A Day in My Life

I often make reference to my "crazy mother who lives with us". This post is going to be a detailed description of why I call her that.


I love my mother. She shielded me throughout most of my young life from the ill fortune of her life. When I was a late teen and found out that for most of her married life she had been verbally and physically abused by my father, I felt sorry for her. I have since grown up. While in many ways I still feel sorrow for her in her situation, I also understand my father better. Crazy, right? How can one justify the abuser?


Don't judge me. My reasons are my own and yes, I do justify it. To a point. Of course, no one should be abused, ever. But in an imperfect world, in which we live, there is abuse. It's a cycle. My father was an abuser, my mother the abused. In the same sentence, I can say my mother was an abuser and my father the abused. It's a hard thing to explain unless actually experienced.


This is why an insight to my daily life while living with my mother would explain some of my justification.





My day starts early, of course, I have four children. Husband's alarm clock goes off around 5:00am. I usually sleep through this, unless he is in one of those moods where he keeps hitting snooze.


Anyway, my day begins with the usual chaos any mother of multiple children goes through to get everyone dressed, fed, clean, clothed and out the door in one piece to make it to the bus.


First of all, no one wants to get up. My kids even go to bed before 9:00pm. So, after initial argument and finally getting up and dressed, breakfast is served and teeth are brushed. About this time, toddler awakens and has IMMEDIATE NEEDS as all toddlers do. "drink!" "cuddle!" "baby doll!"


During this, I'm usually barking orders to older kids to get backpacks, get shoes. I hear a door squeak open. Here it comes. My mother.


"shhshshhh....shhshhhhshhh....shhshhshshh"..her wheezing and breathing precedes her arrival. She has COPD. She smoked for 40 years, including the time she was pregnant with me.


"Noelle, can you come over?"


My mother wants me to come over and SIT on her couch and visit. I do not have time to do this. It's 7:30am and I am trying to get people out the door. I tell her that I'll be over in a little while.

She is angry. She wants me to come over.Now. She storms home and slams door.
Kids are gone, out the door to school.

8:30am. Door squeaks open.

"Noelle, can you come over and look at my pills?"

Her pills are fine. She wants attention.

I check her pills. The pills are fine.

"Noelle, can you look at this one spot on my back?"

"Noelle, can you go downtown and get me some milk?"
She can drive. She can go downtown. She fought us to get her driver's license back, after her two year chemo.

"Noelle, can you put three yr old upstairs and come over?" She wants me all to herself.

No. I cannot PUT my daughter upstairs. She yells, she slams the door.

I go upstairs to fold laundry with toddler. Door squeaks.

"Noelle, can you come over?"

No, I'm upstairs. I am making the beds, taking care of clothes, possibly exercising or getting a shower. I am emptying dishwasher, cooking, baking, going to the school. I have doctors appts, dental appts. I have to mop the floor, clean the bathrooms. I am taking the car to be serviced, I am taking care of a sick child. The list never ends, there is always something to do in the house.

Door slams.

Noon. Lunch time for toddler and myself. Door squeaks.

"Noelle, can you call my doctor and ask for more pills?" or "Noelle, can you please call the pharmacy and ask them about the xanax?" or "Noelle, can you call the dentist because my tooth hurts." or "Noelle, I need you to call the ear doctor because my hearing aides don't work." These are all things she can do herself, but only does if she chooses, because she would prefer me to do them for her.

This is all so she gets attention.

After lunch, if she has actually taken all her meds, she usually passes out thankfully for the rest of the day. This is when I am able to move freely about my own home without fear of disturbing her or getting her mad at me.

Sometimes she doesn't get her meds in her and she will manage to open her door separating our homes 6-7 times during the afternoon. She will yell into my home "Noelle, where are you?"

The fun really starts when the boys burst home from school at around 3:45pm. The rush of them coming through the back door, yelling from school, needing food and help with homework coincides with my mother squeaking open the door, just having woke up from her 4hour nap. She is not only confused about where she is, she is upset that the kids are not quiet. "What time is it?" or "where is your father?" (dead, mom, dead) or "why must you boys be so loud?" or my favorite "can you come over?".

Usually my husband gets home around 5:00 pm and is expecting dinner. She usually arrives about 5:30 wanting me to come over. I try to have enough dinner left over so I can send her home with some dinner, because she will not cook for herself. She will eat toast and coffee.

After dinner, during our family time, my mother will come over and ask my husband numerous questions. Questions that have all been asked before. Many, many times before. She needles him. She badgers him.

Almost every single night, approximately 20 minutes before we put our kids to bed, she will come over and bring a handful of candy she wishes to distribute to them. Obviously, we do not allow the children to have candy right before bed since they have all showered and brushed their teeth.

She is mad. She leaves and slams her door.

My husband and I are exhausted, both laying on either ends of our sectional.

Door squeaks open. "shhshhsh.....shhshhshhshh....shhshshhh" she is wheezing and she comes over. "Can one of you come over?" or "Noelle, can you come over and talk to me?" or "can one of you check my pills?".

Once and a great while, we try to have a spontaneous moment of intimacy downstairs. Not possible. She has snuck over and caught us too many times.

My mother calls me during the night. "Noelle, can you come over?"

It may be 2:00am in the morning.

My mother has suffered through cancer. It was awful and horrible.

She lived. It is awful and horrible. One has no idea how much it pains me to write that. I love her. Do I wish she had died? Of course not, no, never. Do I wish she was her 'old self'? Yes. I miss my mother.

My husband and I have no privacy. We have no sense of privacy, as she doesn't respect our home as our own.

I have friends that would like to visit my home. For coffee, for playdates, for visits. As soon as anyone appears in my home, she immediately opens her door and comes over. She cannot understand our conversations. She is easily confused and angered. My friends don't come around as much. I understand.

My mother interrupts my phone conversations. I could be on the phone with the school teacher or principal, a doctor, she doesn't care. "NOELLE!!! I NEED YOU!" or "where are you???". Every day. All day.

Mom has a problem with the children. She feels they are too loud (they are, I actually agree on this one), they are wild, they talk too much. She doesn't understand that there are actually 4 of them, alive and kickin', here in this house.

This has been for over three years.

My mother recently misplaced a huge amount of money my father left to her. When I say misplaced, I mean, it's gone. We cannot find it and she has no idea where it has been moved to.

My mother walks in on my showers. She takes things from our fridge and pantry. My mother bothers our babysitters, she won't leave them alone. It is hard to find a sitter for four kids in the first place, try finding one to deal with a demented grandmother as well.

If I leave town to shop, I cannot tell her because she will have an episode before hand to ensure I do not leave the house. If I do leave for an afternoon or we take off on the weekend, we come home to our house totally and completely LOCKED and she has all the keys.

If there is a Christmas dinner planned at my in laws, she will have some kind of medical or emotional crisis so I have to be with her and not my husband and kids.

My mother will ask me to put my children upstairs so I can talk to her.

My mother is jealous of my children.

My mother is jealous of me, she was jealous of my father's attention to me.

My father got to the point of abuse. He would actually hit her in order to make her stop talking or needling him. I used to think that it was so awful. I wondered why he never, ever hit me. I was easily as annoying as a child I'm sure.

She drove him to it. I know this because I feel this overwhelming, suffocating feeling at times. I just want her to stop. Just stop. Just please please stop.

Just leave me be.

Leave my children be.

That feeling is hard to admit. I love my mother. But the woman who lives in my house is not my mother. My mother is gone. She died with cancer 5 years ago. The person who inhabits my mother's body is a stranger. She is scared of everything, she is scared of her pills, of my dog, of the neighbor kid.She is terrified of being alone, she is sure there are men in the woods who are going to break in our home and kill us. She is afraid of turning off her tv at night. Her lights.
Gone is the woman who danced in the living room to the BeeGees. Gone is the artist who drew with charcoal. Her love of decorating and her colors, gone. The woman who could dazzle with the bluest of eyes, who loved and was loved.
We cannot go on vacation without having someone to stay with her, and still my cell phone rings hundreds of times while we are gone. I worry terribly when we are gone, thinking she will get so confused that she'll take off in her vehicle or have an accident.

My mother is gone. She is lost and I am here to care for this woman who resembles her.

What I have written today is merely a half of what my day entails with her. I am literally so exhausted by reading it myself that I don't know how to continue.
We cannot go to a football game. A wrestling match. A little league game. We have to sneak in and out of our home. If we try to leave, she cannot bear it.

I have a lot of humor. I have to in order to survive.
I have a lot of grief, too. No one wants to admit the person they loved their whole life, who was an amazing mother, is gone.
Mine is gone.