To be fair, it isn't a real group - "HDSA Caregiver Support Group". Just an on-line thing. And, oddly, they only allow so many accounts to sign into their sessions and all the spots are currently full, so I won't be able to attend any meetings.
Still. I have a support group.
What a joke.
***
Recently, MW has suffixed her bouts of enraged aggression with timid niceties. She'll attack me with all the fervor of a Templar, turn around, and then start some banal chit-chat without even acknowledging that'd she'd just called for my head on a pike.
I wonder how much of this is early on-set and how much is self-preservation. I've timed it: if MW is not otherwise occupied with something like a TV show or a phone call; two minutes will not pass without her calling upon me for some service or with a question - usually about her health ("Cancer? Is this cancer?").
If I'm in the house, she is incapable of being by herself. She needs me around her constantly.
And yet, everything I do infuriates her beyond reason. Or everything I don't do. It doesn't really matter. In the past week she's reamed me for stopping at yellow stoplights; driving too fast to make it through a yellow light: putting too much water in her bottle; not putting enough water in her bottle: waking her up when she'd asked to be woken up; not waking her... You get it. Oh, and the things I have no control over; like when the computer doesn't work or the TV goes out - that's my ass right there.
I take it - I have to - but these recent turnarounds rile me. Is this next level shit? Is she sliding into the next phase of dementia where she can no longer conceptualize her own behavior? I'm used to her getting and keeping a mad on for hours if not days - that, at lease, seems natural once you get past the point that it isn't justified - but these sudden reversals are confusing.
Unless it is self-preservation; where she realizes she can't both destroy and use me at the same time.
Well, this is something I can ask my support group about.
***
Saint or Monster?
Based on MW's comments last month - when she said she never wanted to know - I have been strutting around the place with my halo cocked at a jaunty angle. Only room upon this cross for the chosen, you know. A few days ago, however, something happened that gave me pause.
A small thing.
After MW had finished writing down her daily reminder notes, sticking them all over the walls with masking tape, she spent a few awkward moments trying to fit the cap back on the Sharpie - getting her thumb good and inked in the process.
I went to take the pen and cap from her, but then stopped and thought; "No, let her do this herself."
Followed immediately by another thought; "Why? Degenerative means this won't get better. So what if MW gets the cap on today? What about tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Holy shit, next year? What difference will it make if I take it away from her now?"
By then it was moot - she'd managed the cap.
And just like that, I'm back to being a monster.
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