Carly's Ramblings Blog - Style

Family Secrets

Blog Week Birthday Bastion 2024

Prompt 6. Sept 6.
Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets. Paul Tournier
Can you share a secret? Small or big, tell us. No? Tell us why not.

I don't know if it a secret or not, but things are not discussed. Things like my mother's drinking. She refuses to mention her drinking and I think she has a serious problem. It, combined with her dementia issues are rather stressful and when I keep it inside it rubs at me.

Things started to go downhill a year ago when her license was suspended because she was getting confused and taking far too long to find her way home from my aunt's place in Guelph. A forty minute drive was taking her and hour and a half.

It surprised me, but it was also made me breath a sigh of relief. She was going to restaurants to have a glass or two of wine before driving home. She is part of that older generation that does see drinking and driving as a huge deal. She's never been a great driver even when sober, though she claims to never have had an accident. (She has caused a few small scrapes and bumps)

It became a challenge to get her out and about every couple of days because she was claiming 'cabin fever'. We'd go to the bank, Food Basics and then either the LCBO (liquor store) and/or a restaurant for her to have a few glasses of wine - often on an empty stomach.

She will never claim she's drunk and when I ask her how she's feeling the next day she just claims she's feeling 'old'.

I have been dropping her off at the restaurant on her own and taking some time for myself (an hour and fifteen minutes is not long enough to do much) as I can't handle being around her when she drinks wine. She sounds fake and disingenuous. Telling her this only gets her all pissy, so I try to use other excuses to avoid eating out with her.

Today we were supposed to go get her blood tested. That meant no food or alcohol for 12 hours. She told the doctor "That will be no problem. I don't drink every day." (Well, she does.)

And last night I moved her bottle of wine and her bottle of rum into the cupboard before I went to bed at 10:30 pm. This was 12 hours before her appointment. I considered putting a Post It on the cupboard door to remind her not to indulge, but I thought that was a little extreme. I also considered putting the booze in the basement, but that would also be extreme. Now I'm wishing I had.

When I got up this morning I heard the rattle of a bottle and a glass coming from her room. When I asked her about it she said she 'just had a little' - there was one glass left in the 1.5 liter bottle. So I had to cancel her blood test and rebook it again for next week.

Now I hope she won't let me down again because I don't want to lose a supply teaching day - for a ten minute blood test - But I feel need to be here to make sure she doesn't forget and eat beforehand. And I need to spend another evening monitoring her drinking and being the 'meanie'. Talk about stress.

I also don't have anyone else to carry the issues of my mother. I am an only child and she doesn't remember a lot of her friends or want to be embarrassed in front of them. So she keeps to herself.

I love my mother but her current issues have changed who she is and others don't understand.

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