Mom.

[gottawonder]

In talking to my Mom today on the phone, once again it has been a few days since anyone has stopped in to visit with her, or even to phone her.

I do not understand my family at all. I have several family members who live in the same small town as my Mom (small as in about 1000 people). My niece walks past my Mom's house on her way to and from work every day. There are more family members who live less than 15 minutes from my Mom, and one more that lives about half an hour away (and she has NOTHING to do all day, most days).

Maybe people don't really know how to just sit and make small talk anymore. My Mom doesn't get out much these days, so it's not like she has a lot going on. That doesn't mean that she doesn't want to talk about things in general, like the weather, or local events, or what's going on with other people in the family. I have no problem talking to her for half an hour or so when we talk on the phone. We just talk about what I've been up to, mostly.

I don't think anyone in my family can understand what it must be like to be more or less housebound, and living alone, to eat all your meals alone, to have nothing to do but read or do crossword puzzles, and then on top of that have days where no one stops in or calls.

What's also sad, is that some of my family might not really be good company. My trainwreck sister always is either freaking out about something, angry at someone, or crying about something. She is just drama personified. She can be very kind, but she's unsettling to be around. She's the kind of person who can't make it across the room without stubbing her toe, but her reaction is then to scream bloody murder and then moan and carry on about it for ten minutes too.

My niece that lives a few houses away from my Mom is very negative and sensitive to imagined slights. She apparently spends most of her time running people down, and I know that when talking to her, you always have to watch your words or she'll interpret everything as criticism.

Another sister who lives in town is a kind person, but often talking with her becomes strange and disorienting, because her grasp of reality means that she doesn't make a lot of sense. Half the time she just fills in the blanks with something she thinks sounds right, whether or not it is true, and her hearing isn't great, so she can't always carry a conversation well.

Another sister is so full of anxiety that she hates being anywhere but at her own home, so she can't seem to manage visiting with Mom for more than maybe 15 minutes, and the whole time she's twitching and fidgeting and uncomfortable and looking at the time, or the door. That just makes me anxious watching her have a stationary panic attack.

I feel so unable to help Mom from here. She'll say something, like she can't get the radio back to her favorite station after a grandson messed with it,(but she can't seem to bring herself to ask anyone to do it for her, either). She always wants to know what's going on in the news, but is afraid to turn the radio to a news channel (wouldn't know the station anyways) because she won't get it back to her station. The topic of where a city is, or a small town, or where someone is living, always comes up but she apparently doesn't have an atlas either, so she's always just asking me to look up where some place is in relation to her. Some of this is now just a kind of learned helplessness, where she doesn't bother to figure anything out for herself anymore, even though there's nothing wrong with her mind. She has records, and a record player, and knows how to use it, but will only listen to her records if my nephew is there, and he does it for her.

So, I do what I can, which is to call.