Fantasy--I'll . . .

Thirty-three days have passed since the entire world changed for me. Just two days before Christmas, Mom developed a little limp. Who would think a little limp would rapidly develop into so much pain for my mom, and so many problems for me.

Three days after the limp appeared, Mom couldn't put weight on her right foot, then she couldn't walk. Then she was so weak she couldn't stand.

Now, one month and nine days of hospital stays later, she can only lie in bed, and wake up enough to be carefully fed by spoon so she doesn't choke. She can't hold a pen to write. When she speaks, the words come out confused.

Sometimes I have no idea what she's asking for --I'd get it for her if I could. I typed up a four times a day schedule for her medications. She has 17 as of today. I went shopping at Walmart and stocked up on food that would be good for her and that she likes. She's always preferred totally bland food. We both decided baby food meats don't taste too bad on toast, and it's good digestable nutrition.

I'm really not the Martha Stewart homemaker type, but I've made attempts. I was able to cook family meals when I was married, but that was twenty years ago. I'm single, and I know which are my favorite microwave dinners. She can't eat my favorites, because they're too spicey.

I've watched Mom eat cafeteria food for long enough that I know what she prefers. And the thigs she avoids are burned into my brain: no milk or milk products, nothing--like beans--that causes gas, nothing with citrus, no peppers of any sort, no pork or eggs, and the list goes on and on.

I've brought her Boston Market chicken soup so many times, you'd think she'd be tired of it. But for awhile, that's ALL she ate. Now she eats pudding, crackers, bananas and pears, and healthy food.

I've read labels on food packaging and actually tried to come up with a menu that follows the food pyramid guidelines. She eats five times a day so that she has something in her stomach when she takes pills. I keep two options for drinking (usually spring water and Gatorade) at her bedside, and move them when she travels to the den.

I have done everything possible for her, 24/7, for the last 33 days. My patience is barely hanging in there, or maybe it's my sanity that's almost gone.

I have a bad habit of keeping in all my emotions, and not saying anything,but letting them build up, and up. When everything builds up to the point I can't take any more, I blow up (usually over some little thing, but the accumulation makes it the last straw). The last straw is near, and I've piled up enough emotion to be registered as a volcanic explosion.

This is unavoidable stress. Mom's outlived two good husbands at the age of 80 and 1/2. I'm not only the only daughter in town, I'm the only child. Period.

I was diagnosed as bipolar (also known as the scarey words--"manic depressive") about 7 years ago. I take my meds, and see my shrink regularly. I've led a pretty regular life, without much in the way of symptoms for the past three years.

Stress brings on symptoms, and I know my psychiatrist would change my meds if I could find the time to get to his office. Too much stress triggers symptoms.

(. . .need to describe symptoms more here . . .)

Too awful much stress in the past has caused me to go psychotic. I've spent time in "mental health facilities," more than once, to get myself back to being able to cope with reality and live a normal daily schedule. I've worked my way back from the flaming fires of hell more than once. It's a heavy road to travel, and one must do it rather alone. Nobody can get you out of that mental place but yourself, when you're having an episode. It's kind of like alcoholism, or quitting smoking from that standpoint.

I've got too much stress, but I don't know how to make it go away, or even lessen it. My shrink is already picking up on beginning symptoms. As is typical, I hate the way the meds make me feel, so I'm not strictly adhering to my med schedule. Hell, how could I have enough space in my brain for all that. How could anybody?

I have no husband or boyfriend with broad shoulders on which I could cry, get a hug, or an understanding gaze. I have a dog who listens well, and has a great wag in his tail. But I haven't been at home with the big guy (Lab/Shepard mix at about 85 pounds).

I'm getting very acquainted with Mom's little Chow. She's okay, but she's not my dog. I find her and stroke her fur when I feel my blood pressure rising. It's supposedly good for both of us.


The only thing that is still the same as one month ago is that I get mad when someone calls me "Jane," instead of "Janie." You can still pick your own nickname, can't you? "Jane" just isn't the me I grew up to be. All these new people in my life are mostly keeping my name straight. What you call a person is important. If you can't get the name right, how can you understand all that lies within.

There are so many new rules all of a sudden, like I can't take a bath at Mom's house. Where in the hell is all this shit coming from, and why did God decide to rain all this crap on me now?

Shakespeare said, "a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet." Four hundred plus years later, the same rose would have withered and died. At least I have my own personally selected dead roses. It ws probably a beautiful bouquet when it arrived for me.

The only "happy thing" in my life right now is the bouquet of roses I sent myself using www.flowers.com, for a pick-me-up last week. They've dried in a particularly ugly manner, and have very little smell left. They'll make good potpourri soon. I'm trying to look on the bright side.

I was counting on those flowers to get me through a particularly bad day, when I ordered them over the Internet in the middle of the night. The flowers arrived at Mom's house before I did that Monday morning.

Mom and her caregiver from "Autumn Services" were sitting in the sun room, drinking coffee, when I returned from feeding the pets at my house, barely missing the morning rush hour(s). I remembered the caregiver, Iris, mentioning that some orange roses had arrived, and that the card said it was an arrangement called "Flowers of Israel."

I hadn't gotten any sleep the night before. I passed on joining the ladies for morning coffee, and went to my bedroom at Mom's, shut the door, and fell asleep immediately. I seldom do that. I toss and turn for HOURS. But I was really beat.

When I woke up, about 6 hours later, the caregiver shift had changed, and Mom didn't know anything about orange roses. Thw new caregiver didn't know anything about anything, so I went over explaining the entire set up and routine again. It was great to have help, but we got a new person almost every other day. But help is help, so I took a deep breath, and explained from scratch again. I kept wondering about the "Flowers of Israel." I'd printed the bill. I KNEW I'd ordered them to already have arrived, but I didn't see them amongst Mom's couple of vases of flowers, sent by her friends.

By later that afternoon, I feared the hallucinations that sometimes accompany manic-depressive episodes had begun. Maybe I'd dreamed the conversation in which I was told the orange roses had arrived at Mom's house. I looked everywhere for the flower arrangement, but it was nowhere to be found. There were no orange roses.

As Mom settled into her Craftmatic single width bed for a good night's sleep that night, I sobbed, and sobbed in her dimly lit bedroom, quietly gasping "orange roses" between the torrent of tears that wouldn't stop.

There was just so much emotion and frustration I'd kept in for so long, trying to be strong. The emotional damn broke. I cried myself to sleep in the rocking chair in Mom's bedroom that night. The caregiver woke Mom up to take pills and eat, so I kept my eyes closed most of the night. When I woke up, I'd listen for Mom's regular breathing.

The next day, Tuesday, when daylight arrived, so did a new caregiver, She said that the previous caregiver, who she relieved at 7:00 am, had told her that a big, long box saying "1-800-flowers" had arrived on Monday morning, but hadn't been opened. Sometimes, caregivers pass info to each other they forget the parties involved need to know.

I wasn't fully awake yet. I'm not a morning person under good circumstances. The new caregiver, Shelly, handed the box to me. The box was so large that I don't know how I could have missed seeing it. I had looked all over Mom's house.

Mom was sitting at the kitchen table with a healthy breakfast in front of her. The leisure manner in which she approached her food, indicated her appetite was still gone.

"Oh, yeah, yes," said Mom. "That box came sometime, and I thought it was for me. I was too tired to deal with it." She was staying very tired and very weak. She could walk only with assistance. Sleep was her most productive activity. I needed more sleep than I'd been getting. Whether it was a manic symptom or just the way things were working out didn't really make any difference. "Tired" had become a prominent resident in my Mother's home.

The caregiver and Mom didn't understand the flood of tears that I couldn't hold back. I opened the box, saying "how wonderful," and left the room as quickly as I could. I took refuge in the guest bedroom, which was beginning to look like a flop pad with all my stuff all over the room.

Every new entry into Mom's house was a new emotional cyclone for me. Mom was getting 24 hour care, and there wasn't any reason, except guilt, that was keeping me stuck in such a sad and sorry mental situation, sitting next to her bedside.

I'd been patient with the patient as long as humanly possible. I'd pushed myself until I had nothing left inside myself to keep me going. I tried to keep going, and doing, and fetching, and carrying out Mom's instructions on business matters (which often didn't make sense), and I only felt worse. I'd lost nine pounds in the past month. I'd lost lots of sleep too. Definitely, I was in a rapid cycling mixed state episode. My mood swings were becoming more frequent, more intense, and more difficult to control.

The flowers dried ugly from not getting the proper care on arrival. But I wasn't going to throw them away yet.

These withering peachy, petal dropping roses have a lesson to leave me, and I don't know what it is yet. So they sit, withering and drying still, me carrying them from room to room as the mood strikes me.

I guess it's a pretty morose scene, whether or not you know all the details. I tried not to get caught crying. The tearful mood were becoming more frequent too.

Yes, if I could get away from the stress of what day to day has become: dispensing medications, five feeding times each day, wondering how much personal hygiene was happening outside my "eyeshot."

Mom said she felt "fine." But she had to have help to get from the bed, five or six steps, to the toilet in the bathroom.

She also didn't know if it was day or night, and she kept wanting to take her 12 morning meds every time she woke up from a nap. She'd get argumentative with the caregiver, then I'd have to intervene and open the curtains to show Mom it was dark, and therefore not morning.

My patience was spent. But it would get better. I just needed to keep a positive attitude!

Yeah, right. Everything's just peachy. I'm just like a rotten. mushy. smelly peach at the bottom of the barrell. This situation sucks.

I knew all this would happen someday. I remember my father's quick demise from cancer, but that was 28 years ago. It wasn't at all the same.

Mom's sick, and different in her attitudes and behaviors. She's not the Mom I always knew, always loved, and always depended on.

It's the same body, but just the little changes that started just 33 days ago, have changed her from the person I always knew, always relied upon, to a confused invalid.

And I'm the one who's suppose to be holding things together? One good primal scream would make me feel better! One good primal scream would get me in the psych ward. Let's not put that on the agenda for today.

What do you do when you whole world falls apart, and you have nobody to lean on for support?


"Mom, what do I owe you in this situation?" I watched her sleep, and I continued to wonder, sitting next to her bed, listening to her breathe in the dark, and in the daylight.

One can only make so much jello. Do I need to be physically by your side every minute of every day and night? If I were to ask you, and you were able to answer coherently, what would you say?

You'd say that your needs were being met, and I should be taking care of my own needs too. That would be her motherly response in a more normal situation.


I need a break! I need a change of scenery! I'm going to get in my car, and drive, and listen to the radio, loud--with the windows down. I'm going to sing! Nobody but God will know that I'm singing off key, and under the circumstances, I think He can handle it.

Bossier City, Louisiana, is only a three hour drive away from Dallas, Texas. Three hours away is another world. I need another world.

> > >Insert lyrics to "Janie's Got a Gun" by Aerosmith . . . if copy write laws allow . . .

(Janie's Got A Gun - Pump)

Dum, dum, dum, honey what have you done
Dum, dum, dum, it's the sound of my gun
Dum, dum, dum, honey what have you done
Dum, dum, dum, it's the sound, it's the sound...
Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah....

Janie's Got A Gun
Janie's Got A Gun
Her whole world's come undone
From lookin' straight at the sun
What did her daddy do
What did he put you through

They say when Janie was arrested
They found him underneath a train
But man, he had it comin'
Now that Janie's Got A Gun
She ain't never gonna be the same

Janie's Got A Gun
Janie's Got A Gun
Her dog day's just begun
Now everybody is on the run
Tell me now it's untrue
What did her daddy do

He jacked the little bitty baby
The man has got to be insane
They say the spell that he was under
The lightnin' and the thunder
Knew that someone had to stop the rain

Run away, run away from the pain
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Run away, run away from the pain
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Run away, run away, run, run away

Janie's Got A Gun
Janie's Got A Gun
Her dog day's just begun
Now everybody is on the run
What did her daddy do
It's Janie's last I.O.U.

She had to take him down easy
And put a bullet in his brain
She said 'cause nobody believes me
The man was such a sleeze
He ain't never gonna be the same

Run away, run away from the pain
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Run away, run away, run, run away
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Run away, run away, run, run away

Janie's Got A Gun
Janie's Got A Gun
Janie's Got A Gun
Everybody is on the run

Janie's Got A Gun
Her dog day's just begun
Now everybody's on the run (Honey, honey what's your problem)
'Cause Janie's Got A Gun (Tell me it ain't right)
Janie's Got A Gun (Was it daddys cradle robbin')
Her dog day's just begun (That made you scream at night)
Janie's Got A Gun
Her dog day's just begun
Now everybody's on the run
Janie's Got A Gun[/i}

Yes, pack my bags and get away from this reality. Run away. Run away, from the sound of God's pump. Run away from the pain, and just let my eyes rain until they're empty. Then I could start over fresh. My brain could unfrazzle some. I could sleep, and eat, and not think!

I'm getting out of town. How far can the echo of reality travel? I'm going to drive the 3 hours east from Dallas to Louisiana. I should arrive in Bossier City before dark, if I can stick to my schedule. Sticking to schedules is driving me crazy. No schedules, just get myself together, and go.

Mother said she was "fine,' and she'd be "fine" for a couple of days without me. When one is paying for 24 hour care, one should take advantage of opportunities for personal time, right?

I grabbed things from my bedroom, and threw them in the trunk of my car. I called my neighborhood rent-a-kid to take care of the dog and two cats at my house while I was gone.

So, after returning to my house, I packed my suitcase, my travel bag, my humble excuse for a briefcase, my car trunk, my front seat, and my back seat full of "stuff." The stuff from my bedroom at Mom's, my house, and what has been left in the car because it was needed at both places. I have a lot of "stuff." Everything was somewhere.

While I was sorting clothes, shoes, make-up, etc., I though of George Carlin's routine about his trip to Hawaii, and having to leave "stuff" behind as your trip extends, and carries you into other different trips in different directions, with different needs. I think I have all my stuff that's important within almost arm's reach now.

I packed all the stuff I thought I could possibly need. I packed all the stuff I thought I needed, and then packed more stuff. I even packed my white leather dress.

The only thing I didn't pack was a gun. I sold my Smith & Wesson twelve years ago. I don't need a gun. I just need to run . . .

It was between 3:00 and 3:30 when I hit the interstate that Friday afternoon. I didn't have time to get the car tuned up. But it was full of gas, and I had a map to Louisiana. God was dangling from my rear-view mirror.

I'd also gotten a headset for my cell phone when I was gathering stuff. It's not safe to talk and drive, and a headset seemed safer.

Plus, I can feel the mania chemicals pumping, jumping in my veins, telling me I can afford anything in the world today.

And, by God, I can do anything I want. I can be anybody I want, just for a few days.

But I wonder if I should do this "hotel and casino" thing alone. Is a sole soul safe, when it's a she?

The city traffic thinned out none too quickly, but it seemed like forever that I was hemmed in on all four sides. I stretched my full length in the semi-reclined seat of the Cougar.

As I left the east edge of the city, the sun broke through the clouds, the music on the radio became more comfortable, and I began to think about a guy, any guy.

They say when you get manic, you are apt to make bad decisions and sexual indiscretions.

Which guy could I possibly call to met me like this? I have plenty of old boyfriends.

Whose number would be on the cell phone? I'd recently thrown my cell phone in the lake, as a dramatic gesture for some sort of life cleansing. I didn't have all the old boyfriend's numbers, but I had two.

The odds of either of them coming to meet me on such short notice was pretty low.

What the hell? I could call a couple of phone numbers. If I was real lucky, I might be able to just leave a message, and be surprised later. We'd all be surprised if they both showed up.

First, I called Robbie's house. We'd almost gotten married 15 years ago. He was such a hell raiser, I finally came to my senses and decided I couldn't live like he did, 24/7. He also lied so much, he didn't really know fact from fiction. But, he was a lot of fun, and still not attached to any females, that I knew of anyhow.

A man answered, and it wasn't Robbie. He said his name was Clyde, and he was staying with Robbie.

I knew the story. Somebody gets put out of the house by a wife, or gets let out of jail, and Robbie's right there to offer a place to stay.

No, I couldn't have agreed with a lot of his life choices in the past 15 years.

"Clyde, will you hang up so I can call back and leave Robbie a message, on Robbie's machine?" I brayed like a horse that I was passing in a nearby pasture. The headset felt funny. I clicked him off, and listened to the music:

(insert if copy right-okay by Billy Joel) . . .


A Matter Of Trust
The Bridge Original Release: 1986

Some love is just a lie of the heart
The cold remains of what began with a passionate start
And they may not want it to end
But it will, it's just a question of when
I've lived long enough to have learned
The closer you get to the fire the more you get burned
But that won't happen to us
Because it's always been a matter of trust

I know you're an emotional girl
It took a lot for you to not lose your faith in this world
I can't offer you proof
But you're gonna face a moment of truth
It's hard when you're always afraid
You just recover when another belief is betrayed
So break my heart if you must
It's a matter of trust

You can't go the distance
With too much resistance
I know you have doubts
But for God's sake don't shut me out

This time you've got nothing to lose
You can take it, you can leave it
Whatever you choose
I won't hold back anything
And I'll walk away a fool or a king
Some love is just a lie of the mind
It's make believe until it's only a matter of time
And some might have learned to adjust
But then it never was a matter of trust

I'm sure you're aware love
We've both had our share of
Believing too long
When the whole situation was wrong

Some love is just a lie of the soul
A constant battle for the ultimate state of control
After you've heard lie upon lie
There can hardly be a question of why
Some love is just a lie of the heart
The cold remains of what began with a passionate start
But that can't happen to us
Because it's always been a matter of trust

The road began to roll over the small earthly elevations, the trees began to thicken as pines. The air was too cool, but I opened the windows and blew cold air on my face, scattering my hair about my face until I couldn't see.

I rolled the windows back up, and prepared to call Daniel in Houston. The old fart would probably be taking a nap this time of day. He was a sweet old fart, at 62. He was getting settled into retirement. If he wouldn't marry me when I had the whole scenario planned in Vegas, I knew he hadn't gotten married in the past two years. He might show up, just to gamble and change scenery.





. . . to be continued . . .