10:00 pm - January 10, 2011
Why.
When I re-read my last entry, it said: Are you trying to touch Bill Clinton?
Yes, I must be.
I'm sinking, floundering, trying to figure this all out. My job is taking care of G-ma, whose memory is spotty at best. I clean the condo, clean her, make appointments, cook, shop, make sure she eats, takes vitamins, feels as though she's controlling her life. I help her live her life as though she's doing it all herself.
I have an uncle who lives here in B-town, on the other side of the family from the ones I've waxed rhapsodic about-- this one hates me as though I was responsible for every junior and high school taunt he ever received.
He makes my job, the one that I love, and think of as giving back to the woman who has given so much to me, a spiky gunky tar-like mess of firey hell.
He calls my mother and screams that their mother is living in filth. That I haven't been by in weeks. That I (still) manage to physically abuse her daily. And that she has no food because I'm trying to starve her.
I've been dealing with this for years, as he's managed to sell this story to her two "younger" sisters as well. They call and threaten me "if I lay a hand on G-ma..." frequently.
Gentle reader, I'm sick and heartbroken. Every day, when I leave after dinner, G-ma tells me she loves me and is so grateful for me, because she never could have done all this on her own. In fourteen years, there has never been a day I haven't spoken to my grandmother. I have been there for EVERY single chemo treatment, doctor's appointment, blood-drawing, spinal injection, hospital stay, physical therapy, everything. I fed her when she threw it back up in a bowl that I held right after. I got in the pool and made her walk and do one more rep when she didnt' want to. I exercise her legs, I manicure her feet, I rub scented lotion on her ankles so she feels pretty.
I feel like one of those puff-ball mushrooms, full of sorrow instead of spores.
You know who I pity? No, it's not the asshats who criticize me-- they don't deserve her. It's me. That I'll never have a granddaughter who knows that I can be as amazing as she is.
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