Meth: a Ticking Timebomb Gone Viral

Floating on a Sea of Guilt Ridden Relief

As you would expect, today I woke up feeling very different. It's like a literal weight has been lifted off my shoulders. As I walked around MY house, everything that had belonged the previous day to my Mom, now belongs to me. It was surreal looking at all of the things that I have been seeing for the last ten years and the realisation that it was no longer my Mom's stuff, but my own. I didn't quite know how to deal with it...yes, I now have a lot more stuff, but now I have a lot more stuff I am responsible for.

Because I knew the end might come sooner than expected, I've been visiting Mom most days since she entered aged care...and for the last few weeks, two or three times a day (in part because of the circumstances that seemed to be never-ending).

In Australia, our aged care system is broken. For anyone who has a loved one (no matter where you are in the world) who must go into one of these places, please keep an eye on them. One, because they deserve that much, and two, despite the fact that 99% of aged care workers are caring and devoted people, when you have a system in crisis and there are not enough staff and too many residents for them to manage properly, mistakes can and do happen...on every level.

I'm glad that is now over for me and that she is no longer suffering. There's a lot that I could say...stuff that you would think could never happen...that should never happen, but that's behind me now and I just want to remember my mother for all the right reasons and not for things that happened to her during the last six months that she and I had no control over.

There was a moment during the three days Mom was hanging on when I experienced something so intense it frightened me. It must have been a build-up of raw emotion from watching her slowly succumbing to her illness and the frustration and anger of seeing the mistakes made by people who could not be singularly blamed for their oversights, but who in the end, have vulnerable people's lives in their hands.

I felt it coming...like when a storm is brewing. The atmosphere inside my head changed from light to dark. I walked outside of Mom's room and sat down in a covered area not far away. I was alone when my tears of sorrow turned to rage. Not wanting any staff to see me in such a state, I covered my face with my hands when suddenly a white-hot light, not unlike lightning, flashed behind my eyes. It was like I was having a stroke and in that instant, I knew it was possible I could kill someone. It took a while for my breathing to return to normal and for a while, I sobbed uncontrollably.

I think I did a lot of my morning during those three days and nights, which might explain why I am not as affected now as I think I should be...or it might be that it hasn't yet hit me that she is gone forever.