Damnation and Hope

A month ago, I praised the skies because Mother was moving closer to me. A positive start to the next era in our lives ...

Now, I am damning the gods because Mother is not committed to her decision. She cannot see past the difficult time of waiting for a house sale and living in my (very large) sitting room to the better times afterwards.

Mother is moving back to her house. She decided this within the week of arriving at my place and I have not been able to stop her slide into damnation of everything about me and my locality.

So, No Change? apart from the loss of about £2000 on a round-trip for her things? It is not as simple as that.

A Disaster? Mother wants to re-establish her status quo; it will surely be further entrenched. Being based on a behavioural disorder, her status quo is not happy.

I am accused of coercion. Although a month ago I said "the decision was forced by having to book the date with the removal firm", it was actually the time of the decision that was forced. She did have the choice to move within her town so she could get away from her new neighbours rather than move closer to me. Thus, she has rejected me, my attentions to details as well as the bigger picture, my execution of her wishes, and asserted that she herself is "the only one" who knows what she needs. She is confirming what I have long suspected but was hoping I was seeing the end of, a lack of trust in her daughter. No one has yet been able to be her advocate and the shell around her will only be reinforced.

Also a month ago, I was "expecting other instances of uncertainty": I knew she would be anxious about what was going to happen next, and indeed such a major change is fraught with difficulties as well as delight. What happened was that I could not maintain a delightful life for her for sufficient time -- I became a workman in her home, then a mother herself with her children visiting -- and Mother could not maintain her enjoyment -- therein lies the story of her life.

So a potential Disaster? No end to the frantic calls telling her daughter the latest atrocities against her? No end to her fight against the world? No decrease in the risk that she will be upset and fall again (a real possibility which has happened once this year). I wait to see. I have little hope of a new and positive attitude.

Yet I damn the gods mildly. One can only try, and I have lived being damned if I do and damned if I don't. I damn the gods thus:

Mother has “nerves” (also "nerve": her mother told her in no uncertain terms what she thought of her wearing a lime-green suit in the late 1940s and one could postulate that, even then, Mother had no regard for how others saw her). At the age of 13, about 1940, she was put in an institution for some nervous condition for six weeks, at the time not knowing if she would ever come out. Never mind that this was frightening – all types of "not-normal" people have been institutionalised for the rest of their lives -- there was no diagnosis, no follow up, no healing.

Thus, Mother developed coping strategies that have made her really quite dysfunctional. She has emigrated at least three times in her life and regularly wants to make big moves again. She is constantly dissatisfied with people and events, belligerent and obsessively aggressive to the point of upsetting whoever is her target. She defends herself to the hilt by pleading reactions she can't control and by attacking with emotion and little empathy for how others may feel. She complains that she “has to do it all” herself yet trusts no one to be her advocate.

Thus, we have one more person who is difficult to care for in their old age. We have two children, my brother and me, who are still learning how not-normal their mother is and their childhood was (such that my brother was distressed enough to seek counselling). We have a person who has not been able to fulfill their potential in this world.

Mother will return to her house and her frequent visits to the doctor. And here may be the silver lining to this Disaster.

Evidence for better funding for mental health services?

Surely yes! Although Mother may reject seeing a psychiatrist, a treatment already being suggested by her doctor, because she thinks she is doing alright, there are people who want to receive counselling because of a behavioural disorder or mental illness yet cannot because services don't have enough money. Here is a parallel, the non-availability of mental health service provision in the 1940s, which has turned out to be a false economy in Mother's case.

Indeed, I will thank the gods when the English government finally comes up with a holistic and evidence-based Mental Health Act. The Act of 2007 introduced Community Treatment Orders, an extreme treatment that is at risk of being over used.

The next Act must describe a full range of counselling treatments for a broader spectrum of patients and could-be patients, and make it accessible to anyone who wants it.

Scotland is already taking up this challenge, as well as looking at what contributes to good mental health.

Thus I live in hope rather than damnation.