I set up this blog a while ago with intentions of writing but have not done so yet so here I go!
I called this blog "The Chronicles of Helen" because I plan on writing stories about my mom and all of her escapades as I was growing up. I also plan to write about some of the difficulties of living with a parent who has dementia and how our relationship has changed and the feelings around that. I imagine that this will be a free-flow journal of sorts aimed at helping me to be a better support system for my mom while helping me sort out some of my own difficulties as well.
Currently, my mom and I live in the house that I grew up in from 8th grade until about the age of 23 or so. I lived here throughout college and then moved to an apartment around the corner where I stayed for a few years and then have lived in several apartments since then. About 3 1/2 years ago when it seemed increasingly worrisome to leave my mom for extended periods of time, I decided to move in to help my mom and I had hoped we would share the expenses. The idea was presented to my mom as a way to help each other out financially. She was having difficulty making ends meet and I had hoped to save some money by sharing expenses. She signed her house over to me at the time because she was hoping to declare bankruptcy. This never happened. She also did not share the expenses.
While she was initially very excited about having me move in, this excitement ended rather quickly for a number of reasons. First of all, she was not herself due to the dementia and her declining mental state of mind. I had asked her several times to clean out two of the bedrooms so that I could have my own living room and bedroom upstairs. Week after week when this didn't happen, I had to take it upon myself to move her things. This did not make her very happy. When I tried to include her in my plans to "fix things up" she simply shut down and didn't want to participate in the decision making process. My mom who had been like my best friend throughout my life now acted as if she despised me. I heard family and friends say to me, "It's not her, it's the illness." And while this makes sense in theory, it did not make me feel better while I was going through it. It was completely stressful and made me feel very sad. A year earlier I had lost my sister to Huntington's Disease and now I was losing my mother too.
A series of events occurred over the course of my first year in the house, which I will talk about more in future posts, and eventually my brother Mike came and took my mom for a "visit" to his house in Rochester. He ended up moving her in with him where she resided with him for about a year. Until..... he realized that it wasn't as easy as he thought. My mom began accusing him of stealing from her and hid his things, all things that she had been doing while she was with me. He told me that he couldn't handle it and "needed a break." In July of 2011, he brought her back for my niece's wedding and left her here for what was supposed to be a temporary arrangement. It is now October 28, 2012 and my mom still lives here. All of this is meant to give you a bit of background information regarding the current situation.
In the next few days, I will write a little about my mom's daily activities and what I hope to change about the current situation. After I complete this background information, my goal is to gather stories about my mom and me growing up. Finally, I would like to try to gather other stories about my mom from before I was born. I think that we have had many interesting experiences together, but I suspect that there is more to her life before me as well that I am unaware of. My childhood was generally very good and I felt that I was surrounded by a loving family. I think that I got the best of my mom being the youngest of five children and I am truly grateful for my experiences. I am struggling a bit as an adult and am hoping to do what is best for my mom while also being able to live a happy life myself. I feel like my life has been "on hold" for the past few years and this situation has affected my overall decision making skills. I think that I avoid things now and procrastinate even more than normal because of my current situation. Even this blog has been procrastinated for several months. I hope that by beginning to write it will help me to problem solve and move forward with all that I need to do. Good night for now. :)
