they say she's dying

[Guest guest]

I've been away from this group because these past two weeks have been the most

harrowing of my life. BPD Mom has been placed in a hospice program with

full-time caregivers living in her house, because the doctors say she has

terminal cancer.

At least a year ago, I first noticed signs of dementia in her -- repeated

questions, memory loss, etc. -- but last month everything seemed to start

collapsing rapidly. She was nodding off in the middle of sentences, forgetting

where rooms of her house were, and hallucinating ever more wildly, to the point

where we took her to the ER. Over the next two days, she was diagnosed with

severe malnutrition and dehydration (because she has been anorexic since 1964,

although no one seems to believe me about this), dementia, major infections, and

bone cancer.

Doctors and social workers kept coming to me to discuss this. I wept. I was

stunned. It was so many layers of feelings at once. BPD Mom has been suicidal

for years, telling me in every conversation that she wanted to get a gun and

shoot herself, or burn down the house with herself inside it. Her suicidal

ravings have nearly drowned me. She has also been physically very disabled for

years. Combined with her BPD, which of course she never knew she had, and of

course which went untreated, she has been in unbelievable physical and mental

pain for most of her life. I have had so many issues with her, but it was only

last summer when I actually realized that she was mentally ill (BPD) and that it

was she not I who was crazy, and that she had wrecked much of my life without

ever meaning to.

And now this.

She has remained totally out of her mind since January 3, except for one moment

during which she said to me, " I'm going to die, aren't I? How long do I have? "

I sat beside her in the hospital and then at home day after day, during which

she had no idea who I was or even that I was there, but talked continuously to

invisible people -- endless conversations, even laughter (and I haven't seen her

laugh since around 1974), on and on and on. Once in a while she would notice

" me, " then begin yelling at me to " get off your f***ing ass and take me out of

here so I can get on the ship " (nonsense, she had no idea where she was, there

was no ship, etc.).

Seeing her like that, and seeing the condition of her body -- skeletal and

raddled not just by the cancer but by many decades of her own mistreatment of it

-- is sad beyond sad beyond sad. What is the point of life for the mentally ill

whose suffering is largely self-induced but who don't know that and it just goes

on and on? My own life has mostly felt meaningless, although I didn't until

recently know why -- that it was because I was raised by someone whose mental

illness did not let them love or really understand anyone, including

(especially?) me. Her illness which I did not know was illness dominated my

entire world. Her negativity and self-loathing were all I knew for my first

twenty years. Her delusions became my philosophy, my Bible. I've spent years in

therapy, years struggling for self-awareness and recovery. Of course I always

knew she would pass away someday -- I thought she would have an accident or kill

herself, as she threatened to do. But watching it happen this way, with this

long transition, is ... something.