (wha?), and they all pretty much grind an iceberg into the brain until not even those clever class-valedictorians, the lungs can remember the simple in and out of breathing. I'm no genius (as has been clearly demonstrated in prior posts), but even I know what happens when you stop breathing. Damn. There's nothing in the medicine cabinet to help that.
Oooooh, so I'm (It's not about me, but still, you know) mad. I'm scared too, b/c I have no idea how to be the biggest girl in the family, but mostly I'm mad. For all the years I've had kids, I have begged, wheedled, asked, nagged them to spend time w/their grandchildren.How awful could a visit with three admittedly quirky, but surprisingly handsome boys be? Visits end. Everything will be right where you left it. No one will move your remote, I promise. Look, I grew up in the house next to my grandmother and her sister lived next to her, and my dad's parents visited every Sunday and so forth, so I know how important grandparents are. That's why they're call GRANDparents (Okay, that was scary Hallmark-y. Sorry) But they always had a reason. Their parents...their animals...their house improvements...and I am boiling mad because all those reasons are gone with the wind, but now, ironically enough, so is my mother. The last reason she won't get to know her grandkids is her own self. I just wanted this for my kids, you know? I mean, I grieve my own grandfather in ways and at times and with such fury that it shocks me. And he was ready. I would not have asked him to stay if I could. But my mother is, no no no, it's not time. My children, Your grandchildren, they need you. I need you. You never showed me how to can vegetables. I can live with that. But you never got to know my children and they are worth knowing, even with their uh...quirks. Always something more important. Eight years of very important stuff, apparently. I am sorry and ashamed for it, but I am mad. I want my mommy.

If I have learned nothing else about down in the past few months, I have learned that there is no bottom. People will tell you, you know, that it (insert troubles here) just has to get better b/c it can't get worse (chuckle, chuckle), but that is such regoddamndiculous crap I can't stand it, because there is no bottom. You can go down down down and never even stop for gas.

No. No. No.

I'll wrap this up now because I can see by re-reading that my selfish anger is really quite unnatractive. That, and I'd rather you not see me cry. I get real red and puffy.