Like a child

I am almost fifty years old and my mother can still make me feel like I’m a child. No matter what I do it is never done the right way for mom. Three years ago she had a stroke. For a year and a half she was in a rehab facility. When I would go to visit she would point to things in her room that needed to be done. She wanted her flowers arranged on the shelf a certain way. Her knick-knacks had to be arranged and re-arranged several times during a visit. God forbid, if someone moved her clothes or her shoes so they could sit down in a chair. When we brought her home it got even worse. My husband and I moved in with my folks to take care of my mom. Now I was responsible for changing her, feeding her through her feeding tube, giving her her medicine, bathing her, getting her dressed, getting her into her wheelchair (no easy task), doing her laundry, and taking care of my dad. People that have known my mom for years couldn’t believe the way she treated me. It was nothing new to me but now others were finally seeing it. With all that I was doing, one day she told me I needed to organize the refrigerator. She didn’t like the way things were arranged in there. Another night when I was cooking dinner, my dad came in and told me mom needed me. When I got to her room she wanted me to put away the clothes that I had washed and ironed. I had figured dad could at least do that, but no, I had to do it. As horrible as it sounds I was so relieved when we had to put her back in a nursing home.