Philosophical Elderly Sitting

[MysterionMuffles]

I wanted to post this topic here in Parenting because I feel like taking care of an elder is almost the same as taking care of a child, especially for one who is losing a lot of their independance and requires a lot more assistance to get around. If it should be elsewhere, please move it if you can, or you can tell me to respost it there before deleting it here. Now a problem with my posts is that you might as well be reading a novel, so I will try my hardest to keep this as short as possible.

My grandmother suffered up to 2 or 3 strokes and 5 falls causing head injuries in the past 4 years. She has lost a lot of strength in her legs and requires a walker to move around the house, and also requires assistance going up and down the stairs. She hasn't had a problem yet of nearly falling from the stairs because she holds firmly onto the railings, but of course for safety reasons someone needs to be there to make sure she keeps her balance, even if it is hands off guidance. Also due to the numerous head trauma she has endured, her reasoning skills, ability to hear and comprehend, as well as her short term memory have been greatly affected. She has no problem retelling me stories of her past, but I can sometimes feel like a broken record having to re-explain to her the same things over and over again in a matter of 5 minutes (where my parents went out to, why no one is picking up the phone at another family member's house, why it's too early to go upstairs in the day etc...) and after the first 10 times, I start to get annoyed.

Now here's the part that absolutely gnaws away at me emotionally. I know that she is now highly dependant on us to help her out, but sometimes we may have that narcissistic tendancy to feel like it's not worth answering her pleas for help. As if whatever we're doing at the moment is more important than something as simple as prepearing a meal for an old lady or refilling her water bottle. It just feels like such an inconvenience sometimes that we can't do much around the house on our own time when she's constantly begging and pleaing for a menial request to be fulfilled. I know deep down in my heart that it is not neccessary to get riled up about video game time, writing or reading time, or anything else getting interrupted by my grandma's menial requests--but holy hell, it does take a toll on your patience!

Since she's bound to one spot of the house all day, she has created this baggage system (seems symbolic in a way...) where she has a lot of useless crap tucked in reusable grocery bags that she keeps by her seat. I mean, the stuff at the surface of her bags includes stuff she does use often such as prayer books, all these little holy trinkets she likes to set at the coffee table to create a makeshift altar, rubbing medicines...but other than that there's a lot of stuff that never sees use in the light of day, but she obssesses over them constantly. She always freaks about a missing crucifix pin, a certain piece of jewelry she doesn't even wear but likes to keep in her baggage, and any other imaginably useless item you know she doesn't really need--and so when she scours through her bags tirelessly for that 50th missing rosary (even though she only uses one), not only is she breaking her back from bending over all the time, but also causes us some deal of stress when she doesn't leave us alone about these useless missing items that we can never seem to find. 

Furthermore, I feel a lot of angst towards my family, particularly my dad and the aunt of mine who usually takes care of her in the early mornings at late nights. Since I'm underemployed, I take up the responsibility to take care of her during most of the day for about 12+ hours since no one else can in that time. I feel bad for my aunt because sometimes I have to wake up to her screaming at my grandma, nothing hurtful in terms of put downs, but kind of like forced lessons on how to behave and ways that she can be less inconvenient to my aunt. I usually call her out on that (even though I have my moments of anger, but we'll get to that in a moment), and tell her to calm her ass down.

She says that my grandma just has trouble hearing, so thats why she feels the need to yell, but I cannot excuse that because there's a lot of annoyance and frustration behind the yelling. When I get moments she's not listening to me correctly, I make sure she's making eye contact and that I say things as slowly as possible so she can comprehend, but my aunt...oh man...so quick to anger. BUT I CAN'T BLAME HER! She's the one who usually sleeps next to her at night, and since she's been sick this week, I told her to stay home while I take care of that for her, and DAMN! You really cannot get uninterrupted sleep next to my grandma as she wakes up every 2 hours to piss, and then when it comes to morning she is constantly begging to go downstairs even though there isn't any rush to go down in the first place. Obviously sleeping early helps soften the blow a little but anyways...

My aunt is a brave woman to take on such a task, but on the flipside, my dad is a complete kunt. He berates her for every little request she makes, mocks her loneliness when it comes to wanting to constantly phone other family members to come over. And some of the times my grandma had fallen down, my dad has the audacity to yell at her for nothing using her walker properly, for not holding in her urine which may have caused her to slip, and the one time I woke up to her calling after a fall, my foot was asleep, so I was in panic and trying to explain that I couldn't pick her up yet because of this. My dad took this as an opportunity to wake up himself and come to her room just to yell at her for the way she doesn't use her walker properly. He is such an inconsiderate...ARGH!!! I can probably make another topic about him, but in essence, he is just not very helpful when it comes to my grandma. I hate the man, I believe he is an evil sociopath...no amount of church going can clean his slate. But again I digress, I don't want to get too off topic.

So my aunt and my dad in conjunction kind of destroyed my grandmother's self confidence. After her first stroke, and when her body wasn't too weak yet, she would often attempt to get from one spot to another in the house without the use of her walker. She showed huge obvious signs that she wanted to get along well without the walker, but the two of them would always yell at her in fear that she would fall again...which is counterintuitive since stressing her out like that probably made it more likely. Yet I could see clearly that she WAS capable of getting around with the walker, she was able to use other support and some brief instances where she was able to walk without support at all. And I will be eternally hateful for how they discouraged her from continuing physiotherapy (I dont buy for a second that it was her choice to refuse continuing) because she had the potential to regain more than adequate use of her legs. There's even all these other stretches and exercises in case of a fall that the hospital gave us sheets and pamphlets on that have been left neglected...so she is underprepared if anything were to happen to her when none of us are around, thus dooming her to a slow a demise on absolute dependance on us.

If you're still reading this, thank you for very much for your time and patience because believe it or not, this is a lot shorter than I intended , and since you did read this far you probably do have some degree of patience that you can help grant to me.

There IS the problem with my self of course. Over the years, even before her strokes, I had always had a lack of patience and anger management when it came to her. That short fuse only got shorter when she first returned from the hospital and it has been my life's work since 2009 to work on my internal issues. You would not imagine the vile things I would say to her and how brutishly I would treat her. I am ashamed to even get into great detail about it, but let's just say that thankfully, I've never resorted to physical violence, but that doesn't excuse the full out yelling and put downs I used to unleash on her. And sometimes on occasion I still do, but those moments are far and between now. Like, getting mad at her used to be a daily thing for me, but once I started recognizing how ugly aggression looks like from my dad and aunt, and getting in touch with my own conscience, I've been trying to turn a new leaf. I like to play cards with her, have conversations with her and overall do things for her without a moment's hesitation MOST of the time. As honestly as I can put it, 85% of the time I warm and compassionate with her. Lately I've also been practicing the art of endless apology for any moments I do get irritated with her, but I know those apologies shouldn't have to exist. 

I know that I don't have any control over my aunt and my dad, so I have long stopped caring about changing their reactions to my grandma and recognized that the only person's whose reactions I can control are my own. I just wish I could stop reacting to her impatiently and FULLY understand, not just intelligently, but emotionally that she may not have long left to live, and it would be quite crappy for her last days on this Earth to be met by undeserved scorn. She can die today, or 10 years down the road, either way, she deserves all the love and respect she can get because she has not only raised 10 children of her own, but some of her children's children also. She is a kind and compassionate woman, who hasn't really been mean all that much, just very annoying sometimes due to senile ignorance. I wish to improve in my latest endeavor of caretaking and would love to ask for your input, FDR.

How do I keep my anger in check? How can I help certain family members to do the same? What else can I do to make her overall experience of life better?