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| My mother included her in our family from the beginning. She accompanied my siblings and me to the USA in 1966. |
It is 6:20am. Three hours before I usually get up! Here I sit, dressed and on time to take her to the hospital.
Last night, I had set my alarm for 5:30am so that I could jump in the shower and be ready to drive her to yet another Dr.'s appointment. But just as my alarm is going off, I hear her throw open her door and shuffle into the bathroom.
Always in the way. She. Is. Always. In. The. Way.
I wait for her to finish and go back to her room. Now, I only have enough time to brush my hair and teeth.
I finish quickly to get out of the way of the regular routine my son and husband have before they leave for school and work. That's what considerate people do.
It is now 6:05 and I make my way to the car. I know she is awake, so as I go toward the front door, I knock on her bedroom door and say, Ready? She doesn't answer, but she knows it takes 15 minutes to get to the hospital from here. I will meet her outside.
It is 6:20 and we should have left 5 minutes ago. I walk back into the house to retrieve her. The front door is locked so I ring, ring, ring the doorbell. She takes a while to come to the door. "Come on!" I holler at her. "You have to be there by 6.30!" I shout.
I wonder if my neighbors can hear me. I can't control my anger with her. She is the anti-thesis of everything I hate - lazy, dumb, inconsiderate, complaining, unresponsive, ineffectual, silent, and a follower who hides behind religion to excuse her lack of motivation, her ignorance, her inability to care for herself. Jesus will do it. 'fraid not.
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| Her bedroom today. Hoarding is just one sign of her instability, not due to the Cancer but as a result of a lifetime of unresolved issues. |
It may seem heartless for me not to want to care for her as she battles cancer, but this is not new, a special circumstance, it is the norm. And not only does she expect someone else to take on her burdens, she requires it and isn't thankful for any help.
Last night as my sister-in-law explained to me what our aunt's end-of-life scenario would be, I felt sad. It dawned on me how little time she really had, and for a time, I felt compassion. I have waves of it toward her. But all that was erased when she not only kept me waiting once again, but then she let the car door fall shut and didn't try to reclose it. She looked at the door and then at me and decided she didn't care and started to walk away. "Close it again." I shouted for the second time this morning. She reluctantly did. Then she turned to walk herself into the hospital because I was going to be damned if I went out of my way for her!
She's infuriating! I was prepared to go into the appointment with her but not after her late departure. Do it yourself, I thought. You can go this alone because you're so difficult.
I drove away even before she reached the front door only to have to return because I hadn't given her the prescriptions for the procedure. Why did I have them? Because the oncologist's office wanted to make sure she had them with her. Because I had to make phone calls for her to schedule them. Because my mom, the nurses and I weren't sure she would be responsible for her own care! So, I turned the car around, pulled over leaving the hazards on and ran inside to give her the script.
I see her still making her way down the hall. 'Oh, come on!' I think to myself. 'It's not that far from the front door to the first medical office in the building. Gimme a break.'
I call to her, "I have your script." She looks at me and keeps walking. "Stop!" I shout. I know I'm in a public space but I can't can't can't help myself. I hate her right now. I really do.
I catch up and thrust the script into her hand and turn around and leave.
"Fuck you." I say to her in my head, but I bet I'm so mad, she can hear it.
Once home, I am too wired to go back to sleep, which was the plan. Just as well. I get a call. It's the nurse. "Are you Consuelo's neice?" Yes, I say. "We need a list of her prescriptions. Can you tell me what she is taking?" "She's there isn't she?" I ask timidly. Sometimes, people don't know she can speak English because it takes her so long to answer or not answer. "Yes, but she doesn't have a list and she doesn't remember. She even said she wasn't sure why she was here. That you just dropped her off." "No, she knows she's there for a port." I responded defensively. The nurse says, "I"m sure she does. Believe me, I know. But she's insisting that she doesn't know what she takes and we really would like that list." I don't know any of that stuff but I'll see if I can find out some information in her room. "Even if you can just read off the labels to me, that would be helpful." I say, "OK. I'll call you back."
We're not allowed in her room. She doesn't let us in. I am shocked by how much more stuff she's accumulated since I was there a few months back. There is literally only a foot path from the front door to her bed. The door doesn't open all of the way because the closet behind it has erupted and spread well into the rest of the room. I don't see any prescription bottles on top of her dresser, even as I gingerly lift papers, bags, clothing to peer underneath. I step closer to her bed that is covered three feet deep in stuff - blankets, towels, books, rosary beads, a dish of half eaten food. I step on something greasy. I am totally grossed out. Ugh! What the fuck is that?
I walk on bags, slippers, newspaper so that I don't have to touch the floor and still can't find anything on this side of the room except for a pill dispenser that has a compartment for each day of the week. I open it but I don't know what each of the 8 pills are for, only a few look like drugs while the others look like vitamins.
Ah, I think I see her stack of vitamins and a small bin that holds prescriptions. I turn to leave with the entire tray when I notice another pill bottle toward the back. I pick it up. I don't know what these convoluted names mean. I didn't take Chemistry even in High School. I read the bottle. Disgard by 04/14. Oh. I look at the other bottles I have in the tray. Shit. They all expired in 2006. None of this will do me or the hospital any good.
I call the nurse back. It is now only 15 minutes before they're supposed to start the proceedure. "I'm sorry. I did find medication in a weekly dispenser but I'm not sure what they are. There are no bottles that I can find. "(She doesn't know that my aunt is a hoarder.) "Well, we can only do what we can do. I'll tell the Dr. It would be helpful if she wrote these things down." I agree.
Today, I'm going to have her do that and to make a list of her assets and other necessities. There is no time left and she is quickly failing.
Her cancer was kept at bay for the past 9 months, but now, the tumor is growing again. Funny how the 9 months gestation is the same for this tumor as it would have been had she had a child. She never did and that's one of the biggest causes of uterine cancer.
Her eminent death is the very reason I think that we die as we lived. I can't equate this with every death, but I can with the ones I'm intimate with. She was always a passive person. She let things happen to her. Cancer is that kind of disease. It happens to people. And like her life, she now needs others to care for her.
There's also a beauty to cancer, if I may. I am speaking about my aunt in particular, not about every cancer patient. For her, this is how she lived. And I think that "God" has given her this way out in order for her to rise to a level of human interaction and to make amends with those around her. She is dying slowly so she could be a better person, have better relationships, rekindle old ones, make new friends, but she doesn't.
"God" also is giving her a chance to reflect on her life and be grateful. But she isn't.
With cancer, "God" has given her a chance to complete a bucket list. No more delaying. Do it now. But she didn't.
She chose to go about her life as she had always done, again and again not acting but going along as if nothing has changed. Not facing the fact that she could no longer drive. Not addressing the fact that she had difficulty dressing herself, walking, eating.
She has filed for bankruptcy twice. Her room is filled with the fruits of her ill financial gains.
She would drive an hour home at 11pm from over an hour away after a Bible class and on several occassions had to call my brother in the middle of the night to come change her flat tire, to dig her out of a snow embankment, to have her car towed because she seized the engine. We noticed her car was leaking oil and instead of paying $500 to fix it, she drove it until she couldn't drive it no more! Then, she asked each one of us to buy her a new car.
That's is the woman we live with. The woman we invited into our home years before my mother would move in with us. The woman who lived with my mother all her life previously and the woman who resented her for it. They don't speak to each other and when they do, they bark. It would take me years to figure this out. One day, I saw my daughter relaying messages from them - "Tell Tita Chet that her laundry is done." "Tell Mae I will drive her to CVS."
I was her least favorite neice. She had slapped me across the face when I was six. When my mother found out, she told her she better not ever do that again. She has never been kind. When my daughter was 12, for her birthday, she asked my aunt to make a Filipino dessert that she was particularly good at. My aunt said no. She didn't feel like it. Had it been my mom, she would have felt flattered, but my aunt said no.
She is oddly suspicious of everyone and seems to think nurses that have met her for the first time are being mean to her. Last week when she had to get a blood transfusion, she wanted a chair with a TV. There was a woman leaving and my aunt wanted to sit in that seat. The nurses apologized and said a woman who is on oxygen needed that seat so that she could plug in. My aunt complained and cried. She cried. The nurses kept coming up to me to explain. I said, It dosen't matter to me. I totally understand. But the whole day, my aunt was pissy. I left her there and an hour later she called me crying that they still hadn't found the right blood and she didn't want to sit there any longer. What?!? Too damn bad, I wanted to shout. But instead I said, "It won't be long now."
I have no sympathy.
I am not patient or kind or pleasant. I can't be.
So, I updated my brother and sister and other family members, as I do now and then, and asked for help. I know how I should act. But I can't do it. And no matter how much of a pain in the ass and asshole my aunt is, she is suffering through this disease and its treatment. Having someone yell at you is not helpful.
Something my aunt will never have the benefit of knowing, I know. I willingly asked she and my mom into our home. My wonderful, really, saintly husband and children agreed. And we live relatively happily together. I don't ask my brother or sister to pat me on the back. It's something I wanted to do.
But I also know that when I need them, they are there. I emailed them and everyone - sister-in-laws, brother-in-law along with my siblings - rallied empathy, suggestions, solutions. That's how great my family is.
Yes, our aunt is a piece of...I'll be polite and say, work. But despite her, we can all get together and show love for each other.
Sad to think, really. Due to her own insecurities, Consuelo had received very little comfort her entire life.
Mental illness is a bitch!
ReplyDeleteI think her life would have been so much better if only someone had diagnosed it in time.
ReplyDelete