Heading to school with Beck in the backseat, I was talking to my mother.
"I don't understand why she didn't just call you...I understand her not wanting to call me...but why not you?" My mother says, her voice heavy with emotion, and that troublemaker, the ol' guilt.
Grandma never called me, or at least it was so rare, I can't remember her ever doing it. The day she went to the ER because of chest pains--I had happened to call her that evening, right before my calculus class. It was just pure luck on my part. She told me about her chest pain, and asked what she should do. I, of course, freaked out, and drove immediately to Ridgecrest after explaining that she needed to go to the ER right now. It was that day that we found out she was diabetic.
Over the past year or even more, both my mother and my uncle made extensive efforts to call her on a frequent basis, only she never answered. After a while, she didn't pay her Mediacom bill, so her house phone was turned off, even though her cellphone bill was directly coming out of one of her bank accounts--so it always worked. But she didn't pick up her little flip phone either. A few times, over the months, my uncle and my mother called the police to do a "wellness check," and at one point, a few months ago, my mother rang the police with the specific purpose of them picking up Grandma on a 5150 because Mom suspected Grandma was "gravely disabled" (the police disagreed, and never did anything).
I told my mother today that I am guilty of "inaction." I wanted to have my grandmother conserved as early as December of last year, but I didn't follow through on that for a variety of reasons--one, my mother was venomously against it, two, it would cost several thousand dollars, money I didn't have, and three, the last time Grandma visited her GP, the doctor told me that Grandma wasn't disabled enough to merit such a drastic measure--that Grandma was in no "danger of eminent death" (she died about three to four months later, anyway), and lastly four, was I really ready to take care of my grandmother's health full time while I was barely hanging on to my own recovery (My mother thought it would be too much stress for me, just a few days ago, she called me "fragile")? The problem was, someone had to take care of her, and out of everyone in our family, she liked me the best. She expressed to me the last time that I saw her that she wanted to move to Yuppieville, and buy a condo where just the two of us could live since she made it clear to me that she did not want to live with my mother or her son. Such a solution would have been possible, at least for the next two years, but eventually, I have to leave Yuppieville because I'm planning on going to grad school.
My uncle is dealing with similar feelings of guilt, and from the TXT-messages I've seen of him talking to my mother, he is undergoing a huge emotional blow, with massive feelings of regret. While I do blame my uncle to a certain extent (he's the only one retired, and he had a new truck that could easily make the trip, two qualifications that I currently do not have) because he should have made a larger effort to go see her these past six months, but honestly, my grandmother refused to live with him, so he can't be held accountable for grandmother's nasty attitude. She had delusions concerning him that he stole her truck, that he ripped out a phone in her house, that he stole her TV (actually he bought her a bigger, nicer TV), and that he was violent when he lost his temper (he probably was at some point in his life).
My grandmother only told me that my mother was "too high strung," and that she didn't like being around her for large portions of time, and that my other grandmother irritated her, and Grandma refused to live with Grandma J for any length of time.
Over the weekend, my uncle threw a fit, and demanded that he and my mother and one of my cousins go to Ridgecrest, and clean up the house. Grandma was probably dead for days before anyone bothered to call the police. In fact, we're not sure who called the police or why. Apparently the smell in the house is unbearable, and my father couldn't walk inside, he was so taken back. There are large amounts of dead flies all over the floor. My mother told me that the carpet will have to be replaced, as the smell of death has permeated it. My uncle apparently was emotionally wrecked, and that only my cousin and my mother worked on cleaning the house. My mother, for good reasons, suggested to everyone that we just pay a professional to clean up the mess that dead people leave, but my uncle didn't want to pay the money. I told my mother before she left that seeing the house in that kind of shape could be highly traumatizing. She said that she conveyed similar to my uncle.
He just didn't listen. Just a day after he found out his mother was dead, he had to drive to Bakersfield to start the funeral arraignments. I mean, can't we just grieve for one fucking second before we get in a hurry to put her in the ground?
My mother told me today that Grandma "just gave up [on living]." I know my grandmother was a victim of learned helplessness, and of catastrophizing, two gateways to depression. Last time I visited her, she frequently told me that her "life couldn't get any worse" (actually, it can, try diabetic neuropathy, or a large stroke, etc). Despite this, she refused to let me help her by taking her to a doctor and getting some help for her chronic pain. She wanted nothing to do with it.
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