Sometimes my mom doesn’t know who I am. She knows me but she doesn’t see where I fit in. She tells me stories about myself in the third person, she refers to my dad by his first name and confuses me for her older sister. She tells me the same story of her dog for a full hour. My mom is sad and vulnerable and confused and I left her in a third world country when I immigrated. The guilt doesn’t go away. A hundred phone calls make no impact.  I can call daily only to be greeted with hot Anger at my lack of contact. See, some days are good and she remembers her grandkids and where we are and some days are bad and I mourn the fact that she would have been the most amazing gran in the world she would have doted on her grandkids and given us the real deal grandparent experience we crave. Sometimes, more often than not, I feel the worst kind of anger. I feel hopeless anger. I feel the kind of frustrating emotion that I cannot undo or change or remove myself from and  I feel helpless and victimized and  I get angry at my poor, completely overwhelmed and lonely and beautiful Mother, the real victim, who is physically and emotionally  trapped  inside a dark mind that has long failed her. My  30 year old brother has been saddled with the financial strains of caring for his mother who most times is angry at him for making the informed and safety based decision  of taking her car away.  He  has to deal with her constantly berating him for this. She cannot move passed it and it’s not her fault so he cannot blame her, but he also cannot not feel anything.  In addition, he does not have a family of his own to retreat to and seek comfort from.  It’s hard and it’s sometimes so devastatingly so that we both try and avoid it for a while.  that’s right, We don’t call for a week. We dont want to face our new reality. We want to hold on to the old. You see, although in retrospect the signs have been there for sometime, 5 years ago my mom was a bubbly, kind and caring to a fault and fiercely independant. She was also a woman who had been through a lot, a woman who had faced the loss of the love of her life, she struggled with the demons of divorce and the pain of betrayal.  Of course the divorce was not one sided, but to her, she could never love again. Through all her inner issues and the stress she battled to cope with daily, she remained  an amazing mother and the most compassionate animal lover. No  semi-road killed bird or monkey or mouse was ever loved more than in her care. A mother that would drop absolutely everything to be by the side of her adult child with a cold. A mother who spent her last cent on a mountain bike for her 10 year old.  A mother who stayed up all night baking and decorating for the most magical of birthday parties for us. A mother who gave me a goat for my second birthday and a horse for my 12th. A mother who dedicated her life to her children. Who sang sad songs on sunday evenings but got up at 6am on monday mornings to be a mother that effectively saved us from what could have been a very different childhood.  She raised great kids. but She is the one I have left behind… guilt makes you feel some strange things. One moment it can make you not feel anything or it can consume you or it can make you lash out at those closest to you. In all of this larva-like pain, I have also learned of those who truly care. Family members and old friends and strangers that have sacrificed to help, to care and to love unconditionally.  My dad and step mother, who has taken her in, who helps daily to make life a little but brighter for the ex wife of her husband. It’s not easy.  It’s not even just hard. Sometimes I know it must be heavy and dark. But she does it. And for that I will always be indebted and in awe.   Mom, I know deep down you would give anything to come to me, I know you are scared and nervous and afraid of change, I know that is why you refuse. It’s hard for me to grasp but I know your world is different now and I know I cannot change that, but I still hope one day a little bit of you will remember the lifetime of memories we made in just 25 years. The belly laughs and the ugly cries, the teenage angst and the late night heart to hearts. I silently long that one that day you will wake up and be you again and you will take the brave and scary step and get on an aeroplane to see your beautiful grandbabies and let me spoil you, if just for a little while. Let me care for you like you did for me. Let me buy you your ciggarettes and let you feed my dogs 5 times a day. Let me not judge you and let me just embrace you. the way you are now. Let me not mourn and let me not feel that although you are here, you are not here at all. Let me just celebrate you. Let me be grateful for the bit of you we have… I love you mommy