from “Elder Abuse and Neglect”:

In emotional or psychological senior abuse, people speak to or treat elderly persons in ways that cause emotional pain or distress.

Verbal forms of emotional elder abuse include

* intimidation through yelling or threats
* humiliation and ridicule
* habitual blaming or scapegoating

Nonverbal psychological elder abuse can take the form of

* ignoring the elderly person
* isolating an elder from friends or activities
* terrorizing or menacing the elderly person

OMG. There it is. That’s why I moved out from living with my brother and trying to take care of my mom who still lives there. I kept trying to tell him to stop, but he just kept on. I’m an elder, and that’s abuse.

And now I have to figure out how to get my mom away from him because, at 94 and with dementia and a slate of physical problems, she can’t just move out the way I did.

Boy, did I make a series of bad choices as I tried to be my mom’s caregiver. I’ve been trying to remedy my situation since, and now I have to figure out how to remedy hers.

What I find really interesting is that, while I was on an anti-depressant, I never got mad enough to fight back no-holds-barred. Now I’m off the drug and I’m really mad. And I’m fighting back.

She tries to comb her hair with her toothbrush and brush her teeth with her comb. That’s pretty much a metaphor for where my mom’s mind is. And this is my 3rd day here with her and my brother, trying to ignore his rants against my caregiving “techniques” while keeping my spirits up so that I can be of best use to my mom.

Every once in a while she does have a lucid moment. Soon after I arrived, she looked at me, smiled, and then started to cry “I’m so happy happy to see you!!” Several minutes later she asked me “What is your name?”

Sometimes she calls me “Pani,” which is the Polish equivalent of “Mrs.” In those cases she knows I’m someone who helps to take care of her but forgets who I am. Sometimes she calls me “ciocia,” which means “aunt” in Polish, and she thinks I am one of her many aunts (all long gone) whom she knew as a child. Sometimes she hugs me and says “You are my mother.”

But mostly she vocalizes quick pants of “a ah, a ah, a ah….” for hours on end, refusing to take even a tylenol.

I am only here for a while once a month. My brother, who has CONTROL but no real self-control, keeps her with him and does the best he can by himself. They both need more help, but he won’t bring any in.

I’m doing my best to keep my reflux and back spasms under control. How long I last here depends….

I keep reminding myself that she won’t live forever, even right now it sure feels like it.

While she’s napping, I’m going to wash my hair.

I am a year older than Wonder Woman, and she was my favorite comic book character beginning on the day I first walked into Mr. Wellman’s candy store and discovered her on the shelves.

But today’s comic publisher is going to turn her into something she was never meant to be, and I, personally resent the insulting “updating.”

My Wonder Woman had a past, a “backstory” worthy of her mythic and iconic stature. From here:

From her inception, Wonder Woman was not out to just stop criminals, but to reform them. On a small island off Paradise Island was Transformation Island, a rehabilitation complex created by the Amazons to house and reform criminals.

Armed with her bulletproof bracelets, magic lasso, and her amazonian training, Princess Diana was the archetype of the perfect woman from the mind of her creator, William Moulton Marston. She was beautiful, intelligent, strong, but still possessed a soft side. At that time, her powers came from ‘Amazon Concentration,’ not as a gift from the gods.

Wonder Woman’s magic lasso was supposedly forged from the Magic Girdle of Aphrodite, which Queen Hippolyta (Wonder Woman’s) mother was bequeathed by the Goddess. Hephastateus borrowed the belt, removed links from it, and that is where the magic lasso came from. It was unbreakable, infinitely stretchable, and could make all who are encircled in it tell the truth.

I first become interested in Greek and Roman mythology because of that original Wonder Woman story.

But now “they” are going to change all that — make her a Superman Clone.

They are taking the awesome “wonder” out of Wonder Woman, and I don’t like it at all.

There is a lingering scent of bug spray throughout the house this July 4, left over from yesterday’s cook-out and trek down the street to watch the fireworks. I had the option of not hanging out in the 90 degree heat with the forty-something-aged parents and their young kids and not standing around in the mosquito and Japanese beetle invested night with the hundreds of others, necks craned to the sky. I chose to hang out in my own cool space, making periodic appearances to gather up my food and drink and interact a bit with the guests.

Such is the privilege of age — especially in my situation, where I have few responsibilities to anyone but myself. (Except, of course, my 94-year-old demented mother, whom I will visit in a few days to help with her care.)

It is Independence Day in another way for me. For the first time in some 25 years, I am off an anti-depressant. It served it’s purpose, and I was done with the lack of depth of feeling that is the both the benefit and the curse of those meds. It took three months to wean myself off, and I am seeing a counselor to help with the transition, but it’s worth it.

I’m writing more, feeling more, doing more. I’m almost done with the three-dimensional wall hanging that I’m creating for this virtual exhibit. I’m quite pleased with the result, and I have ideas for more such projects. And I’ve begun a sweater for my daughter like the one below I made for myself, but in another color.

I’m even feeling more sympathy for my poor mother, and, in a new strange way, I’m looking forward to spending some time with her, trying to ease her weary mind.

I am thinking a lot about being the age I am (70) and what I want for myself, which is seeming to be so very different from what I wanted even a dozen years ago. I am trying out some alternative ways to relieve the pains of joint and spine problems, and they seem to be working.

Today is Independence Day, and despite the turmoil and despair in so many other parts of this world, in this small space that my life takes up, it’s a good day.

Yes, it’s a good day for singing a song,
and it’s a good day for moving along
Yes, it’s a good day, how could anything go wrong,
A good day from morning’ till night

`Cause it’s a good day for paying your bills;
And it’s a good day for curing your ills,
So take a deep breath and throw away your pills;
`Cause it’s a good day from morning’ till night

The following is a piece I wrote in response to this Magpie Tales #21 visual prompt. More responses can be found here.

fabric, paper, twigs, and twine
in fullest moon this spell will bind
shape your fullest heart’s desire
free its truth in earth and fire

I can’t remember the last time I actually sat and did nothing, mind emptying into the slowly drifting clouds and the muted chirps of birds of all kinds. The air smells faintly of marsh. The sun is warm. The breeze is cool. I am thinking of nothing as I lay on my back, doing nothing being in a place safe from stress and worry,

This is a panoramic view of the estuary behind our cottage at Moody’s Cottages in Wells, Maine. (I have an iphone app that “stitches” photos together to make a panorama. Love that iphone!)

Right now I am at the library, using its free wifi while the rest of the family checks out the local fire house and police station. My grandson is building a collection of t-shirts and patches from such places in every town he visits. He knows as much about fire trucks and ambulances as those who actually work in them. He charms them into giving him tours and explaining what all the equipment does. He also likes to throw stones in the estuary.

Last night I finished reading Alice Hoffman’s The Story Sisters. She is by far my favorite writer; no one captures the magic of ordinary things the way she does. Thunder storms promised for tomorrow means that I will immerse myself in Kate Atkinson’s Human Croquet. I just discovered her recently, and I’m hooked.

It’s going to be hard to get back to the hard real world that awaits me, scheduled with a week’s visit to my mother’s. But for now, it’s time for me and lobster and the ocean and the vast sky over the estuary, where I can lose myself in the sounds of silence.

The following is a piece I wrote in response to this Magpie Tales #19 visual prompt. More responses can be found here.

Sometimes the softest silk,
the smoothest grain,
hide danger, sharp,
compelling beyond trust.

Beware of costly knives
riddled with history.

We were supposed to leave for Maine today, but my grandson had a stomach bug and fever yesterday. He seems fine today, but we gave him another day home just to make sure.

It’s been a while since any of us have been able to go away for a whole week, and we are all looking forward to the ocean and the nature preserves and the deck on our cottage that looks out over an estuary. My grandson and his dad will fish, and my daughter and I will just veg out.

Time is passing too quickly for my liking and taking with it too much of the physical capacities I’ve always taken for granted. Degenerative disc disease is not uncommon for people my age, but mine is worse than normal. There’s not much I can do at this point — eat healthy, stretch….

I remember that my mother had a chinning bar attached near the top of an open doorway, and she would hang from it by her hands several times a day. I think it helped a lot with her spinal problems, and now I have one here. When I hang from it, I often can hear the pops of my spine decompressing.

I spent a little time online last night searching for ways to decompress the spine. Hanging by your hands from a bar is one of them — one of the least expensive and easy to use.

I am lazy and things I wanted and/or wanted to do always came easy to me. Notice I said “things I wanted.” Maybe I didn’t want the things I didn’t want because they didn’t come easy to me.

I was never one to delay gratification — whether it was eating chocolate or buying a new pair of jeans. This is something I am learning to tolerate now in my elder years.

I think of my dementia-plagued mom, who seems to be able to be gratified by so little — a globular gourmet lollipop that she can suck on for hours, a simple song that I make up as I go along.

Tomorrow, Maine, and some gratification for me. In another few weeks, I make the journey to try to give my mother some little gratification. (I wish I could take another vacation after that!)

Meanwhile, I am continuing to see a chiropractor for thoracic spine therapy, since the muscles are still pretty sore and in spasm from my fall off the bed at my mother’s a little over a month ago.

I will probably never delight in Salsa dancing again. And that’s too bad, because I always found the movements and the music very gratifying.

My mom lives more than 160 miles from me. She is 94 with severe dementia.

When I go and stay with her (about once a month) I sing to her, old songs that she might recognize — “Over the Rainbow,” “My Favorite Things,” “Try to Remember,” “When the red red robin comes bob bob bobbin along…..” I have a below average singing voice, but my singing seems to calm her down.

Tonight, 160 miles away, she wouldn’t calm down, and my brother was at his wit’s end. So I started singing to her over the telephone, and it worked. Now I have to figure out how to record some of those songs and burn them on a disk or get them onto an mp3 player so that I can send them to her — a medley of old songs to ease the demented mind.

Hey, whatever works.

The following is a piece I wrote in response to this Magpie Tales #18 visual prompt. More responses can be found here.

We called him Uncle Albert before he was the king. He was a sweet, shy man, you know. Stuttered a bit in stressful circumstances and always deferred to his more dashing brother, who was supposed to be king but gave it all up for love.

I remember sitting at a corner table with the rest of the kids in the family during his coronation celebration. It was quite an pompous affair, and poor Uncle Albert looked so uncomfortable. I thought he was going to vomit right then and there. No one paid much attention to us kids, so I swiped one of the commemorative pottery pieces from our table just to see if I could get away with it.

It’s been in the family since, and my granddaughter has it now. Keeps sharpened pencils in it.

She asked once if my Uncle Albert was the one the Beatles sang about. I think my Uncle Albert would would get a big kick out of that. And the pencil holder, too.