Mums drinking habits

[Coolcar98]

Hi, sorry I haven’t been on for a while. I guess I have been feeling rather indifferent lately what with battling my health, work, mum and everything else. However things are very much still stalled with mum.

I have been trying to focus on myself abit more as I have been feeling so ashamed of how things have turned out and I’m trying to focus on myself.

I’ve had a few good things, well amazing happen this month. I went to a comic con and met my celeb crush and a couple of days ago I went to see my favourite band. I have waited a year for this concert and everything was paid for a year ago. This was the fourth time I have seen them since 2016. The band I saw played a certain song from their latest album. The song means so much to me. I have mentioned before the song which I heard driving in the perfect surroundings when I heard it for the first time. The song is also a love song about people fighting to be together during covid and in the song the best sounds like a hospital machine helping someone. The song also mentions people dying alone in hospital. The song means so much to me after loosing dad.

When this song started playing, I nearly broke down in tears. It just reminded me of everything that had happened and I was there in that perfect surrounding. During the song people were lighting up their phones to filling the stadium.

I never cried on the night, but as I write this the tears are just pouring down.

Anyway I guess my role is now becoming beyond carer territory now. I find it hard to continue to accept that I am a carer because it just doesn’t fit in binary terms. For years it hasn’t been about meeting needs, it’s been about so much more.

My sisters words the other night were we only have each other and those words were so true. I spend my life trying to do great things, stuff I enjoy just to fill a massive gap.

Mum also keeps continuing to be obsessed with the pub and I just can’t take it anymore. I don’t think she is an alcoholic, but she is putting more effort in with people at the pub than she is her own children and then acts like we don’t care about her or want to see her.

[bowlingbun]

There is a song that can bring me to tears in seconds, I have to protect myself and turn it off immediately. As far as your progress is concerned, I’m pleased that you had a good cry, you needed it. As a widow I’ve done lots of crying, it’s part of the letting go process, on the way to a different new life. It’s unfair to have a less than perfect parent, but you can’t change her. My mum thought more of her plants than me and my kids. After she died I found lots of flower photos, not one of us together! It’s OK for me to spend my money on me, not put everyone else first. It’s great that you are treating yourself, going out and about more, enjoy yourself again. You are making real progress now!

[Charlesh47]

Hi Coolcar98.

It’s nice to hear that you’re making good progress: it takes time, but you’re definitely on the journey now!

[Coolcar98]

Yeah, it was an emotional moment. I can listen to the song, and I really wanted them to play it. Once I heard the first few notes I was gone.

The song is about covid anyway and people fighting to be together. It compares Romeo and Juliet to the virus, obviously the virus is the poison. The song also has a slow beat which is what usually gets me. It sounds almost like a hospital machine. I am surprised the song isn’t widely known, I mean the band that sing it are one of the biggest UK rock bands, but it is just isn’t that big.

Anyway, the final time I ever saw my dad in the resus ward in an induced coma. he was hooked up to a machine with tubes in his neck. There was many other people on the ward and the sound of the machines got me. It was the sound of people struggling to breathe. I will never forget that sound. So you can see how the beat means a lot.

The concert was mainly heavy rock and was an asking, the crowd knew every word to the song and the production was amazing with pyrotechnics and a big light show. There was also two giant puppet things on stage, during one song the frontman sat on the shoulder of one. I think the stadium capacity was about 35000 too and it was packed. Then to see phones lit up during the song and confetti everywhere, it was so poignant.

Unfortunately though I tried to tell my mum about the concert and she was really disinterested which is not a suprise. She just wanted to talk about the pub as per usual, and she wonders why her kids don’t really want a conversation with her.

[bowlingbun]

The band sounds fun.
I think your next challenge is to start telling yourself “don’t go there” when you start thinking of dad in his last days. I know how difficult this is, but you can train your mind to think differently. Do you have a favourite photo of dad? Have it enlarged, and framed, and put it where you can always see it. Every time the last days come to mind, tell yourself you are NOT going to think of dad then, but think of him as he was in that picture, happy, full of life. I found my husband dead in bed, but I finally managed this, so I’m sure you can do it do. As for mum, your other challenge is to not even bother trying to tell her about anything relating to you, because you know after all these years, it’s a complete waste of time. Possibly not deliberately, we are all flawed in various ways, so maybe try to think instead that she is incapable of sharing experiences with others. In this way, you won’t be disappointed when she can only talk about herself. Try to develop a little group of friends who share common interests, maybe learning french, knitting, golf, anything that brings you in contact with others. Do NOT volunteer, this is all about you now.

[Charlesh47]

I agree with BB. Digging out favourite photos from happier times is always a good idea. I’ve scanned about 10,000 family photos and am now transferring some of my favourite ones onto my phone, partly as a backup and partly so I can access them easily if I need to ground myself. My Dad used to do most of the photography, so I don’t have many of them other than ones I took, but I do have some.

[Melly1]

Yes, I agree with BB and Charles too. This is one of my key strategies regarding my Dad (who was killed in a house fire) I don’t want to focus nor think about that as it’s too horrific. I look at photos that evoke happier memories and I try and encourage the smaller garden birds (the magpies dominate here) as my Dad loved the garden birds and had befriended a few,

[Pet66]

I still struggle with photos of hubby, but I did have a pencil portrait of him commissioned in his memory. Its fabulous. Even shows his eyes twinkling. Its a picture of a happy time in his life and I draw comfort from it
So I agree with the others something to remind you of happy times is very therapeutic.

[Coolcar98]

Yeah. I get you. I just meant the song meant a lot to me in general.

I also have my own ways of remembering dad. I didn’t celebrate Father’s Day this year, to me it was just another day to be sad. Not to be all anti-consumerist or anything, but there wasn’t much I could do for him otherwise. Although I did end up going into the town centre with my sister and I bought a David Bowie Tshirt. I do like alot of music, my dad loved him so that was a testiment to him if anything.

I do have a few photos of my dad in my room. In the pictures my dad and I are on a day out when I was an about 4. We were at the seaside near a landmark. My parents found out they were pregnant with me whilst at the same seaside. It is also the place is where I got my first proper journalist job and still remain. Dad never saw me leave uni or become a journalist, yet every morning I drive by the landmark where that picture was taken. It’s a long story how that job came to be, but I do believe that it was more than a coincidence that I ended up there, the story of how it happened is just wierd.

There is also a third photo clearly from another day out. Me and my work colleagues were discussing something their husbands do which is very cheap. They were talking about going into a certain low price tiny supermarket. (I think it’s a shop we only have in the north, but they are everywhere). Basically the idea is to get cheap low price drinks instead of paying a few pounds each time. Obviously times have changed, but it was the sort of place where you could get a few bottles of Pepsi for a pound. Nowadays it’s a couple of cans of Pepsi for a quid. Smart thinking but my dad always swore by it on everyday out we went to. We couldn’t go anywhere without going to this shop first, or finding one.

I remembered in one of the photos dad has a bag with the old logo of this shop on. It made me laugh. But to then realise even other people do it too. I thought my dad was cheap.

It is those little things that often get forgotten. This is why I think no family member should care for anyone without necessarily support. For a long while after dad died, dad was remembered as a carer whose support was no longer. Mum became a pain, and suddenly so much more pressure was imposed on me. No one ever considered the emotional toll.

It sounds really offensive to say, but I mean it respectfully, but mum occasionally behaves like the stereotypical person living on a council estate. Everything has to be a fight and a disagreement, everything has to carry on and carry on with no solution in sight. This is how mum behaves and if someone even so much makes a comment in the street hell breaks loose. Dad was very working class too, but different. He instilled in his children the value of working hard and support. Like when I went to uni, mum kicked off big time making out I was trying to be better than I was, dad was so happy. To mum if I ever accomplished anything I was showing off.

I don’t have much to do with mums side of the family for those reasons. A lot of them don’t really like me, but the feeling is mutual. The thing that annoys them most is the fact that I’m just a very gender neutral person without being trans or anything like that.

Dad was always ahead of his time and even when us kids were young our Christmases were filled with toys of all sorts. He hated nothing more than jewellery sets and toy prams, but he loved construction toys, scaleelextrics and stuff. I relished all that stuff and hated girls toys too, they just weren’t fun.

As I have got older I have just learnt to be confortable in my own skin. I don’t care really, I shop in both the male and female sections of any shops. I buy toys and I am brilliant with fixing things.

[Chris_22081]

10,000 crumbs Charles that is impressive. I so wish my Dad had not just discarded all his photo collection and let me do what you are doing. My cousin did that for my Uncle and he provided us with around 1500 photos on a DVD. A lot are of their family and not much interest to us but some good old memories.

I look back and drift into a different world and, you are right, it can be relaxing and make things seem better.

[Charlesh47]

Unfortunately, that was only part of his collection. He had thousands of slides, too, but he threw out most of them shortly after his stroke. Unfortunately that included some photos I’d taken on honeymoon in London. I have found a few that he missed, but the cost of getting them scanned is a bit prohibitive. Here’s one, though, from the few that have been scanned…I’ll get the others done as and when I can afford it…this is Corbière lighthouse, in Jersey, taken in 1977. You can see where I get it from.