The Question I am asked most...
How long can you continue? I have no answer for that. Nor can I explain why a toddler uses the doggy door, other than it is there.
Enough muddling, today the kids and I went to a store that they have been waiting to explore. They had a grand time! It did us all some good to get out and relax even when shopping is not relaxing to me. It is time to get on with whatever it is I am to do for the rest of this year.
Not bad for her first attempt!
I think she found quite a bit of pleasure in the making of these.
The Slime in the package did not work as well.
The youngest bought some putty and tried her hand at making flowers...
I have found that I am in a constant state of "on guard". Trying to think of meals to prepare I come up blank. Too many days of preparing and being told that is not what is wanted. A refrigerator full of "left-overs" that were never touched in the first place. A timely exit of DH each time "pills" are due doesn't help the mindset either. As I type this, he exits just before the 9pm meds are due.
Relaxing during the night and allowing SIL to take care of the things that she can take care of is done with trepidation for the "fall" that is bound to happen. It is currently happening every other day or so. It has come to getting sleep myself and hoping there isn't any attempt to exit or staying up and being exhausted during the day.
Medication time is taking about an hour now. Not that long to take the pills, but recording the production number on the applesauce packet, comparing it to the time the pills are dispensed, lining up the pills on the worksheet and checking off the pills as they are taken. All this must be done by SIL and is painstakingly slow for accuracy's sake. None of this would be entertained by a facility. This is my biggest reason for not considering her placement anywhere.
I have also come to the conclusion that during her stay at the behavioral health hospital she was quite the handful. Being through the things that she has been through in the last 6 years totally accounts for all of it. The trouble is that she suffered alone without her brother and now she lives with him. He has no idea how she has suffered alone, then again neither do I. I can count on one hand the number of times we spoke of the course of 20 years and on the other the number of visits and still not add up to ten.
It is not that we feel guilty or responsible for the things that have happened, perhaps we should, but there wasn't any connection between us. Her mother was not going to have me about and she is her mother's only daughter. All the tasks of being a daughter fell squarely on her shoulders. She has buried two brothers, her mother, her husband and the only one I was involved with was her dad. I attended the funeral of her oldest brother but I didn't know him.
I found all to be stand offish. Perhaps it was really me. There wasn't a sense of acceptance or interest for that matter. Still, I might have tried harder to fit in but I didn't. All that is water under the bridge and now the bridge needs care. It has been said that each traumatic event requires so much time to recover from.
How does one recover when the losses come so close together that you can hardly bury one family member before the next one passes? To be diagnosed with a debilitating illness and then to lose your spouse? It is a burden that she bore alone. She did have her husband's family and they were all quite closely knit. So why is she here now? Aside from no one being of sound body to care for her, I have no idea. It is time to close this and try to rest and figure out tomorrow... when it gets here.
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