Edit: I later found out that the person written about here ended up being a good friend and ally of the family, thank you for saving my mom’s life, and sorry for the suspicion and apprehension we treated you with.
I wish I didn’t have to write this, but I need to express the emotional weight of a situation that has added enormous stress during an already painful time.
There is a person who became involved in my mother’s care after she became gravely ill, as best I can recall. Earlier today, based on a call I had with my great aunt, it’s my understanding that during a recent hospital visit, this individual’s presence did not feel supportive or calming—especially given the hospital’s restrictions and the seriousness of my mother’s condition.
From what I’ve gathered through conversations with the hospital staff, I’m under the impression that this person’s behavior may have disrupted what my mother needs most right now: peace, comfort, and clear communication with her family. I find myself unsure why someone outside our immediate family would engage in actions that, to me, appear to create distance between my mother and her closest relatives, especially at a time when we need each other’s understanding and compassion.
In my personal view, this individual’s manner has felt manipulative, and interactions have not seemed constructive. I have perceived behaviors that, from my perspective, make it harder to trust their intentions. As a result, I feel that my mother has become more isolated from her children during a time when we should be united around her.
One specific event I can recount occurred during my last visit I may ever have with my mother: while this individual was on speakerphone, I heard them suggest that my mother ask me to leave. Experiencing that firsthand was painful and intensified my concerns about their influence.
My family’s only priority is my mother’s dignity, care, and comfort in her final days. I sincerely hope everyone involved will approach this situation with empathy and respect.
Although there’s much more I could say, this individual has threatened legal action, claiming my words might constitute “slander.” While this isn’t my main focus at such a distressing time, it has made me cautious about how I share my feelings. That added pressure weighs on me during a period already defined by loss and heartache.
To those who have offered their love and kindness, thank you. Your support provides a measure of comfort when it’s needed most.
I’ve been using my blog and social media as a space to share my raw emotions and personal challenges, giving myself permission to be honest, vulnerable, and unpolished. It’s about recognizing the power of perspective, even when confronting the most painful parts of life.
To those who’ve joined recently and might not know the full context—my family has been facing deep struggles since June—I realize some of my recent posts may have seemed harsh. In context, my little sister woke up to find her father in the lawn just a few weeks ago after a suicide, and the doctors told me last week my mother may not make it past Christmas.
It’s a hell of a thing that I don’t know how anyone would approach or process, and then you sprinkle in my mother’s confusion and paranoia, which often leads to her lashing out at those closest to her and it’s been an impossible situation for half a year now.
There’s a wide range of perspectives from a wide range of people, but one thing is an absolute fact; the police, EMTs, hospitals all know us by name and know it’s time for mom to re-visit the ICU when they start receiving panicked calls and weird accusations from mom, as she is back, again, for the 10th time now.
I pray that she will listen to her doctors and actually go to rehab this time, like all of us kids, and Mike tried repeatedly so she has a shot at recovery and we finally break this loop, as it’s very obviously not working.
I started inpatient yesterday, not that I’m particularly actively suicidal or have suicidal ideation, just that I’ve made so much progress with my agoraphobia and don’t want to wake up trapped in my home again, seemingly unable to walk out into the front lawn to collect my mail as I was during the pandemic.
I need the extra support right now due to the extreme stress myself, and the family is under and I’m so incredibly emotionally drained.
It’s been a decent enough day. I’m happy to share that we submitted an application for an apartment in Colorado with a tentative move date of February. It’ll be a big change moving out of Indiana and moving across the country, but we will be moving close to someone we love and a breath of fresh air is sorely needed on all fronts.
I almost don’t want to write about this evening’s events as it feels like a bad dream, but mom and I talked; we had a nice enough conversation. I sung Peter Cottontail and Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer to her, she sang along. She had me write some really strange letter, which I’ll include below:
She dictated the letter to me and what to say. Functionally, it doesn’t mean anything, no one has ever invoked POA or Medical Directive in this situation and no one has ever prevented her from coming home, obviously.
What is concerning that apparently her estate attorney dropped her due to ethical concerns. I’m not sure exactly what transpired there, and honestly, I’d rather not know.
And what is further concerning is whatever insane rant mom started texting me about being in her emails right after her phone call, after telling me how everything was “forgiven and okay now”?
I was instructed to access Mike’s emails to collect information soon after his death by mom, such as Amerigas for their home propane, AT&T for their wireless bill, information about Mike’s Mom for his sister so she is taken care of. I’m sorry, but I’m really not interested in whatever he had in his email inbox, although I’m sure there’s some cringeworthy boomer humor in there somewhere.
No, what actually happened is that her attorney added her to an existing email thread I had with him discussing what needed to occur with probate and my previous efforts trying to stay on top of legal obligations as Mike’s executor is unable to, or unwilling to execute his will. Not that anyone would benefit from that other than mom as she inherits all of his assets. Somehow, my mother considered that redirecting her emails or being in her emails?
Whatever the causality, she did say I was no longer her son and to never contact her again, which hurt, but this is just how things go with mom these days.
EDIT LMAO IT GETS SO MUCH WORSE TODAY
Jade called me this morning and mom is at the police station trying to press charges against her for giving her the “wrong meds” paramedics were also apparently out there last night and confirmed they had the correct meds. What did I write yesterday about mom trying to kill herself by only taking Vitamin C?I… can’t make this up.
I suppose the difference today is that I’ve just come to expect it and I can put my renewed tools such as the inpatient session last night, “Make the best out of a bad situation” to work.
I’ve also been diving back into Tao philosophy lately, two of my current faves
But it’s nice knowing there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Work is very busy, but I seem to be doing well (somehow, like damn), we are redecorating our home to have a safe, comfortable place to be in, and we have the move to look forward to, reset our lives in some way.
Imagine waking up to this view every morning, it doesn’t seem real
Got a frantic phone call this morning, apparently mom was at the police department going on about how her family is poisoning her as she doesn’t want to take her antibiotics and kidney medication. To be clear, not that anyone has been forcing her or otherwise doing anything other than filling her pill organizer with the exacting medication and dosages from the list the hospital provided.
She was in the ICU a few times by now with sepsis due to this exact thing, and it’s not the first time the police have been called out to the house by any means.
The paramedics were apparently at the house last night and verified the correct dosages and medications.
The situation has devolved into such a poor state that anyone who tries to caretake for mom could very well end up on the receiving end of a false police report, which makes it unwise to be in contact with her for fear of their own legal well being.
I’m personally concerned that I may be targeted due to my refusal to move home and mom’s insane rants about how terrible of a person I am for not doing so. It’s not that I don’t want to be there, I want to help mom.
I’m just not sure what else I could possibly communicate on this blog, or otherwise that doing so is not safe. Not for the abuse and name calling she dishes out, for the history of false police reports and insane rants about the government monitoring her, and the flying monkeys of people mom enlists who are financially motivated as she is loud about having money and actively demonizes her husband, children in her life.
There are genuinely good people out there reaching out, trying to help, thank you. It’s an impossible situation and my deepest apologies for not being as controlled and stoic about the situation in the pages of my blog as I could have been. Mike committed suicide, mom had her first melt down at my house and after several hours of insane rambling, the police carried her kicking and screaming out of my front door. Mom becomes very paranoid about people “keeping her in the hospital” and the insane rants and suspicion is shared widely.
If you think this specific situation is insane, it’s been what Mike, Jade and the family have been dealing with semi-privately for months now, and why Mike committed suicide.
It’s been a nightmare.
This is the.. 10th time I believe she’s been in the hospital. I’m questioning to myself, how does it get worse from here, and, how many days until she’s back home again doing the same thing?
Edit: going through previous posts to review, look at what I found from August?
Edit: and yet another one
annnddd another from July.
Just to be clear, I later learned that Mike indeed did the best he possibly could and he did try to keep her in the hospital past a certain point, the issue is that the hospital can’t, and it makes sense, even if it’s not ideal.
If someone is conscious and able to tell what day it is, the hospital deems them of sound mind, even if they warn the patient and family members they will die if released and return home to do the same things again. The only time a POA or Medical Directive can take effect is that if the patient is on a ventilator or otherwise completely incapacitated.
There is something called emergency guardianship, and I think it’s time to approach that just to ensure that she goes to rehab or a nursing home for a week or two to get stable, instead of in and out of the ICU every week, or like Dr. Mohammad said, she may not make it until Christmas
Kasey and I went over; it was time for us to collect our things out of the garage from the last time we stayed there. I don’t really know where to start or how to move forward, and I know I’m feeling very emotional right now. So, warning, dear reader—shield your children’s eyes.
No one wants to get a call from their mother’s doctor saying she’ll be gone in a few weeks if she keeps doing the same things over and over. She’s been hospitalized nine times now, many of which were completely preventable. And not preventable like “don’t smoke or you’ll get cancer,” but deliberate, very unwise, specific things like not taking antibiotics when she has sepsis.
Or not regulating sodium intake properly, an issue since September, which directly impacts memory and cognition. Or starving herself and consuming so much liquid that her kidneys now only function at about 17%, pushing her close to kidney failure.
Mike is gone, in large part because of her. Yes, he had his own issues—back pain, depression—but she pushed him over the edge. Imagine your wife retiring and making travel plans, only for everything to turn upside down: getting screamed at, having things thrown at you, the police called, threats of divorce, and more for months on end. All while trying to ensure she takes her medication so she doesn’t die, cleaning her wound so it doesn’t get infected, or trying to get her into rehab because the doctors say she’s going to die if she keeps doing the same harmful things over and over again. Mike tried so hard to keep her alive, yet she made him out to be some kind of monster. I honestly understand why he felt so hopeless. I wish he had just packed up and gone to California like he said he would, anything other than suicide.
You didn’t deserve any of this, Mike.
And I’m sorry that our deeply flawed medical system didn’t allow you to properly care for her. Not your fault.
Like I said the first time Kasey and I left, I’m not open to being called names, screamed at in front of everyone, or made out to be a terrible person because I don’t jeopardize my life, quit my job, and endure abuse. Especially when I’m expected to just go along with her belief that antibiotics are poison, that the government is spying on her through Bluetooth, and all the rest of it. I don’t care if it’s my mom, and I guess I don’t care if she’s dying—no one gets a free pass to openly abuse others, especially when they’re trying to help.
And what’s the point, anyway, when any help one might give is literally helping her harm herself? Tonight’s disagreement started because I refused to hand her the pill bottles after she claimed “Jade messed up her meds” and went off on some unrelated rant about not having a POA. I refused to hand them over because I’m not going to assist her in taking just “Vitamin C” as ordered by “cancer doctor,” or indulge the idea that “sodium causes high blood pressure” in this context. It’s all nonsense.
I’m stammering here because my next instinct is to defend myself—to say that I do care, I’m scared, and I don’t want my mom to die. I even woke up with night terrors, dreaming she was dead. But this situation has been so uniquely awful, so extreme, that frustration and anger drown out everything else.
Kasey and I took our RV over there for a single night in August. We lasted one night. I work remotely, a 9-to-5, and my job was already unstable due to layoffs. I stayed up until 1 a.m. trying to convince her to take her antibiotic. It took hours of dealing with rambling nonsense. I finally got to bed around 2 or 3 a.m. Exhausted at work the next day, I got woken up at 8 a.m. and brought into the house, Kasey too, to be screamed at that we weren’t doing enough. Both Mom and Mike yelling, going on and on. We lasted one night.
Kasey rightfully walked out, and I was right behind her. Kasey isn’t even part of this, and no one gets to scream at my partner, period. I lost that job soon after.
But it just goes on and on. I don’t have the energy to detail every awful and abusive thing. Mom has this narrative that everyone treats her like a “child,” and she demonizes anyone who doesn’t want to help her destroy herself. Mike is gone because he wouldn’t just pretend everything was fine while she refused to help herself. My sister walked in from collecting her father’s ashes and was berated for not magically having Mom’s breakfast ready before work. It’s all just beyond understanding—awful, sad, and infuriating.
And I’m done. I said my goodbyes, and this is what I’m forced to remember her as: a harmful, confused person who likely doesn’t even know what’s going on. Meanwhile, others circle around, willing to agree with her so they can get what they want, or a handout as they need the money.
We’ve got probate, Mike’s estate, business matters, in-home aide options that I spent days researching. But I’m a liar, I’m useless, and she already wrote me off after I left the first time. Fine. Good luck, then. Thanks for calling the attorney to tell him not to talk to me, because I’m apparently such an awful person.
Maybe I need to be the “bastard son,” because I’d much rather deal with that than live knowing I helped my mother end her own life.
So, Mike is mom’s husband. Jade found him on the swing outside (his daughter). To say it’s been a fucked up weekend would be an understatement. Mom is still in the hospital due to her sepsis and physical therapy as she’s a fall risk.
I’m heading over with the RV to support Jade and fam tomorrow. We had been planning on going full-time again and this time actually, for real traveling. Lease is up in January, might as well.
Funeral is weekend after next, not sure if I’ll go. Not anything to do with Mike, I just have unsolved trauma around funerals from long ago.
Yeah, I’ve been sad. Mike and I had a complicated relationship but he was good for mom. I’m not sure what else to say, I’ve never had anyone I personally know commit suicide before.
I thought about it, and it’s why I went to inpatient. It was the hate driven kind though, like here’s the consequences of your actions and what you are doing to me, can you finally HEAR me now that I’m dead? No, but even though I’m 99% over all of that I still have a sneaking suspicion that other(s) may not be, and that’s fine. Not in like a spiteful kind of way, but kind of like, yeah – obviously this is what happens when you intentionally try to hurt someone.
For whatever reason I’ve been thinking that day at the canal with Amanda and Luke lately, just little flashes of processing of the subconscious. I was a toy and it was funny to see me get jealous over the dog, it was intentional. I have no idea why I put up with even a quarter of the bullshit honestly, I’ve burned far too many bridges since for much less.
But hey, I was in that transition from the lifelong trauma based state of just stuffing emotions under the rug since like, forever, and whatever happened to just have to start feeling my feelings, well – there’s no way of going back from that. Not that I was a unfeeling person before, more like, I’m much less scared to feel my feelings and be much more of myself.
Honestly, I don’t regret the experience overall. I’m a much more feeling, vulnerable person now and I’ve become so much stronger within my queerness and have (even if sometimes heavy handed) boundaries so much more well figured out now that even those without them scream narcissist when I’m just kinda done and wish to go no contact.
Happily a narcissist over being taken advantage of, the evolution of the people pleaser.
One thing about handling high grade, nuclear grade trauma, like a suicide, is other issues just kinda melt away. Like I know we may be fucked due to the election and politics bullshit, but I kinda have bigger issues here right now. Not that it’s healthy in any way, but a fact so might as well roll with it.
But yeah. We’ll move the RV tomorrow and use this breakpoint as a transition to start downsizing and getting the homestead ready to vacate. Is third time going to be the charm for actually hitting the road? Let’s fucking go.
You mean that I was right THREE FUCKING TIMES NOW??! I wanted to be proven wrong, I wanted to second-guess myself and be proved to be the asshole in this situation but damn man.
Of course, now she has a fever and she is really high stroke risk so if she strokes out and dies or it causes further damage, I’m the asshole still, right?
There will be much I untangle and write about in the coming weeks, but I genuinely feel as if I did the best I could to help my mom. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
The last 48 hours have been a nightmare. I got a call Thursday night at around 1:38 am from Jade, who was crying. In the background, I heard Mike’s yelling, glass breaking, and things being thrown. The abuse had escalated yet again.
Mom had already called the police, and I followed up with a call of my own to ensure they responded. Mike packed his stuff and fled the state. On one hand, he faced immense pressure, but on the other, it’s unacceptable to abuse my mother and sister and then abandon mom when she was in real danger due to her current mental and physical state.
Mike knew that mom wasn’t taking her meds at IU Indy after her surgery, and they both lied to get her released. This decision is baffling, especially after we had to have mom arrested and taken to the hospital the previous Tuesday before her emergency cancer surgery. Refusing antibiotics post-surgery is dangerous and could have severe consequences.
Tuesday night, I stayed up coordinating help for mom. She was threatening Jade and believed she was being poisoned by her antibiotics. On the advice of a close family friend, I called the local crisis unit. It became a chaotic scene with 20-30 people involved. Mom was deemed mentally unfit by EMTs but still refused care. She had been calling everyone in her address book, reaching out as far as California for help.
Mike was unreachable during all this, and they never got the Power of Attorney notarized, which added to the complications. A family friend finally convinced mom to go to the ER, and after many hours, she was there. I kept several family friends updated while managing my work responsibilities.
The kicker is that Mike got her released from the hospital again, leading us back to a dangerous situation. I fear that someone might end up seriously harmed or in jail.
If Mike hadn’t returned, I would have pursued an emergency guardianship order, ensuring mom got the necessary care. But now, Mike is portraying me as the antagonist, despite my efforts to help. It’s infuriating to be painted as the bad guy when I’ve been the only one actually helping.
I’ve had my moments of frustration, and while I’ve said things I regret, my primary focus has always been on getting mom the help she needs. I’ve made the difficult decision to go no contact for my own mental health and well-being.
I know my mom isn’t in her right mind, and the hurtful things she’s said to me will take time to heal. But I can’t continue to be part of this chaotic and harmful situation. For my own sanity, I need to step back.
To Mike, it’s crucial to understand the impact of your actions. It’s not right to berate and attack those who are trying to help. Genuine support means working together to ensure mom’s well-being, not creating more chaos and conflict. Your actions have not only hindered mom’s recovery but have also caused unnecessary stress and harm to those around her.
We all need to be there for mom in a way that truly supports her recovery and well-being. This means making difficult decisions, prioritizing her health, and not letting personal conflicts get in the way. It’s about coming together as a family, despite our differences, to do what’s best for her.
In conclusion, while I wish things were different, I can’t continue to be part of this situation. I need to prioritize my mental health and safety.
