Some unexpected family issues have arisen and, even though you can't pick your family, they are your family and issues have to be dealt with. I have given myself a self imposed exile to shuffle the cards and try to deal a better hand.
I know that many of you have gone through a period of putting your life on hold to help out a family member. It is often a thankless job. A few years ago, my youngest brother put his own life on hold for two years during the illness and passing of our mother due to ALS. He will always be a saint in my eyes. Now I am taking over a situation for a less sympathetic family member. I am hoping to get this situation situated by the end of summer.
I can't say I don't have support. I can put an alarm (or private message) on face book to my five children and their "others" and they jump to the rescue. My dear, long-suffering husband is doing his best to keep the home fires burning while playing handyman at my new headquarters. But dealing with the complications of a stroke which an eighty year old man doesn't think happened is exhausting. Almost as exhausting as the leukemia he refuses to acknowledge or share with medical professionals when he arrives in various emergency rooms . . . .
It is just that I am finding twenty four hours a day, seven days a week to be a very long time.
Due to a secondary complication, I really cannot leave the premises at all for a period of 30 days (the time required by law to give notice for someone else to leave the premises). A very uncomfortable situation. A very quiet (as in spoken word) situation. A very noisy situation if you want to count the doors and cupboards slamming. A situation that could become more expensive as I replace what is being packed because, even though I hope to empty the premises by the end of summer, you still have to replace the necessities that are going out the door (like forks. Tell me, if you were beginning to pack your belongings - would you start with forks? And what happened to the forks that were here when you moved in? - but I digress)
I am finding that I am a person really set in her ways. I like my own kitchen, my own placing of the towels, the milk in the refrigerator, the coffee cups in the cupboard by the sink and coffeemaker. I find that the news program that I normally watch in the morning is the "right" one and the one that we watch here is the "wrong" one. I like knowing that if I want to put items in the washing machine someone else hasn't beaten me there by 2 minutes. I like having my shampoo and conditioner on the shelf in my shower. I like sleeping in my own bed, not a fold up cot in a corner of a room of someone with a Cpap machine. I like a moment to myself, not a moment by myself in a room with two silent people. I want to watch something besides sports on television. In case there are any other Queen of the Houses out there - do you know that these silly basketball games can last over 3 hours? And baseball games; forget it!
And the semi-potty-trained dog. All 2 1/2 pounds of ankle biting nervous energy.
And as much as I was considering retiring from or seeking a new job; this is not exactly how I pictured my life with my new found freedom.
I really don't need anyone to read or comment on what may become my online diary - maybe "How I spent my Summer Vacation"?
Several years ago (gosh, maybe fifteen?) I came across this wonderful print by Mary Engelbreit on my desktop calendar. I was trying to make a "life-decision" and needed someone to tell me to stop second guessing myself. I want to share it with anyone else who is stuck between a rock and a hard place and needs to know that whatever choice they make, life will go on.
