Ten Years After

Boy, this is weird.

It's been a very long time since I've put fingers to keys.  I don't blog any more, hardly ever write.  I've moved from putting words to paper (or screen, as it were) and focus more on photography for self-expression, for a creative outlet.

Yet, here I am.  Ten Years After. 

The date on this entry says 2006, but it's not.  In August of 2006, my life was a wreck.  I was, at this point, existing on around 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night.  I was living back in my old home in Swissvale, taking care of my mother, who was waking me up in the middle of the night, claiming she had to go outside or generally acting up.

See, in the course of the last nine months, at the time, she'd begun to change.  Her baby sister died the previous year, and she wasn't taking it well.  Her personality was...off.  I'd attributed it to one of the many UTI's she'd had, but her doctor gave her a (relative) clean bill of health.  After every test came back clean, he said her problems might not be physical, but rather, mental.

I'd made an appointment with a geriatric psychologist she'd been to, ironically, a decade before, and they prescribed anti-depressants for her.  She'd started to take them, but they told me it would take two weeks for me to see any effect.  We never made it that far.

I don't think I've put the following down in words.  I've told people, but never wrote about it.

Middle of the night on August 7th, My Kid (as I've always referred to her) came into my room and was acting worse than ever.  She was hyper, rambling.  I tried to calm her down, but she was borderline hysterical.  She insisted on going to the hospital, and told me she'd hit me if I didn't take her.  I said she wouldn't, but she insisted. 

The slap across my face...it wasn't a hard one.  But it was enough of a wake up call.

I'd called for an ambulance.  They took her to the hospital in Braddock where they gave her something to sleep.  They'd told me their psych ward was full or else they'd admit her, instead, telling me to take her home and call her doctor in the morning.

Got her home, got showered and went to work. Called her doc, and she said they'd get her into Western Psych, but they didn't know when.  They'd call me when there was a bed available.  It would be another 24 hours before they could take her.

Another night of three hours of sleep.

Tuesday, August 8th, 2006.  I was at work, around 10:30 in the morning, when I got the call that a bed had opened up in Western Psych, but I had to get her there before Noon.  Now, anyone familiar with Pittsburgh will be impressed when they hear I was able to drive from CMU to Swissvale, get her, and get back to Oakland in under an hour.  Speed laws were broken that day.

She left her home of 40 years that day, and she never came back.

It took some convincing for her to admit herself, rather than have a judge admit her.  I had to be the one who finally convinced her to do it.

She wouldn't leave that place for more than three months.

In the beginning, I was convinced she'd be able to come home again.  I'd bring her home after they were able to help her, and we'd go back to the same old routine.  But there was no coming back from this one.

She'd been diagnosed with depression and cognitive disorders, dementia and onset of Altzheimer's.  There was no coming back from this one.

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You may ask, why am I writing all this now.  Why am I up at 2:30 in the morning, unable to sleep, like I couldn't 10 years ago? 

I remember anniversaries of important dates.  First time I talked to Julie, first trip out to DeKalb to meet her.  Our wedding day.  I remember them all, just as I remember August 8th.

But decades have always been big for me.  I've seen over the course of my life how things have...changed...as each new decade starts.  I've changed, as it were, with each decade of my life.

I think we all change a little every 10 years, or else we experience something new every decade.  We reinvent ourselves, making changes. Some big, some small.

So it's been a decade since my mother left home one last time, went into Western Psych, and ultimately the nursing home where she spent the last two and a half years of her life.

It's been a decade since I accepted she wouldn't come home, that the house was mine, lost my job, met my true love, moved 500 miles from the only home I'd ever known and became a step-father, and a step-grandfather.

Ten years after.

Nowadays, when I wake up in the middle of the night, it's because I'm too hot.  It's not because My Kid came in the room in the middle of the night swearing she had to go next door to the flower shop (that's not there anymore).

I'll get up and go stretch out on the couch until I cool off enough to go back to bed, where the most amazing woman is waiting for me.  I'll climb back in, and she'll reach over and take my hand, and I can sleep for a couple more hours before I have to get up and face the day.

Yeah, it's been 10 years today, and I may seem a little...introspective, but I'm better today that I was back then.  10 years ago, tonight, I came home and I didn't have to worry about someone waking me up because the demons in her head were telling her things.  Maybe tonight, I'll sleep though the night, to celebrate that anniversary.

It's a decade thing, you understand.