And so it goes...

Hiya Steve, how's life treating you lately?

It's been rather bizarre around here. Have you ever spent time with an 89 year old bipolar woman with dementia?  Lemmetellya, it's just freakin' bizarre.  The other day, she sat in the rocking chair and apparently worked herself up into an angry frenzy about something that was totally UNREAL, and I thought she was going to haul off and punch me in the face. You really cannot reason with someone who is totally unreasonable like that.  Trying to explain to her that her husband is dead is awful. She hates hearing it, but I want her to know the truth.  I once overheard an orderly in her old nursing home tell a distraught woman in a wheelchair that her husband "was outside doing something and would be back soon." She had been crying about her husband and you just sort of knew he was dead and gone, but that orderly LIED to her, and that poor woman sat by the door all day long WAITING for him to return.  That just broke my heart.

Yeah growing old sucks.  My hubby Pete has been involved with a sibling rivalry of sorts most of his life, because he was adopted at 3 months old.  So, his cousins (who spent more time with Florence than he did when he was at college), told Florence that he wasn't REALLY her REAL family at all, he was just some total STRANGER'S baby, and who knows what you will get from a total stranger like that, you can't expect him to be a TRUE member of the family, not ever, and you can't trust him either.  They brainwashed his own mother against him for many years, and told her all sorts of lies about him.  It took us nearly 2 years to UNDO all the damage that they did, and to PROVE to her that he is a good man.

Not only that, but when she fell a few times at her home, the cousins decided (without telling Pete or his sister, who was also adopted), to put Florence into a nursing home. But of course, before they did that, they made her sign all sorts of papers....one of those papers deemed her as "demented" and "unable to make decisions for herself," another put one of them in charge of her as power of attorney, another was changing her WILL to add themselves to it, and took 30% of what Pete originally would have inherited away from him to dole out to themselves...and another was to add themselves to all of Florence's bank accounts.  They spent her money, they took over her life, and they basically treated Florence like shit. These were her NEICES, whom she took care of from the time they were teenagers and their own mother (Florence's sister) died.  She trusted them. She depended on them. And they screwed her over left and right. The way people treat elderly in this country is a SIN.

Here's the good part...and yes, it's a happy ending...Florence called Pete to say she was in a nursing home, (he was FURIOUS, as was his sister), and she asked him to come get her.  She's been living with us ever since.  His sister's husband is also a Forensic CPA, meaning he can trace every DIME of Florence's money and where it was spent, and how, and by WHOM....and so we no longer hear from those cousins anymore. We changed the will BACK to remove them from it, and restore it to the original, where Pete and his sister get a 50/50 split of her estate. And now this same Forensic CPA is her fiduciary power of attorney. He is now in charge of her house. We waited four months for those bitches to sign off as trustees on that house, (they put it in an "irrevocable trust," before she went into the nursing home too).  So, now HE is in charge of it, and Florence can make her OWN decisions, because she is perfectly capable of doing so. She is NOT as "demented" as they made her sound to the doctor who signed the paper. She is very intelligent, very coherent, and very sure of herself.

Ya know what hurts her though? The fact that these neices of hers no longer write to her, or call her. They have totally IGNORED her the entire time she's lived with us.  They didn't even send her a birthday card. She's helped them by paying their rent when they needed it, she's helped them out by taking care of them when their mother died, (she sort of became their "mom" after that happened), and she's given them everything in her heart that was possible to give, even if they made mistakes.  But now that she lives with Pete, the "black sheep" who "really isn't their TRUE family," well, they no longer contact her.  And that HURTS HER FEELINGS very much. She blames herself, for not staying in the nursing home like they wanted her to, and feels that THAT is why they turned their backs on her. The reality is, they don't want to call and have Pete answer the phone, (or ME for that matter, I'll rip 'em both a new one if they even TRY to come near her), and they know that Pete's sister's husband can put them both in jail for spending Florence's money while she was incapacitated in the nursing home. We just use this to our advantage though.  We showed Florence the wedding invitations that we mailed to them both, but of course, they didn't come, they didn't send a card, nothing. So that reinforces to Florence that they are the ones who have the problem, not US. They just make it easier to convince her of that. It's karma.

In Florence's mind, she's still in her 40's.  She's still at the prime of her life.  She forgets sometimes that she is really 89 years old.  Then she gets all frustrated, and tells me "Never get old. It's terrible."  So I tell her "I have no intention of sticking around after I'm 50." (And that's the God's honest truth).  This world has gone to hell in a handbasket, frankly, and I can't even stand living in it NOW, much less waiting around another 50 years to see it worsen.  To hell with THAT idea.  No thanks.  That's the same reason i decided that I never wanted to have children of my own. This world is too messed up, and no matter HOW I try to protect them and raise them right, the world and all its negative influences, will mess them up...and that would really break my heart to see.  (I was also told at age 16 that I couldn't have kids). So, of course, why should I WANT something I can't HAVE??  That's how I justified it, by saying the world sucks and I don't want MY kids struggling through it like I have.

Well, anyway, I'm only 42, but I'm expected to be Florence's nursemaid.  I've never BEEN a nursemaid, nor do I know HOW to be a nursemaid, but yet, that is my role here apparently.  It's hard though.

I'll write more later.

Love, Rebecca