The blows keep coming

There isn’t really a roundabout way to say this.I spoke to my mom two days ago and she told me  she plans on killing herself soon. She has been terminally ill for three years. Her doctors originally gave her six months to live when she was diagnosed with COPD three years ago. I am grateful for the fact that she has had 2.5 years more than I had thought she would have. But that extra time has worn her down. She is very ill, very frail, and she said that she is coming very close to the limits of her endurance for pain, sickness, and relentless fatigue.

I will not, of course, blame her if she chooses to end her life. She has nothing to look forward to other than more sickness, pain, and fatigue. Her condition can only get worse.

I just don’t understand how my brother and sister can still smoke cigarettes after seeing how sick it has made our mother. I just don’t get it. She is dying a lingering, horrifying death and yet those two keep lighting up. It’s just unbelievable.

It frustrates me so much to know that mom is so sick and there isn’t a damned thing I can do about it. She smoked two packs a day for 40 years and drank a quart of vodka per day for 40 years. And this is the result: incurable lung disease, congestive heart failure, edema, and the beginning stages of renal failure. I wouldn't wish this illness on my worst enemy.

It also frustrates me that the people who most desire to help mom (that being my brother and myself) have few resources to offer. My brother and I are not doctors, nor do we have jobs that pay very much. We are unable to help mom financially either. She has to receive food stamps and housing assistance. I feel deeply ashamed that I usually have less than $20 in my account by the time we pay our bills. I get my bills paid on time, but there is so rarely anything left. I haven’t had a raise in three years. My brother is in a similar position.

The flip side, of course, is my knowledge that there are two family members with the resources to help but refuse to lift a finger to help my mom. I have an uncle who is a millionaire and he has literally not parted with a single dollar to help mom. Yes, that’s right, he is willing and able to let his own sister subsist on food stamp vouchers and Medicaid instead of paying for better food and better physicians. What a fine Christian he is. Then there is my sister. She had been helping mom with mundane tasks like shopping and errands. But she decided to abandon mom on Christmas Eve so that she could go back to Tennessee. No one has heard from her in four months. Personally, I don’t care if I ever hear from her again.

I’m not sure how my brother and I will pay for mom’s funeral. Fortunately, mom decided that she wants a cremation. But it is a forgone fact that my uncle won’t part with a penny to help pay for the funeral.