Life is hard

I don't know, I really feel like things are slipping fast, and it worries me, because it is hard to come to terms with. Mom is 91 and until this most recent issue with her bowels, has been doing okay. I wonder at it, because she's also lost about 20 pounds, and in a short time.

Myself, I think it is because she has been having normal bowel movements, but then taking laxatives, to correct, what may be an imaginary problem, has made her weak. And she is much weaker. Her walking is very slow, very limited, and her strength, to get up from her chair, is waning.

Yet she eats well, and while she doesn't drink enough, she does okayish. Still, she is losing strength, and today, hasn't managed to gain an ounce. At best she's the same as last week, at worse she's lost a half pound. That can't be good, given how much she's eaten too.

And nothing back from the lab yet, or the doctor from her blood workup over a week and half ago. It is scary, because while I am 54, she is still my mother, and maybe I am still just her kid, but we've been through a lot, and I don't want to think of losing her.

I know, it's stupid, lame and unrealistic, but she is my mother, you don't just cope with that, or accept it. You can't, not if you love someone, and yet it seems, that is what we do, we cope. I don't know if I can, really. Tears well up, for no reason, or so it seems, and no matter how much I tell myself to be strong, it seems to not work.

How do you stand by, with a sense of such helplessness?

Right now, I just want to scream, to yell my head off and how do you talk about those things, with her, or with your own partner? I mean David is just 31, and yet, I don't know, it is like he is more the type to just ignore it, to not think of it, which maybe works for him, but it is a bitch for me. How can I talk to him, about my fears, when he looks to me for strength? How can I talk to her about them, when she relies on me to be strong?

Life sucks.