Life After Mom Died

I’m 32 years old. An only child. My uncle Thurston passed away in 2019 while waiting for a heart transplant. My mom passed away in 2020 unexpectedly due to heart issues. Before she passed she and I lived together and it was awesome. It’s always been me and my mom, like two peas in a pod. And then out of no where something began happening to her mentally in September of 2017 and I didn’t understand it….it got so bad that she felt we needed to move. So we moved about 30 minutes away. But that didn’t help and it got worse. She would be yelling all hours of the day and night at the neighbor who lives below us at the first place we lived at, when she started thinking we were in danger. Of course being in an apartment, they couldn’t allow the disturbing of the peace, so we have to leave. She said we needed to get even further away. so I turned down a job offer I had just accepted to move with her to Florida. Mind you we knew no one in FL. She began thinking that our downstairs neighbor in Maryland was out to kill us both. But that wasn’t the case. Like I said I didn’t understand what was going and and I thought maybe she would stop having those thoughts. I did try to get her help when it got to the point where she barricaded our front door every single night, and then moved just enough stuff for me to be able to leave for work in the morning (at my former job).

There we’re a few times when the cops were called by her because she swore she could hear the neighbor talking about killling and robbing us. She thought that he could see us showering and all kinds of things. So officers would ask me if I heard anything and I would tell the truth, I said no. I said what can I do, they said unless she is a danger to herself and others, there’s nothing we can do.

So long story short, in Sept of 2018 we packed what would fit in a rented Chevy Traverse and left. We got an apartment there, and the same thing ended up happening with her thinking the neighbor from Maryland was after us, and then she began talking about how she heard him talk about killing family members of ours, and she began thinking our upstairs neighbor in FL was working with him. She would call people and ask if they are okay, because she was hearing voices that were telling her that people had been killed etc.

She did okay for a little while, but then the hollering resumed as she would beg and plead for this man in Maryland to leave us alone. But no one was bothering us. We never even spoke to the man who lived below us in Maryland. After giving her many chances to stop disturbing the peace with the yelling etc, we had to leave the apartment in FL, so she broke the lease and did a $3 buy out. Which I ended up having to pay the last $2000 after she passed away.

At one point in FL she did let them hospital keep her in their behavioral health unit for a few weeks, but once they deemed her crisis was over, they released her with medication to keep her calm. But once that medicine was done, she didn’t refill it. I was struggling living with this day in and day out, so when we had to move out of our apt in FL, I began renting a room in a woman’s house from Craigslist. That’s how badly I just couldn’t live in the same household as her anymore. It was taking its toll on me really badly. So she got a tiny apt and was living on her own. She could still handle her business and most of the time while in public she wouldn’t act how she would at home.

so fast forward to last year 2021, my uncle who lives in MD passed away unexpectedly at the home he was living in, from a heart attack. So now my grandmothers last child has died. She lost her second daughter when she was just four, she got hit by a train.

my grandma has three other grandchildren but they all live in Los VEGAS and they never come around. I have seen them in person less than 10 times my whole life. So me being the only child, i have always been there for my grandma, always.

now my grandma is 83 years old, she’s tired of doctors and tired of depression and stress. Her health seems to be worse each time I visit.

I work from home now, so since October of last year I have been splitting my time between Maryland and Florida to spend time with my boyfriend, his family and then here in MD with my family and friends here.

we found out just last week that my grandma has had several mini strokes. Her vision in her left eye is worsening, she has rheumatoid arthritis all over her body, her pressure gets high so often, and it’s like her doctors and these people in the hospital aren’t helping anything. They send her home saying oh your lungs are clear and your heart is good. But her health doesn’t improve.

for almost a year she didn’t take care of herself aka stopped going to appointments and when winter came she used the weather as an excuse to not go. So once it warmed up, and once I got here I kept begging her to make some appointments. I have been here since March 18th of this year and she is just now starting to make and get to appointments. A family member thankfully takes her to the ones that are far away.

anyway, I keep getting word that people are talking about me behind my back a little saying I need to move to MD and take care of my grandma full time, and others say you are the only grandkid doing anything for her and you do everything you can while you are there, but don’t forget you have to live your life too.

so I try to, but each time I come stay for a few months, even doctors are like she shouldn’t be living alone. Well I can’t fix everything, I don’t want to move here and just live in her guest room. I want to be able to still have a life, and it’s way too expensive to rent apartments here.

so I’m just struggling with beating myself up lately. I want to go to grad school and work on my masters so that I can get a better paying job / a lot closer to my dream job of being a child therapist or school counselor. I was a teacher from 2015-2021, preschool, toddlers and pre-k. And I want to get a home loan so my boyfriend and I can have our own place again. He’s at his dad and step moms in FL, which is why I split my time between Maryland and FL. And I could get a higher paying job at least 2-3 dollars more if I could get an in person job. But because of having to be able to split my time between two states, I can’t. So I go back and forth about trying my masters online or a certificate in a specialized area. It’s hard to focus on myself when I’m at my grandma’s. Her memory is declining and even she notices it. I have to help her remember to pay her bills now, and she hides important things from herself and then I have to help her find it. When I first got here she had forgotten to pay her cable and one other bill and while I was working they cut it off. She hadn’t gotten paid yet so I had to pay it out of my own money, which I really needed. Her debit cards keep getting hacked so I had to pay her cable bill a few times since I have been here, and lots of groceries, cigarettes etc. That’s money I could have put into my savings. But I paid for the things and wouldn’t dream of asking her to pay me back in full, because that’s not the kind of person I am. But it definitely affected me negatively.

I had a very scary moment while I was at a stop light today. I pictured myself just releasing my foot from the break and letting the car go into oncoming traffic. I also thought if I died it would kill her, she would be reunited with all of her kids, and all of her siblings. She outlived all 4 of her siblings. But then I snapped out of it.

I have never had such a harmful moment before. It scared me. That’s been a lot I have been though even when I was in middle school and high school. Which I won’t go into, it’s a lot. But today, when I was at the stop light, I knew that this is all becoming too much for me. And that I need to look into therapy, because I don’t know how to handle all of this properly.

it’s nice to have a safe place, here, to say how I’m feeling.

tomorrow is a new day and I hope it’s easier to get through than today.