Perspective is a little hard to come by at the moment.

Perspective is a little hard to come by at the moment. My baseline irritability deep, deep down is rooted in my inability to get my own act together. Meanwhile, the more proximate issue is that my mom has become untenable in the last few days. The final straw this evening was my dad acting stupidly, somewhat a result of my mom, as it happens.

It turns out the reason for Mom's behavior is predictably that she has once again enmeshed herself in my uncle's (her brother) life. More correctly, she's been ensnared. Somebody joked the other day about a black heart. This isn't that Joseph Conrad. This is just a dangerous narcissist, the actual technical definition get the hell away as far and as fast as you can. My mother is completely blind with this.  Apparently she and my dad had another fight about it. She's been getting more and more horrible to live with, again.

She's hurting herself, too. She thought she was having a heart attack, so she came and got me and wanted help. Now that I've seen this repeatedly, and retroactively recognized it over the years, I went ahead and talked to her and eventually clarified enough to remind her that this happens every time there's a stress crisis build-up for her emotionally, that she had to go see the doctor because it was her stomach and she has medicines she can take, but not many, and that she was also having an anxiety attack. So I asked her what she could do for her stomach, we did something, it started to help a little. I (granted somewhat grudgingly) listened to her talk and countered with fact based information that was mostly argued with. Then we got the rationalizing. Then we got a tiny admission of ok maybe stress.

She adamantly refuses having any anxiety whatsoever. Then she de novo decides that she is going to magically return to her extremely effective meditation practice. What meditation practice? Oh, fine, you're having anxiety attacks and exhibiting pathologically controlling behavior bordering on OCD because you're so consciously mindful, or mindfully conscious, or whatever. Eventually, after doing her level best to dump her stress on me (I wish I were better at deflecting this), she realizes she is calmer and feeling less unwell and it's ok, I can go to bed. The good news is she was absolutely not having a heart attack, although she is probably doing serious damage to the lining of her esophagus and stomach.

My dad has made it very clear to my mom that he does not want to hear about my uncle, have anything to do with my uncle, and absolutely will not support my mother in helping my uncle. You can make whatever arguments you like about if you're in a relationship you support your partner, etc., but I'm pretty sure if you think your partner is trying to jump off a cliff with no BASE jumping training, you are generally not supposed to give them a push. My dad thinks she's cliff jumping. She thinks he's a big, unsupportive jerk. And continues to insist on talking to him about my uncle. Like she's going to convince him to have a different opinion. Or, more correctly, torture him into it through sheer persistence. This is obviously going well.

So my dad is getting super irritable because she keeps at him about the uncle thing. Tonight, she is in her obsessive house perfecting mode because one of her many women's groups is going to be over at the house for lunch and someone's birthday. This effectively means we are not allowed anywhere except bedrooms and the back enclosed porch/room area. I mean, we can go in the basement and garage, but they aren't finished areas. No dirty dishes in the sink, no thumbprints on the stupid black enamel/glass finish on the appliances, no using the stove and getting it dirty, no sitting at the dining room table because she has to get it set tonight for tomorrow afternoon.  

This last is particularly problematic for my dad because the dining room table is the only eating area in the house, he has to be able to sit in a chair he can sit in, which has become difficult since his illness, and both he and my mom basically use the dining room as their place to read and keep some things, like his medicines and little book he tracks that stuff in. So instead of letting him move that stuff after he takes it in the morning, it's all been moved already. It's become really, really hard for both my parents if things aren't done in a repeated, regular way, so this is very disruptive for my dad.

My dad's stress level is high right now, and he got super irritable with me over a couple of stupid things. One, I am not interested in discussing in detail every little thing I am doing as I do it, right now. It's not a secret, but it's not a form of entertainment, either, and it's not up for discussion. Two, he wanted me to do something with him tonight because he wanted to get out of the house, but I was already doing something (not that that went well, but whatever). He could have gone and done something by himself, but he didn't want to, apparently, and instead of saying anything further, he just dropped it. Three, I went in the back room and he told me to sit in one particular chair, and I said no, you pick one that is comfortable for you and I'll sit in the third one, whichever you don't. There's a reason why I won't sit in the chair he was telling me to sit in, but that wasn't even the point. I said no, he got mad, and walked out. Like, literally. 

And I am not ok with both my parents throwing stupid stress everywhere, as well as at me, so I left. My mom started to ask what was going on, and I told her she wasn't involved, and for the first time in ever, she accepted it and left me alone. Otoh, all bets are off as to whether she's going to create a problem by bothering my father later on because a dog with a bone's got nothin' on her and control.

I want to tell her that no matter how many problems she finds to fix, no matter how much she tries to control, my dad will still die, we will never be wealthy, and the world will still be run by horrible people. She cannot change any of these things. She might be able to find a way to live with it, preferably one that doesn't alienate people while still allowing her to feel that she has been true to herself.

I don't know what to do with my dad. He's dying. It's just taking longer than they thought. Sometimes, I'm pretty sure, he can talk with my mom, but other than that, I don't think he has anyone to talk with. His friends are all dead. The last one I know of, a fellow Vet, died from a recurrence of a solid tissue lymphoma. He's an old-time guy; he's not talking to a counselor, he's not talking to any clergy. There have been two or three clergy I'm aware of in my whole life that he respected as people and would have talked to. Because they were 'guys'. Meaning, he would have talked to them as a guy anyway, they just happened to be clergy. None of them are here, anymore. He's angry, he's tired, he's worried about my mom being ok after he dies and, as he sees it, he's watching her self destruct because she won't disengage from her brother. 

So, yeah. I'm pretty irritable myself, right now, but perspective is definitely hard to come by.