Updates on my life...

I dropped off the blogisphere after my attempt at the topic du jour exercise, and I do have the desire to drop back in.

At this point in my life I need a distraction from the stress and overwhelming, oppressive responsibilities in my life.

Yet I don't want blogging to be yet another responsibility, another "have to" in a long, long list of have-tos....

Yesterday I spoke with my mother's home health nurse.  She suggested that we look into Hospice at this time for my mother.  In the back of my mind, ever since I learned of her diagnosis last June, I have known this is a possibility.  I knew that people get cancer, that cancer can be fatal.  I knew that mother had this thing called cancer.  But I consciously fought against making that connection.

The home health nurse stated that people who get discharged from home health and into Hospice sometimes do get better and get discharged out of Hospice and back into home health.  The thing is, I don't consider home health to be for the healthy.  So Hospice, to my mind, are the people who are even farther removed from health.  She said she had this conversation with my mother two days ago.  My mother has not brought it up in conversation with me.  Of course, we don't have too many long conversations as she usually falls asleep when she is talking to me.  Staying awake is not her strong suit since she is now taking Percocet and morphine.  So I have no idea what to do or where to go from here except into the dark night with her.  And hope one of us keeps from losing her mind to guide the other.

In the midst of all this, life goes on.  Work demands more than ever.  If 12-14 hours was the accepted minimum, it is demanding 16-18 hours now.  I just don't have it anymore.  So I rush and I delegate more than I ever have, then I stress about what I delegate, so I stay awake worrying away and not sleeping the hours that I am not there.

My oldest is getting ready to go to her first prom this year.  She has fanagled  going to a prom as a sophomore, and she - with typical self-centeredness and lack of concern for others that marks all humans her age - is characteristically hateful and cutting whenever she does not get her way.  She wants the last money for the family's groceries to be spent on her nail polish.  When she decides she doesn't like that $8 nail polish after all, she wants fake nails bought for her.  Then she breezes in and has a meltdown because I won't give her my only decent make-up.  Then I have to keep an open ear, because whenever she is denied her way, she turns around and says something cutting and cruel to her little sister, passing on the misery.

My youngest reels from being a victim of her sister's hormonal maelstrom to watching her beloved grandmother sink farther and farther away from her to spending less and less time with me as I try to support the household financially single-handedly, show her the love kids need to grow up at least somewhat functional, and make sure she has clean clothes that match somewhat (her father is color-blind).  It is a testament to her strong personality that she takes each day as it comes, expresses her emotions clearly and appropriately, and keeps her spirits up.  I want to be like her when I grow up.

So pardon me while I regroup.  My posts, I hope, won't always be dark.  I will try to keep managing my depression while pretending to be Super-Boss, Super-Mom, and the part of Supportive Daughter.

And in the back of my mind, I will dream of the day I will be a real writer.

If I live through this.