Everyone does something in the course of their lives that they regret and wish they could take back or re-do in some way. You can’t live and this not happen at some point. As we grow older, we try to become mature and think before we speak or act, but at some point, things happen that push us beyond that point and negative things occur. Sometimes something brings out the bad in us and causes us to say or do things that we regret. Hopefully, it is only words that can be taken back and not something that has caused us to lash out physically. I personally, thank God, have never gone that far. But I am guilty of saying things that I regret and have had to say “I’m sorry” many times.
For the most part, I am a gentle, quiet person, a loner, not a gossip, a ‘gotta see it to believe it’ kind of person. But I’m human. And I’m a depressant. My imagination goes wild with me at times, telling me the worse of all things, when I think about things that are going on, until I get into a great sadness over something that isn’t even reality. That’s what depressants do. So put that on top of something that happens to you that is true, that is hurtful and saddens you and you have a very depressed person who finds it hard to find their way back to a happy place. And, therefore, you find a person who finds it hard to forgive.
Before my father died, he put me in charge of taking care of my mom and her affairs after he died. The papers were drawn up and everything was done legally. When he died, I did everything I could to take care of my mom the best way I could. For about 4 years before he died, mom was diagnosed with Senile Dementia (Alzheimer’s) and was showing definite signs of the disorder. I was living in a different city about 30 minutes away and had to travel that distance each day to take care of mom’s legal and medical needs, so I had to quit work. I sold my house and moved into a house next door to my moms. The pressures of all the stress of my dealings with mom put added stress on my marriage and added to the problems I was having with my two teenage daughters, one in which I had custody of a grand-daughter, so I divorced. It got so bad, I couldn’t watch mom from down the road so I renovated daddy’s shop which was right behind mom’s house and moved in there to better watch over her. One of my daughters moved out and one of my daughters and grand-daughter came with me. I didn’t want to upset my mother’s environment in any way because that would have upset her dementia even worse so I chose to move in the shop. It wasn’t ideal for me but it was ideal for mom.
My brother and sisters didn’t seem to appreciate the way I did things even though they weren’t doing anything to help. Mother didn’t have much money to begin with. Then she began to use up all of her household items over and over which meant she needed them replaced over and over which cost money over and over. She did a lot of traveling. She gave a lot of money away to her grand-children. Her brother borrowed money. My brother borrowed a lot of money. It would take too much time to explain it all in detail. I still have the ledger I kept throughout the whole ordeal that shows that when my brother and sisters took control from me, that I was using my money to take care of my mother. She had spent all of hers.
Along with all of that, my oldest daughter had gotten busted and it had cost $15,000 in attorney’s fees to keep her from going to the penitentiary and mom & I had paid for that too. I paid $10,000 and mom paid $5,000. There was no other way and mom knew exactly what was going on. I never did anything without her knowing what was going on. I never gave my brother money without asking mom first and she would say “Go ahead and give it to him. You know your daddy would anyway.” At other times she would just tell me to give her ‘x’ amount of money to give her brother and I would because it was her money and hers to do with what she wished. So I would. I did it that way because I figured I was going to be taking care of her the rest of her life and I was going to be footing the bills the rest of her life so it didn’t matter. (I was drawing $2,500 in renewal income each month from an insurance company I had worked for so I could take care of her.)None of my siblings offered to help financially ever. Then mom, when prompted by them, began asking where her money was. Well, it was gone. I had invested some of it but it didn’t do so well. A lot of people lost money back then and we were one of them. They held that against me.
Mother needed monitoring physically. That’s why I lived in the shop. But instead of getting someone in to watch after her in her own home they took mother out of her house and put her in a three homes. One she escaped out of, one she caught the kitchen on fire (come to find out this was a home where people with Alzheimer’s disease weren’t supposed to go into). Then they put her into a nursing home and behind locked doors. It was too early. She was still able to take care of herself with a caregiver like I was doing, but they weren’t willing to do that. I am a Geriatrics Alzheimer’s Nurse and I know she could have stayed home much longer.
In the meantime, I moved to SC. She was in that Nursing Home in MS for several years and my brother never visited her once and he lived in that city. I visited her several times. She finally died. I had just been diagnosed with Glomerular Sclerosis, a fatal kidney disease plus I had a major panic attack and my doctor had told me not to travel at that point so I couldn’t go to the funeral .Do you know hard it is not to be able to go to your own mother’s funeral? Well, instead of understanding, they judged me for not being there and a lot of negativity has passed between us since then. I had been ostracized.
Now it’s been years and many negative things have been said back and forth. Once I thought we had made up only to find out that wasn’t the case. I have still been outcast. I did not do anything to anyone of them. I just tried to take care of my mother the best way I knew how. I gave up my life to take care of her. I am a depressant and have had to deal with this along with all the other issues of life besides dealing with the issue of depression itself. But now I realize I have to forgive them anyway. I’ve come to realize that I don’t hate them. I just feel sorry for them.
To me, they treated mom in a horrible manner to take her from her safe haven, her home, and put her in those strange environments when she had lost her partner in life and was lost in her disease too. She needed to stay home. Daddy had left her in my care because he knew I knew how to take care of her and that I would keep her at home until she died. To me they did her wrong. They have to live with that. I don’t. I gave up my life to let her live hers. Then again, I’m sure I didn’t do everything right. None of us do. We just try.
So I am here to say I forgive them. They thought they were doing what was right and I thought I was doing what was right. I think they just wanted control. They thought they were getting some money or something, I don’t know. I still inherited the house when it was all over with and had the privilege of renovating it when I moved in after mom died. I know what I did was right. I did what dad asked me to do and I have no regrets.
So I officially forgive them for the pain and sorrow they caused me over these years. I will now let it go and let live. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone deserves to be forgiven. I forgive them and will try to make amends. Trust is the next issue I will have to deal with, though. But I will deal with it too.
Maybe you have someone you need to forgive too. If so, I encourage you to do so. It’s not worth hanging onto the negativity and hurt that goes along with not forgiving someone. Let it go and let peace fill that place in your heart. Life is too short to hold a grudge and family is too important. You may not get back all the relationships that have been affected, but if you can repair even one, it’s worth the humility. I hope you find it in your heart to forgive someone today and I hope you have A great Cup of Jo today too! Be HappyJ
No comments:
Post a Comment