Ways to Help

My mom went home today. My dad has been with her since she had her surgery, sleeping in the chair beside her hospital bed. My parents can be infinitely annoying and occasional emotionally abusive, but they are pretty incredible.

Today is the first day since Tuesday I won't see my mother. I'm relieved. Starting tomorrow, much of her daily care will fall to my brother and me. He lives there for the summer, so he has less ability to escape. I have to remember it is not my job, that her friends can take up some of the slack.

Yesterday, while I was feeding her ice chips, my mom started complaining to me about one of her friends and went on her standard bitch-and-moan about her mother and one of her clients and other flawed people in her life. She's keeps checking to make sure she's not overburdening me with the physical stuff--repeats over and over I don't have to feed her or help her stand or poke at the bloody things unless I'm comfortable--but I've never been able to properly communicate how uncomfortable I am being her emotional support system, and now seems a cruel time to say something. I feel so backwards--help from her local adult daughter post-double mastectomy is a huge act of charity; therapeutic services have been assumed since I was 4. I never had to do the dishes or take out the trash, maybe I just got the emotional trash instead. And my parents still don't expect any sort of physical, visible work, but perhaps to them it's a greater burden to do something than to feel something. Not me.

I'll be back at their house tomorrow night and it will be emotionally draining, too, but it's emotionally draining sitting at my house.

The cicadas are loud again tonight. Crickets chirp, cicadas scream. The sound swells and ebbs in irregular waves. I never see them, but I hear them. They are monsters.