Everyone is dying accept my mom…. for evil people live forever.
The authorities disdain me for having no attachment to my mother. I hereby plead my case.
Dementia in films always effects the kind and rational person. Only in AbFab was it bravely depicted on a disagreeable person: Patsy’s mother. In a Feliniesque flashback, Patsy wishes her mother dead as the loveless, dementia addled woman rattles on about the sins of youth despite living a much more debauched past herself and made her children feel unwelcome since birth.
“Take it away and bring me another lover!”
-Absoluteley Fabulous
Mother bears chase their adolescent cubs up trees and forbid them to climb back down on pain of severe punishment. Once assured of her freedom from her offspring, the sow runs off to mate again. The cubs are left behind to figure out that they’re on their own, usually to the tune of a growling stomach several days later.
Every summer I was sent to off to relatives. When I returned home at the end of each of those summers, mom always had a new boyfriend. They would stick around until parenting became too intense, then leave. Then I would have to put up with the resentful bitch until the following summer. The holidays were usually the turning point.
What are you doing New Years? New Years Eve?
Johnny Mathis’ voice would carry over the forlorn setting that was our too-stylish-to-have-a-kid-living-in-it home and my mother would drink away her loneliness. The post-ERA period was hard on single mothers who either kissed frogs or left disappointing marriages. They got the freedom they wanted but they were left behind with unwanted children of their fantasy alpha males. I have this theory that African-American men are commonly 6’5” because their single mothers mated with the captain of the football team. The caveat is that she couldn’t hang on to her man. Most of my friends, growing up were the only children of single mothers. The different cliques at school didn’t all get along, but we were all able to bond over our latest beatings. I didn’t take much to realize that we were all mistakes for no parent, who actually wants you, hits you for the slightest trespasses and uses excessive force. We were our mother’s punching bags and stress balls. We were squeezed until we cried loud enough. The lack of child support was an added stress as well as the root of our mother’s rage.
When I was 11 years old, I left the window open with the heat on before I went out for a sponsored outing with my friends. I came home from a great days at the arcade where I learned to drive a go-kart and discovered the video game, Joust. It was classic 80’s heaven! I entered hell when I returned home, to a Blofeld sinister mother and was ordered to strip naked with the exception of a robe and told to sit down in one of the living room wicker queen chairs. My mother then proceeded to whip me black, blue and red with an extension chord. The demoness citied all the money I cost her that season: two lost bus passes and the heat left on with each blow. I was scarred and bloody from the experience. Mom calmly placed alcohol and cotton balls at the foot her bed for me to use as she settled into her room and went about her evening.
Let this be an argument in favor of child support, birth control and abortion. Pay child support, it keeps the mother from beating your kid. Don’t let your righteous, ethnic rights ego persuade your vain and selfish 20out of 80 wife to have children, they will only be tortured. A woman must have rights to control her own body. You have no idea what kind fuckery may go on in parenting or if there are traits she refuses not to pass on—like Aspergers! In my mother’s case, she wanted a prettier child which she would treat better. A mixed race girl child is the secret desire of many Black-American women. They just don’t say that out loud in a Black Panther and Black Lives Matter political climate.
I learned many things from that whipping that panned out over the course of my life: never trust sires to pay child support, therefore, don’t let impregnators near you. An un-partnered woman will always be abandoned by her married friends or at least be the odd one out. And on a metaphysical level in my own life, something will always go wrong in November. I happens like clockwork. Since I have no control over the phenomenon, I always cross my t’s and not my i’s in all principle affairs so that my wits can be clear to solve whatever problem the Universe unveils to me in late fall.
This year I am waiting for the other shoe to drop from an incident this summer. In August my mother called the senior authority on me for an attempted beating, on her part, gone wrong. She wanted me to change a television channel she could very well do on her own, but I refused. I was in the middle of grading my student’s homework and didn’t want to mix up grades by mistake from disrupting my flow. She threw a fit and lunged at me at me. Having sixty pounds heavier and being three inches taller that my mother, I stood my ground which caused her to bounce off my person and fall back, tripping over a stool behind her. I went back to my room to return to work and she called the police.
The police were ready to take me away until I told my side of the story. I researched defense against violent seniors a few years before when mom was caught wandering, so I knew not to raise a hand against her to defend myself. I simply squared my shoulders to intimidate her, which usually works with people, but not my mother. She lost her toes to diabetes, but not her temper. Her impaired balance cause her fall. I also told them about my extension chord beating. A severe form of corporate punishment I never received justice for despite my and my friend’s parents efforts to rally child protective services to my cause. The police factored my past experiences into my defense and let me stay home with a warning of advice: “The next time she attacks, just walk away.” The officer then demonstrated a 180° about face turn. I can’t help but wonder if I would be in just as much trouble of she fell forward as I walked away…
While I had the police there, I asked a few defense questions of my own to protect myself. They advised that the next time she bangs on the bedroom door at 2:30am, irrational for some reason or another and disturbing the neighbors, call 311 and they’ll come and diffuse the situation.
This information is for all who live with difficult people: CALL 311, not 911 to resolve your domestic disputes. They are burly officers and negotiators, not domestic soldiers with guns!
The officer also told me to be vigilant for call from the senior authority to follow up on the case. I’ve been fielding telemarketers in search of this call for months now. No one has called.
This Thanksgiving mom had another episode. This time, I wrote everything down and sent the briefing to her doctor a few hours ahead of a routine check up on her diabetes and overall health. I knew that if I had not taken advantage of the opportunity, only her diabetes would’ve been reviewed. Dr. Chan gave me a stern lecture that I either need to be more patient or sell the house and put her away. I replied that I have been trying to do the latter for three years to no avail. The problem turned out to be funding. Medicaid insisted that she is $40 over their income threshold. Finally, he acquiesced and assigned me a social worker. AT LAST!!!!
My admin, laced with stealth, paid off at last. For your information, dear reader, doctors are only paid for fifteen minutes for consultation by insurance companies, so it doesn’t do to tag along with a volatile patient with dementia and argue your case. That takes too long. A hard copy of the patient’s episodes delivered to the office hours before an appointment does the trick. The catalyst that sparked action was my mother’s habit of leaving the stove on for hours after preparing her meals.
“She’s going to burn down the house!”
Yes, Dr. Chan. She is.
Write down everything. You never know which bit of information will motivate change. The doctor didn’t care about my suffering, but the possible danger to our neighbors who will undoubtedly sue myself, the city, and possibly HIM if my mother’s negligence in cooking created an inferno pricked up his ears. Nothing motivates bureaucracy like a threat to the regional economy. Just look at Jesus. No one gave a shit about what he did until he pissed off the bankers.
This morning, mom is demanding groceries for it is her social security check deposit day. It’s the only day of the month her dementia (or her WILL) allows her to remember. 3:30am a banging at my door, and then again at 6:30am. It’s 7:45 now. Yep, a knock at the door. I am going to be dead on my feet before my poor students at 10:00 this morning. I went to bed at 2:30 am. Now she is banging on my bedroom door with brooms, the metal dustpan and possible the wall art I have hanging in the hallway. She wants me to make her coffee, when she is able to do so herself. She just doesn’t want to do so today. Universe, please deliver me from this hell either by local authorities or by death. If am to taken, give me time to re-home my cat. Social services is slower than my mother’s episodes and it’s all can do not to snap and bash in her skull with the coffee urn. My revenge has been a long time coming.
Addendum: The social worker contact me and advised that I call the doctor’s office at whatever hour to report my mother’s episodes as they happen. The reason being she needs to be taken to the ER and distributed to a long term care. In long term care facility where skilled medical professionals are present to evaluate the episode and recommend further treatment and ideally an institution.
Furthermore, the reason why it has been so difficult to place my mother in care is #1, she is still high functioning and #2 Nevada has no state income tax, so there is no public money to place her where she truly needs to be. With that said: never let your parents sell their house to a reverse mortgage company. Ignore those damned commercials. You need the sale of the house for assisted living expenses. Assisted living isn’t cheap.
You can read the fictional adaptation of my struggles with my mother in the upcoming final series of Superficial: Jasian Genetic.
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