The Pythons Grip

Pythons are large and muscular, boas who kill their prey by squeezing, or constricting, until it suffocates. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, right now it feels like my mother's grief is squeezing and constricting life out of me. Her grief has been systematically draining me of all energy. The thing is that this is nothing new. I have lived with her sense of loss and untreated grief all of my life. Siblings all left home long before me and I was left to carry the burden of her emotional ill health.  Now, as she has got older and her health has deteriorated, her short term memory has begun to fade and she is emotionally frail again.  The death of her companion animal has, quite understandably, triggered it all.Over the past six days she has sobbed and told me, at least one hundred times, how desolate Max looked when we got in the car and went home the last time we were here, just a week earlier.  She has sobbed and told me at least one hundred times how much they missed going to Fitzroy, the home I sold two years after Darryl's death.  She has sobbed and told at least one hundred times that  she has no reason to get up now that Max is not here.  She has sat in her chair, vacantly staring into space just as she used to do when I was a young girl.  I repeatedly came home to find her like that. I have rung my sister to tell her I am all spent and that I have to go home tomorrow. I didn't ask for anything but my sister did say she would come and be with her for a couple of nights, change shifts with me. I will also be letting my brother's know that I have reached my limit.  I am trying to set boundaries to protect myself at the moment. I have to or I will wither.  I can, as I have been in the habit of doing, visit each week, but I cannot do more. This is a load that has to be shared.