Ramblings...

Somedays I forget that I'm dealing with two diseases in my family. We seem to spend almost all our time as a family concentrating on mom's alzheimer's and dad's parkinson's is often overlooked. And yet, in the reality of life, he is the one I look at and watch to see how he's doing. His struggle is so physically obvious that all of us, especially mom, spend a lot of energy on him and holding him up with the schear power of our mental wills.

Because mom looks so 'normal' i find that I am often harsh with her or short-tempered or exasperated or, or, or... I know the disease is not her fault and I know that her responses are not personal choices to make life difficult but it is easy to forget. I get lost in the appearance of 'normal'.

Somedays I get lost in the old patterns of my relationship with my mom, especially the patterns that didn't work very well! We engaged in power struggles for the entirety of my teenage years and even with the alzheimer's our pattern for powering over each other still exists. We both love and need to be right about the other. I have always prided myself on 'knowing my mom' and she has always declared her understanding of me even if we hadn't spoken for a year. Two mighty and stubborn women in the same household is an interesting challenge in the best of circumstances and these circumstances create fuel for even more interesting times...

I often wonder what our early relationship was really like as I'm sure my memories are skewed through my childhood understandings and I am unable to 'look back' with anything resembling adult emotions. Every time mom responds in a way that reminds me of my childhood I'm immediately caught in a flood of childhood emotions and often behave in very childish ways.

Ah, so much for an evening's rambling...