My sister came to visit from New York. I don’t think she planned on staying the weekend, but we decided it would be a nice idea to bring our mother to visit our aunt in Massachusetts since we hadn’t seen her in months. She is elderly and really cannot drive to Connecticut any longer. The best she can do is short trips around town. The classic Little Old Lady.
Visiting always takes a bit of planning. We have to give my aunt a head’s up, of course, but the biggest hurdle is getting my mother to go because “they” are back again. The woman who comes in the house and steals things…. But the urge to see her sister is stronger than the fear of someone breaking in, so off we went.
Now, a little background. My aunt always loved to entertain when we were growing up. She thought nothing of having groups of people large and small to lunch and making an enormous spread of food of every description to feed them all. The irony was that she could cook a piece of beef to perfection, yet is a vegetarian. It was at one of the occasions that I met my future husband, as a matter of fact, although we did not set eyes on each other again for some years, again at my aunt’s house, but that’s another story.
At any rate, my aunt still wants to provide hospitality and is hugely put out when she can’t. She just physically cannot prepare all that food. It’s way too much for her. She also hasn’t scaled down the portion sizes. In her mind’s eye, her nieces and nephews-by-friendship are all still in our mid-twenties with hearty appetites. We are all in middle age now and just don’t eat that way anymore. Thank God. Speaking for myself, I’d be a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon if I did. We’ve all scaled back.
We all know her propensity for feeding people so my sister and I made sure to go with empty stomachs. She didn’t disappoint although there wasn’t nearly as much food, which was good, really.
The hard part about these visits is watching the interaction between my mother and aunt. They have always, always, been very close. Like the closeness I have with my own sisters. I don’t know if that is unusual or not, but I’ve certainly seen siblings who do not get along. That’s not to say I don’t have differences with my own sibs, but we make it up because the relationships matter that much.
But they have drifted apart. Not on purpose, naturally. But my aunt is most definitely ‘not right’ and neither is my mother. What my aunt’s condition is is hard to say. Schizophrenia? Bi-Polar Disorder? Delusional? All I know is that she has delusions just as strong as my mother’s but hold the memory loss. Or, if she does have memory loss it isn’t even close to my mother’s.
For example, my aunt was utterly convinced that her partner of 30 years, a woman she loved and who loved her back, was having a torrid affair with her boss. A man, I might add. My aunt made life so miserable for her partner that she had to leave because she had ongoing health issues and the quality of her own life was going from bad to worse, with no end in sight. My aunt was verbally abusive and threatened physical violence. What else could she do? She wasn’t having an affair with her boss, obviously, but she couldn’t live under those conditions either.
My aunt, like my mother, could be volatile when she was young. But not abusive. This was something new. The filters were off and she would and did say awful things. The vitriol that came from her was frightening. She was a different woman, someone I didn’t recognize.
By comparison to my aunt’s delusions, and who really wants to compare delusions, my mother’s are pretty benign.
Things are better, I suspect she’s on antidepressants or anti-psychotic meds or some combination of both, but she still has her moments. Her rants.
By comparison to my aunt’s delusions, and who really wants to compare delusions, my mother’s are pretty benign. She thinks other people came with us to my aunt’s. She’s looking for my father. She’s looking for my aunt, even though she’s sitting right in front of her. She’s looking for her children, two of whom are with her. But she’s looking for her babies, not her adult children. She’s looking for her younger sister and doesn’t recognize the one in front of her. She doesn’t remember my aunt’s partner but does recognize, at least I think she recognizes, my aunt’s long time friend whom my mother has also known for 60 years. Memory is a funny thing.
After pressing the leftovers and Lord knows how much other food on us, we made our farewells. I was a little surprised we actually stayed more than an hour and a half, frankly, but after three and half hours mom was definitely getting itchy to go. She had to make dinner for my father, or so she imagined.
My aunt was weeping when we left. She’s lonely and mostly alone. Her former partner still visits and keeps an eye on her; there is still love despite everything and she is a good woman. But my aunt is watching her sister slip away and can’t bear it. It would be like one of my own sisters getting a fatal disease and watching her die in front of me bit by bit. I don’t know how I’d bear it, but of course, I would. I would for her sake and for my own sake. Because we are family.
