Oh the parent thing is tough - and you're right, nobody prepares you for the role reversal.
My mom started to get very cranky and stubborn about everything and anything. Confrontational, argumentative, and short. And there's something going on either cognitively or visually: she just walks into everything with alarming regularity. For example she'll just saunter through a grocery store and bump into people and turn without looking--not just your fairly common 'stop and put your Costco card away as soon as you enter the store' lack of spatial awareness, but it's like she can't see people. I wonder if it's some kind of tunnel vision.
I know her hearing has gone downhill big time, too. After about a year of that, and mentioning again and again that she needs to get it investigated, I finally just booked an appointment with an audiologist for her and she went ballistic.
It's incredibly worrying and stressful. And there's this foreboding feeling that blankets and envelops you. What compounds it even more--for me--is that my two brothers are absolutely absent, and always have been.
I really don't have the mental fortitude for this.
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