I keep not writing anything because I want what I write to be perfect documentation. Just how it happened, freeze-dried for future reference, perfectly preserved, no unsightly blips and bumps and double-exposures. Just the truth. Presented with grace and humor and peaceful acceptance, of course.

Unfortunately that's not what I'm feeling. I'm feeling anger and betrayal because my mom has turned into a bizarre, sad, and often maddeningly irritating stranger right in front of my eyes. I'm upset that she's left me - that for all intents and purposes, she is gone. I don't care that I'm 48 years old - I still need my mommy!  I'm mad because now I have to do things like call her doctors and call about lawyer appointments and call care facilities and I am a princess and I do not care to have my serene days disturbed with thoughts of having to fling my poor mother into a nursing home because she won't eat and she has to have someone with her 24/7 and if it's not my father she wants to know where he is every 1.3 seconds and she's currently making my poor father's life a living hell. That's not how the world is supposed to work! Isn't everyone supposed to be catering to ME??!!??

No, no, I'm not really a princess. I just play one on the interwebs. I do however bitterly hate and resent intrusions on my time and space, and I can't easily make these calls at work and I wish someone else would do it and I'm even more annoyed that now, when my sister-in-law and I have finally managed to figure out how to get home health nurses in every couple of days to help out (and please note that I made the initial call and the SIL did pretty much ALL the rest of it. I live an hour and a half away; she, poor soul, lives right beside them) now I get a call from my brother today. Just as I'm leaving for lunch.

He needs me to call my mother and talk to her and see if she will please stop yelling at my father and telling him she is going to shoot him and she is going to kill him and she isn't going to stand for any more and she is finding a gun.

"....!!??!!??...."

Because my brother is on the road far away and won't be back for hours and the SIL is at work and won't be home for hours and maybe if we call her she'll calm the hell down. And quit mentioning guns and shooting because that is, well, ALARMING. She weighs 90 pounds  tops and my father probably weighs 250, and although they do have a rifle in the back of the closet I'm pretty certain she has no idea where the bullets are and even if she did, she can't figure out how to use the coffee pot or which way to turn the phone around to speak to whoever's on the other end, so I'm pretty certain she could not figure out how to load a rifle and shoot my father with it. However they do have knives and frying pans and a rolling pin somewhere and many other assorted potentially lethal objects and maybe this has all gone way too far to be taken care of with some home health care nurse visits. 

So of course I call and of course she is as pleasant and cheery as she can be. As always. Daddy sneaks off around the corner and tells me she's settled down. For now.  

Jeeze. Now what? She won't eat so she's off her Alzheimer's medication now, as well as the "mood stabilizer" medication. I guess the home health people could give some suggestions. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it's not a problem anymore, but I don't want to consider that possibility either for sure.  

And perhaps the worst thing of all is the thought of how she'd feel if she knew this was going on. My mother, back when she was the person I knew, was the most pleasant, kindest, least violent person on earth. Who never swore, never threw things, and certainly never threatened gunplay. It would be funny if it wasn't so awful.