The Time Is Now

Illustration of the Parkinson disease by Sir William Richard Gowers from A Manual of Diseases of the Nervous System in 1886 showing the characteristic posture of PD patients (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I wrote to you, my blog followers, earlier today about how tired I am. I think the devil himself is leaning on me this very day. I do know that I am smart enough to not let him win. I do have enough fight left in me to tell him to go straight back to hell! If I am going to be dealt anything bad, I would rather get it all done in one day than a little bit each day. This day, I felt, was the ultimate day. After we got home from the auction, my brother went to take his nap. I knew he was disappointed that he didn’t get to purchase any of his coca cola items, but this is the chance you take when you go to auctions, right? Right! I didn’t really notice anything else different. I heard no sounds coming from the baby monitor, so I knew he was sleeping nicely. I really need to quit second guessing. During supper, from watching TV , and now tears, and I mean heavy tears. Tears I have never seen from anyone’s face before. His whole face turned bright red. I thought he was having another heart attack. He looks at me with his hands shaking profusely, and he asks me straight out, whose fault is it that I got this Parkinson’s? Who did I inherit this from? Why cant the doctors fix this stupid thing? I sat here once again, trying to change brain gears from the news to this. I listened without talking while he went on with his questions. For this one time, I didn’t feel the pity for him. I actually felt some sort of weird, strange anger. I can remember thinking, alright! you want the answers? you want the truth? even after all this time I have protected you from any bad information? He kept going on asking what he did wrong, did his dad give this to him, because his dad didn’t like him? Which was not true. Dad loved him, but he carried his own guilt over the upbringing of my brother. I think my brother must have used a half of a box of kleenex during this time of 21 questions. After he was done, I looked him straight on, straight in the eye, and I asked him, do you really, really want to know about Parkinson’s? He calmed down for a moment, and shook his head up and down as a yes signal. I got on the computer and googled Parkinson’s. I read it almost word for word to him, only leaving out big words, I knew he would not understand. I read him the symptoms. I read him about the weak legs, and the freezing of his legs. I read to him the five stages of Parkinson’s. He was quietly crying, but he was listening. Afterwards, I felt awful inside. It was if I was telling him for the first time that if you eat all the candy in the candy bowl, it will make you FAT and make your teeth fall OUT! It was all on the table, spread naked for everyone to see. The room got deathly quiet. I could not even hear his or my own breathing. A few moments of silence stayed with us, then he asked me if he was going to die. I said NO. Parkinson’s does not kill a person. He asked me if he would have to live in a nursing home. I choked on my own dry words, as I told him it was a possibility that maybe sometime I would not be able to take care of him. Silence, long silence. We both sat and each of us picked our own corner of the room to stare at. Each going over the words that were spoken. He stood up and took himself along with his walker, and put his dirty dishes in the sink, and left the room. It was like someone had said, the bar is now closed. He walked to his bathroom, and he is now in his bedroom. All tears are vanished. The quietness remains throughout the house. I know in my heart, that somewhere in his mentally challenged mind, he is mauling over this new information. I wonder what he is thinking, or how he is feeling. I don’t want to walk in on him in such a private time in his life. The baby monitor will tell me if he needs me. Somehow through this mal-function of asking and answering question times, there is God standing right there in between the two of us. He is wrapping an arm around each of our shoulders. He is consoling us, breathing his love into our lungs. It is so strange and yet it isn’t. I have asked for his help haven’t I? He has been listening and watching and knows the perfect timing. He is consoling each of us, our broken hearts and spirits. Brother and sister, God holding us together.

Waiting For The Winds To Calm

Do you remember when you were a child and you had a toy, a spinner top toy? You would push down on the red handle and it would spin and spin. You would try to keep up with the pictures as they raced round and round. Your eyes would feel funny, and you would eventually roll back on to your back, with feet going up in the air, rubbing your eyes and laughing so hard? That top would entertain you for ever it seemed. When you become an adult, you don’t play with tops or toys anymore, but today, I am the top. I am spinning and spinning around and around. Dizziness fills my head, my eyes are heavy. Tiredness creeps all around me. One moment, I am pleading with God to help me stop this thing. This thing I do not recognize, and the next I am pulling with all of my strength to keep going on. It feels so heavy, and I just want to sleep for hours on end. I can go through the motions of a day-to-day schedule and not even realize I have finished my work. Today, is a great example of a fear that has come upon me. One of my favorite things to do or used to do, was going to public auctions. I loved the people there. A lot of them recognized me, as I had an antique business of my own at one time. Lots of chatter and bidding on things I could resale. My brother had been hinting for the past three days, that there was an auction today. There was going to be coca cola items in it. He really wanted to go. I thought about getting him to the car, the walker to the car, getting there, unloading him, and the walker, and instantly, I was tired. I just felt this huge matter floating inside of me. Not wanting to disappoint him, but not wanting to go. Me? Give up an auction! This was unreal. We went. He didn’t want my help walking him to a seat. He didn’t want anyone to notice his cane, so I let him go on his own, hoping and praying he would not fall. He swayed from side to side, but he made it to the seat. Three hours of sitting there. Not wanting to leave him alone, I didn’t do what I usually do, which is to walk around and check out everything, see if there were cracks or breaks, and decide what I would bid on it. I sat. The pieces being bid off one by one. I didn’t try to bid on anything. As I am sitting there letting it all slide by me, I knew this wasn’t me, but I couldn’t change it. It was like a force weighing me down. It made me angry that I was acting this way, but I felt too tired to fight it. His  coca cola items went too high, so we came home empty-handed. I sat down here at the computer and started to read some of my emails. My eyes are heavy, like I have had no sleep. A couple of bloggers offered me links for places I might acquire help. I immediately clicked on them, but for some reason, the town I live in has nothing to offer. This made me more tired. I went through a few more emails, but quit, choosing instead to get this out of my head by writing. I don’t feel stressed. My body is too tired to feel. I have called every program I can find. I have asked every person I could. The problem for me, is my brother is not on Medicaid. He is not eligible as of yet. So every single thing I do for him is out-of-pocket.  There are agencies, but very expensive. There is one adult day care here, but it is five hundred a week. I thought about one or two days, but they have only one client, which is female, and older than my brother by years. I think he would be miserable, lonely and bored, so I am not going to do this to him. I think of hiring a private person for day time hours, and then I back off, because I can’t afford to pay someone for regular hours each week. It would be nice for a couple of hours a week to get groceries, or  a hair cut, etc, but

Lowell Spinners (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

when I place an ad, they don’t want a few hours a week, and this I understand. Yesterday, I prayed to God. I gave him all of my problems, concerns, worries, and hopes. I am sure that Satan is so totally angry with me now, that I talked to God more powerfully than I ever have. I am sure that Satan is helping me to have that dragged down, life is at a stand still feeling that I have today. I am grabbing a hold of the big birthday party I am giving my brother in early May. It is like a hope of doing something positive, and fun for him. I didn’t write this to get your pity. I wrote this so I could read it back and see how weak I am letting myself become. My last thoughts on this may somehow connect to how I feel right now. The trees with new leaves are blowing terribly outside from high winds. Swaying back and forth, branches going in all directions. The leaves, delicate and new, are clinging to life so they don’t fall to the ground. Both the baby leaves, any my tired soul are both waiting for the winds to calm.

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terry1954.wordpress.com

The Left Overs

A newborn child crying. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was born. Others thought I was so cute and adorable. Brother was born, and their world came crashing down around them. An extra butt to wipe, a mouth to feed. More money needed for care. It was an innocent child born into a negative world. During the days crying could be heard, cries of help, hunger and restlessness. During the nights, glass beer bottles could be heard. Loud screaming, fighting reaching into the wee hours of the morning. She was young, 16, two babies to care for now. He was 18, a mamma’s boy. He worked at the bowling alley, and stayed mostly at his mom and dad’s. She was left alone to attend to two crying babies. His mom would come over weekly to check on the babies, and to voice her opinions of what she thought of the young mother. She would bring over with her a new dress for the baby girl, and sometimes a toy for the baby boy. Arguing could be heard through each of these visits, one trying to place blame on another. One day with the mom’s help, divorce proceedings started. The young mother became scared and thought the only way to fight this was to take the babies and flee. Life was a  mess. The law was involved. The law after several weeks did track them down in another state far away. They had been stopped for speeding, which was a blessing. The law returned them all to their home state, and the babies were taken to the father’s mom and dad’s home for permanent living arrangements. The divorce went through, the grandparents raised the children, while the babies father worked. One day a few years later, he met a nice lady. Eventually, they married, and the new step mom raised the children. Life was much better, but the guilt, and the left overs from the first marriage were carried on in the mind of the children’s dad. He took that to his grave. The guilt, and all of the left over memories were then transferred from the deceased father and passed on to the baby boy, who now a man, still carries the wounds.