Recently

I’m sorry if I’m not myself, not like I’m very sociable to begin with honestly. I used to be years ago and started seeing how fake people are and started just being blunt and honest and even if it hurt at least you knew the truth.

Well, with my mom getting sick around the time I was already having a ton of issues causing my body to say “hey bitch, you’re stressed.. We’re just going to block your oxygen and make you black out, have panic attacks and not feel like you can leave your house – ‘safe space’!” In the meantime I had a 16 pregnant daughter, I took some time off to get back mentally because I knew she was going to need me strong. Bam, reality hits like a Mack truck!

I get a call on my birthday that my mom is in the hospital. She hasn’t really eaten or kept much down in a month, didn’t know what was causing it all yet, a mass in her stomach, and possibly liver cancer. So I rushed off to Tennessee, stayed at her apartment, which she never decorated besides purchasing furniture after using inflatable ones for months, and found out she seemed to have an aggressive rare cancer and if she really wanted to come home she’d probably have to do chemo or hospice. So I took her debit card and I bought curtains, Christmas decorations, home décor and other items to make it look homey and I knew that my mother wouldn’t do chemo. They stated she’d feel better for the first few days just being home but she’d go downhill after about 3 to 4 days and honestly they were right. At this point we had to drive over an hour or so to an oncologist just to tell us that after waiting in the waiting room, driving all the way there, hospice is her only option. She had multiple types of cancer, in at least 4+ locations, with the main one being a poorly differentiated neuroendocrine carcinoma with a liver mass in the right lobe.

So for starters, mom didn’t want me leaving Kaity being so close to her due date but I wasn’t not going to see what was going on and make sure I helped set it up, so I made the house nice, took her to get diagnosed, helped set up hospice… meanwhile due to my damn email account being hacked and on the dark web, when I used her bank account to pay her December bills, they took over $3K and made it look like Amazon charges. At this point I’m willing to put myself in jail because I’m not telling my mama that all her money’s gone because her damn card was linked to my account and now gone. To dispute it without telling her we had to get a POA and we kinda told her we’d need it in case of anything, not thinking that ceases at death, nor that she needed to create a will, not just the living will done at the hospital, a will regarding her estate – i.e.. Her bills, bank, insurance, her apartment, etc…

So we set up to get the POA, I go back to Indiana to go to Kaitlyn’s Dr appointment and I state I’d be back the day before Christmas eve, well I was tired and decided to leave the next morning and I basically floated down there in record time, meanwhile she had drastically taken a turn for the worse while gone. She still hadn’t eaten, she’d had a bed and other things brought in from hospice, her mass was needing drained but she’d have to go to the hospital to do so and she had to see a Dr first yet she couldn’t hardly walk down the hall. (when I left she had just wanted to sleep, she slept and slept. My aunt Vicky had been staying there and she was getting worse, dehydration, couldn’t swallow or hardly talk, and no energy to go to the Dr. The next day she fell and got a concussion, black eye and bruises all over her body, but she’s on hospice so basically not much to do, she’d signed a DNR). I got there on Christmas Eve a little after 1pm and my aunts barely slept. My mom had been throwing up constantly, dried up black blood in her stomach, so she reluctantly goes home after 6pm. Moms in her room because it’s more comfy than the hospital bed, and we nap.. I’m worn out from the drive and she’s just worn out.. I’m just trying to understand how when I left she was talking and walking fine, in a week she barely could do either. Around 10 I wake up, she’s still sleeping. Then around 1145 pm she drops her bucket of meds to get my attention, needing ice water, then a little bit later she throws up everywhere. She wants to go to the bathroom to clean up, this took us almost an hour or more to get her to the bathroom with the walker, cleaned up, new pj’s, and back comfortable in bed. I got bruised trying to get her there and back without letting her fall again or get hurt, it was heartbreaking seeing her so helpless and needing help. She was the most independent person, she wanted me to roll her over and looked up at my papa’s picture on that side of the room, holding onto the bed rails because she needed them to help her roll over, looked up at me with tears in her eyes and said up, so I propped her up until she said OK and then looked up, rolled her eyes and said damn, I kissed her forehead and told her I’m sorry I’m not good at this, she just shook her head, I kissed her again and said I’d be back I was going to call Vicky back because she’d called during all that. She then nodded OK, I was on the phone telling Vicky about that last hour, it had been only 8 minutes and I went back in there and my heart dropped, I could tell she wasn’t breathing. I’m saying Vicky I don’t think she’s breathing, I don’t think she’s breathing, she’s not breathing. What should I do? So I say I got to call 911, she says “oh God, do what you got to do I’m omw..” I knew she had a DNR but seriously, it had been barely 3 weeks since I initially got the call regarding her being in the hospital. So they get there and I tell them she’s a hospice patient, idk what I was supposed to do, they said to try calling them, they couldn’t stop cpr until they got confirmation of the DNR, so after I get Susan on the phone, she talks to paramedics, they start walking out and the head paramedic tells me I did what I could, she’s no longer in pain, did I have anyone to be there with me because they couldn’t do anything, someone from hospice would be to take care of her and call the coroner/funeral home. Vicky walks in and it’s barely 13 mins later and starts crying and saying it’s only been 3 weeks.. They leave, Vicky is feeling guilty for leaving me alone and going home to get some sleep, I’m feeling guilty for leaving a week and in those moments after getting her comfy I’d thought ‘there’s no way I can do this by myself daily.’ (I mean mama wasn’t heavy but I am the definition of accident prone! Then to help her when she’s in pain, can barely speak, I felt helpless and out of my element.) Yet knowing Vicky and I were all she had and she’d already been saying to take her to a home because we couldn’t do it alone... I also knew she didn’t want to die at home alone, that was one of my granny’s worst fears, that actually happened and mom later on stated now she knew why she’d complained and understood her fear of dying alone. I’m glad I made it back in time, almost exactly 12 hours after I arrived in Tennessee, yet I never expected it to happen so fast. The Dr had stated about 6 to 9 weeks, now think back on it from the date she started actually expressing pain to the date she died was in that time frame.

So now I’m utterly confused, lost, ashamed, not sure what to do.. Her living will was really only about the DNR, POA ceases after death, she didn’t really have much and since her funds happened prior to death they’d stated we shouldn’t need to file for an estate.. So a few days after the funeral and everyone left, Kaity had a Dr appointment. Maverick wasn’t moving as much, her fluid was low, etc. I knew it was because we’d allowed her to come down at 38 weeks so I grab a few items and drive back, leaving most the clothes I’d brought, my heels, my new glasses, and took off to Indiana to make sure Kaity rested until it was time for him to enter the world. (History repeating itself, granny passed away a few months before she was born.) I sent money to my aunt Vicky for the January rent, could never get a hold of anyone, apparently never in the office, her lease wasn’t up until January 31st , thought it would be OK.. Wrong! Since I’d been off for almost 3 months now, money was tight, so we’d opted to wait till the last weekend in January to grab her belongings and rent a small U-Haul. Exactly 30 days from when she dies, shit hits the fan, my brothers wallet had been there, the locks had been changed by the time he went to look for it and they opted to throw her things away stating no one had contacted them, she couldn’t get ahold of anyone and she’d found out from another tenant. Nah duh, you never answered the damn phone, not something I’m going to say on vm, you accepted the rent payment, and have some decency my mom just literally passed away and I haven’t had time to process anything, let alone get an estate started when I didn’t think I’d need one. By the time we’d get in touch with anyone, it’s basically empty, stating it was old and tattered, she’d bought it since moving in, and I have pictures, why am I yelling and I’d I think she did something wrong to take her to court.. Really? The only things I have left of my mother, some of my grandmother’s things, my things, and you had to throw them away like trash because you needed to rent the space when her lease hadn’t expired, it wasn’t even 15 days late. Hell it wasn’t even the 1st yet!

So now I’m numb, don’t know where to start, my brother blames me for leaving and not getting it done before I left, I’ve lost her possessions, letters my kids wrote her, my granny’s pillow I’ve carried around for about 16 years, and I’m losing my mind. I sit and I cry, I cry because I didn’t have time to process losing her and then lost what I had left of her. Crying because the ones I love blame me, I need to be here for Kaity but I can’t even be there for me, because I don’t want to talk about it or respond because idk how I’m feeling and if I try to think about it, it’s not good inside my head, so I try not to open that door.. I just want to give up but hell I don’t want to put that burden I just went through on my kids before I set up a will, estate, life/death insurance policies. I’m not mentally capable of being at work but I have to because if I don’t get some sense of normalcy I’m going to lose it. Idk why I’m writing all this, maybe to get it all out of my head so I can come to terms with it or because I need others to know I’m not trying to be distant or moody or seem mad at them, I’m mad I lost my mom in less than 3 weeks of her admitting she was sick, I’m mad because history is repeating itself, I’m mad because people steal others shit and now her accounts are frozen, I have no funds for her ashes, all her belongings were thrown away, I lost my granny’s pillow, and I’m losing a sense of myself I’d just seemed to have gotten back after so long!

So, I’m sorry if I don’t respond.

I’m sorry if I get mad or seem mad.

I’m sorry if I don’t seem like myself.

I’m sorry I didn’t know what to do or how to go about it. I’m sorry I lost all grandma’s stuff.

I’m sorry I don’t know how or what to say to make things better.

I’m sorry there are so many people in the world who prey on others and wipe out old women’s bank accounts.

I’m sorry people are so money hungry they can’t seem to wait until the grieving family is able to get her belongings before discarding them like trash and renting it out for the next individual.

I’m sorry I suck at being a mother, I wish I was the one you wanted me to be.

Most of all I’m sorry I wasn’t a better daughter, when you needed me the most.