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Physically, I am feeling much better today. Emotionally, I am still a wreck. My improved physical health is going toward arguing and off-loading with people who are not here. It took me 2 hours to fill the bee fountain because I kept tripping over phantoms on the way to the watering can. Poor bees... It is so hot out there that I am having to fill the fountain twice a day. The fountain was bone dry by the time I finally stayed on task long enough to do the do. It is always the little ones who pay for our giant psychosis.
Thought it might help to vent the dominant thread of my phantom argument.
I do not know, but I do believe that the real subject of my husband's verbal attack this past weekend was his guilt over not having visited his parents since May. It is a heart-ripper down there in their private nursing home. I am not at all sure a family home turned nursing home is any easier to visit than the state run nursing homes. I rather enjoy visiting the retirement centers, but that is another thread. His mother is semi-vegatative since her stroke three years ago and his father's control issues are growing faster than his physical capabilities are declining. I cannot remember the last time we drove away from the house he was raised in when my husband was not in tears. For the entire 34 years I have listened to his long-winded stories, my father-in-law has been inordinately fond of discussing the things other people cannot possibly understand about him. What I call his "Can't Can." He can be downright vicious about it. The fellow has a very deep need to be misunderstood.
As the mother-in-law's huntington's disease has progressed, the FIL has become ever quicker to throw his Can't Can at us. Her disease is all about him. Since her stroke disabled the last of her physical capabilities and his domestic staff has grown into a small army, he now has professional help in hurling that particular weapon. No biggie to me, his white-trash daughter-in-law. I never have expected anything else from him and can side-step it with practiced ease. Hey, I still have contacts in Bolivia... To his sons and grandsons, it is increasingly devastating. This family is a natural man clan. The only women in this family are the women that married into it and we ALL maintain contacts in other hemispheres. We are ALL quick to run for the safety of the ladies room.
Don't really know where I am going with this. Just sorting?
Thought it might help to vent the dominant thread of my phantom argument.
I do not know, but I do believe that the real subject of my husband's verbal attack this past weekend was his guilt over not having visited his parents since May. It is a heart-ripper down there in their private nursing home. I am not at all sure a family home turned nursing home is any easier to visit than the state run nursing homes. I rather enjoy visiting the retirement centers, but that is another thread. His mother is semi-vegatative since her stroke three years ago and his father's control issues are growing faster than his physical capabilities are declining. I cannot remember the last time we drove away from the house he was raised in when my husband was not in tears. For the entire 34 years I have listened to his long-winded stories, my father-in-law has been inordinately fond of discussing the things other people cannot possibly understand about him. What I call his "Can't Can." He can be downright vicious about it. The fellow has a very deep need to be misunderstood.
As the mother-in-law's huntington's disease has progressed, the FIL has become ever quicker to throw his Can't Can at us. Her disease is all about him. Since her stroke disabled the last of her physical capabilities and his domestic staff has grown into a small army, he now has professional help in hurling that particular weapon. No biggie to me, his white-trash daughter-in-law. I never have expected anything else from him and can side-step it with practiced ease. Hey, I still have contacts in Bolivia... To his sons and grandsons, it is increasingly devastating. This family is a natural man clan. The only women in this family are the women that married into it and we ALL maintain contacts in other hemispheres. We are ALL quick to run for the safety of the ladies room.
Don't really know where I am going with this. Just sorting?
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Hey all, i know its been quite awhile since i posted on here. Its been a summer all right. Its been something else........... You know how they say not to open the can of worms? Well a few months ago i decided to find out what my due date would have been for my first baby, the one conceived by r***. My baby would have been due on March 4th of 2006. They would be 20 years old. I was R**** on June...
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My day...today...misplaced my debit card...didn't realize it until I got to the register after shopping to a full cart. Used a different debit card and pulled apart everything looking for missing debit card before I left parking lot. Got home, dropped keys. So now I have a missing debit card, missing keys. A full cartload to unload and put away. I got everything put away.Dumped purse for a...
I'm sad that your innocent and highly beneficial activities brought wrath upon your head. I think it's both sweet and awesome that you're beekeeping. I've read the articles about the threat to honeybees, the dearth of honeybees, and the importance of honeybees. You're doing some thing beautiful and great. You deserve praise and support. I praise you! I support you!
Hearts, however, grieve. And it can't be easy for your hubby to not see them, even if seeing htem is hard, too---there's lalways that "What last thing could I have said or done?" to plague us... or me, at least. My sis died without warning. My dad, no. But that didn't mean there weren't things that could have and perhaps should have been said to at least find more peace in my heart....
I know I struggled with the fact I cut off even my dad's parents after his death. I tried to see them but gran developed Alzheimer's and their home was never without several of my dad's other fam, and that was just... no. No. And no. I have some small regrets still, but small.... and it tooka bout ten years.
So coming at it from that POV.... His parents are clearly failing, fading, and his dad at least is making sure everyone else gives his misery some company, right? So is there any way to coordinate a visit so there's the maximum number of people around (sons, grandsons, etc.) so that your FIL will be overwhelmed and not be able to really go on the attack? It's an idea at least. Worked with one of my toxic fam---we always went in a crowd, that way she couldn't pick on any one person too long.... we gave *our* misery some company.... I dunno... just rambling along trying to find some way out besides Bolivia, though I hear Belize is nice,t oo....
Some things in life just aren't meant to be easy. This is one of them. I disowned my parents in 1977 and still haven't gained immunity from the pains of aging parents. I still feel their screams from the sucking black hole disowning my birth family left in my life.
In the case of my in-laws, the bonding never happened between myself and them. They still insist I pretend I am one of the cultured sorority girls they wanted for their son and... C'est la vie... I hide myself from them in accordance with their wishes. My husband envies me my lack of parental complexity, but I can't bring myself to encourage him down that line. Whatever their flaws, they never sold their children into prostitution or any of the other hard core extremes that prompted my decision. Decades of living with that sucking black hole has convinced me of the importance of making peace with what you are made of. I continue to encourage him to work it out, especially when it is hard.
Sigh... I've heard great things about Belize, too, but the Aymara of Bolivia stole my heart.
I don't feel it as a sucking black hole anymore. I used to. but then I realized the black hole was actually a big pit of black pain and yuck like La Brea or something--- so all that's left is being trapped until the predators finish you off even if it means they go too.....
I did the hard sh*t to be at peace with my dad inside myself at least before he died, but.... it is not easy.
And am working on it woith Mom now....
THe problem is that you have to feel the pain to get the gain in this case, and it sux.
Gentle symaptnhies to you and to your hubby.
In seminary I spent a year as an intern in training serving people in a Presbyterian Homes nursing home. We seminarians were close friends and usually visited each other for support. But nobody visited me. I asked my seminary classmates why. They said that of all the hospitals we were serving--cancer hospitals, all kinds--mine was the hardest for people to take.
I think you're on to something when you write "I am not at all sure a family home turned nursing home is any easier to visit than the state run nursing homes."
I'm like you, I enjoyed my year of service there. But it wasn't generally true of others.
Sorry how the illness his parents are going through bothers your hubby and is passed along your lives as a couple. Sort away.
Hey, I'll say hi to Bolivia for you as I fly over it on the way to Uruguay next week. Last time I was there I got off the plane and passed out cold from altitude sickness. Beautiful place, but high up there like Tibet in the La Paz area.
Anyway, sort away. And send my love to your blessed bees.
As a smoker, I get beat up allot by the folks who advocate quantity of life over quality of life. I have yet to meet one of those fanatics who will talk about geriatric care options... What is it you are asking me to covet, folks? Have you looked at it yourselves????
My mother, MIL and FIL are all among those anti-smokers. They have the lung-power to carry them through many more years of their chosen life-style... I hope they out-live me. My mother has gone 15 years without the ability to get her immaculate lungs out of bed on her own. 15 years of adult diapers... Puff puff.