Just keep going. Choose living. Sometimes life makes you want to give up and throw the towel in. I have seen the consequences of hiding more times than I want to admit and it is always sliding backwards and things for them just got worse. Frankly I am more afraid of the worse than I am of just dealing with the hard stuff. I watched my mom shut down this week. She became like a little kid. It didn’t matter that any of us were trying to help her and do things for her. She was just done. I watched my mom sit in a chair and cry because she had to admit that remembering things has become really hard for her. I rode in the car with her as I watched her drive slowly and think she should not be driving any more. I don’t come home very much so the changes are more drastic to me than to my brother who lives with her. Before I left she talked about my next trip, we need to start marking things we want when she is gone. I am now the adult as I watch my mother change. This has been a week of emotions for me. How does one deal with yet more changes after so many in the last few years? I am coming back in a few months and I am afraid because I know that the changes aren’t over. Dave had a conversation with her to reassure her that we weren’t putting her in home. These are not the conversation I thought I would be needing to have this trip. Such a hard thing to watch when I am living so far away and yet I know I could not live here nor do I think she would ask me to. I am the oldest and taking care of things has always fallen to me. I remember having to be the strong one when my dad died and I am the one who has taken on the estate and the lawsuit.

Life is full of so many changes and yet I feel so unprepared as each of them begin. I feel aloneness in going through these trials. These things were never something we covered when conversations about life occurred. I don’t even know how to process that my mother needs my brother so that she can live on her own now. I was talking to Linda about it but as she and mom don’t talk, this is one I again, get to deal with. My mother is one of those people that judge others actions and say she would do them differently until the time comes when she actually has to make those choice that impact her herself. She genuinely was afraid. I am a writer and I have no words for how this made me feel.

I just keep going. My list of things I need to do to complete her lawsuit grew exponentially in the past two days and that made me feel guilty that I haven’t worked on my own lawyer stuff since the day that Ryan and I talked after the hearing. Life has been so busy and yet I feel like my list is growing instead of getting shorter. I cant stop and I wont stop! I just need to be able to breathe every once in a while. My  writing has become my sanity. My writing is where I sort out these emotions that the hard stuff brings with it. I know I can get through this and that I am just going to be stronger for it, and that I am going to learn something from it but in the middle of it I am just trying to keep my head above water. I keep avoiding this. I want things to be different but life never works the way I want it to.