Saturday, January 2, 2016

To laugh or to cry, that is the question.


Today I laughed.
Today I cried.

Here's the story:

I've been trying to help my parents deal with their timeshare.
It's kind of a nightmare for them and I want to help them either be rid of it or to have someone start using it.
It's been hard to get all the necessary account and login information 
so that I can try to deal with it.

For New Years they went from their motor home in Arizona to my brother's house in California.
I asked my brothers to try to help them do a few things while they were all together.
I forgot that during the time they were all together it would be a holiday and nothing would be open.
Dang.

So, today, when he arrived home to his motorhome in Arizona,
my dad called me so we could try to work on it.

It involved a lot of hassle.
We needed to reset the password on the timeshare site since no one remembered it.
But of course the password got sent to an email account that has a password that no one remembers.
The backup account is a different email account with an unknown password.
The links to change the password were sent to my mom's phone
which neither parent really knows how to use.

So I was trying to do all of this over the phone
and my Dad was checking emails and getting texts and
I was trying to tell him how to retrieve the texts and emails and forward them to me.

I was finally like "this would be easier for me to do if I just had your phone".
"Should I come to you or do you want to come here?"

My Dad says, "I guess you should come here."

So I text my brothers to tell them that Dad called me and I was headed over to get it all fixed...
Just to keep them in the loop, you know.
I send Frank a text saying that I'm going to my parents for a few minutes.
I jump in my car.
I drive to my parents condo which is a few minutes from my house.
I knock on the door, I ring the doorbell...I realize the house is dark.
Why the heck is the house dark?
My parents knew I was coming over...where did they go?
I start to call my Dad to ask him where the heck he is...
when it hits me.
He is IN ARIZONA.

Yeah.
I knew that.
I helped drive him there not that long ago.
I was just on the phone with him a few minutes before when he said they had returned to their motorhome safely from California.

I called my Dad.
I asked him what he thought I meant when I said, "Do you want come here or should I come there?"
and he thought I must have some sort of video call planned
so he and mom were patiently waiting with phones in hand for me to "arrive" by video.

UGH

I am seriously feeling like I'm losing my freaking mind.
I can laugh about it sometimes...it's funny.  
My Dad and I laughed on the phone together.
I texted my brothers and they got a good laugh over it.
My Dad thought it was so funny he called my brothers to tell them the hilarious story.

But also,
it's not funny.

Let's be honest here.
My mom has dementia.
She has almost no short term memory now.
Her mom had dementia before she passed away.

I came home and got it all worked out with the timeshare and the passwords.
and then I lost it.
I cried.
I told Frank to prepare himself for the fact that I am literally GOING CRAZY.

I am going to be a forgetful crazy person someday.
Feels like it might be sooner rather than later.

I know I will get comments telling me that this is normal.
Forgetting words, forgetting appointments, forgetting things my kids said to me a few minutes before.
Maybe it is.
But today it feels abnormal.
It feels like a ticking time bomb in my head.

I tell my kids things like
"you better still love me when I'm crazy"
and part of me is laughing and part of me is not.

I will go on with life.
I will remember stuff.
I will forget stuff.
I will take solace in the fact that I can hold a conversation and do all kinds of things on the computer and learn new things...and that all means that my brain works.
I will hope that it was just a glitch from trying to do too many things at once on this one busy day.

But
in case I'm wrong,
I hope you will all still love me when I'm crazy.

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