Too Many Pieces In This Particular Puzzle

They called me from the assisted living this morning that my mother's eye was red and swollen and that they had made an appointment for her with her eye doctor and that the bus would take her.
I sighed because I knew that just taking her to an appointment was not enough. Whatever the doctor told her, she would forget before she got back home and so I needed to go.
And so I did.
She was hugely upset, not because of her eye (and it turned out to be an oil gland on the lid which was inflamed, not the eye itself) but because she had lost a hundred dollars. She had called the week before in tears- she had a hair appointment but no money with which to pay for it. We haven't figured this money thing out yet. There used to be a bank branch in the basement of the AL but it's no longer there and it's a moot point anyway because Mother can't remember her password for her debit card and so getting cash that way is impossible for her. Besides that, she loses every debit card Mr. Moon gets her and then he cancels them and gets her another and the cycle is repeated. So he has been taking money from her account and taking it to her which he did last week. One hundred dollars in twenties. And he gave her the money and watched her put it in her wallet and she went to lunch and he left.
And then, she did something with that money. She had told Mr. Moon that she wanted to take some out of her wallet- that was too much money to keep in one place and he had said, "Fine, do whatever you want, it's your money but do it after lunch. You need to go eat."

And in her mind, the money had never been in her wallet. She swears up and down that no, she had not even seen the cash, it had been in an envelope and she had put the envelope of cash in a stationery box but now it was not there.

I checked her wallet when we were at the doctor's office and her entire purse. No cash there at all. I told her I'd help her find it when we got back to her place. And I tried. I looked through every stationery box (and there are many) and through things in her desk and in her drawers. I found other things- a gift certificate for $250 from 1982 to a jewelry store in Winter Haven. Other gift cards from Target, Barnes and Noble, and an old bank envelope with four dollars in it. But no envelope with one hundred dollars in it. And she kept saying over and over again that she had taken the envelope from Mr. Moon and put it on top of a cabinet and then, after lunch, she had put it in a stationery box but Mr. Moon said there had never been an envelope and when I would tell her that, she'd say, "Well, that's just not true," and she also, at one point, told me that the bills had been new and crisp although a little while later, as I said, she declared that she had never seen the cash itself and when I pointed this discrepancy out, she said, "Well, I don't remember telling you that."
She knows she can't remember shit and it's killing her. But she refuses to believe that there was no envelope and that the money was ever in the wallet. "I'm the old one so we all know who everyone thinks is crazy," she kept saying.

She went and got her late lunch and I continued to look through her things for the money. I HATE going through her things. It's one fucking memory after another. The jewelry gift certificate was from my stepfather. Just seeing his name made me want to scream. There's old jewelry and old pictures (interestingly enough, and perhaps telling, as well, I never found one picture of me and there are no pictures of me in her room on display either) and old obituaries and newspaper articles and decades of years' worth of address labels from different charity organizations she gave to and I just hated going through that stuff. I found symphony tickets, some for concerts yet to be played and when I showed her those she said, "I didn't buy those. I don't remember paying for those." And then she said what she always says, "I just wish I were dead."
She must have said that ten times today at least.
And it's not that I can't sympathize with her when she says that. I can. What sort of hell on earth is it that you can't remember anything, whether it's what the doctor told you two minutes ago or it's buying symphony tickets or it's where you hid what seems to you the vast sum of one hundred dollars?
But I can't take it, hearing that. I have heard her say, my entire life, that she might as well kill herself. From my earliest memories I can hear her saying or screaming or sobbing that very phrase and finally, today, I told her, "Mom. Please don't say that to me anymore. I know you feel that way but what can I do? I can't kill you and I can't change anything and it just makes me feel terrible."

She didn't know what to say. I've never really spoken to her that way. I've never been able to tell my mother how what she says makes me feel. I tried once or twice but was shut down so severely and so quickly that I simply quit. It wasn't worth it.

And today, after I said that, she said, "I don't expect you to DO anything about it. I don't mean to make you feel bad." And I'm sure she doesn't but god damn!

I do not especially like the way I am with my mother these days. Not that I ever have, truthfully. But there seems to be some evil side of me that comes forth now and I contradict her, even if I know that it does no good. I tell her flat-out if what she is saying is not truthful, even if I know in my heart that what she is saying is truthful in her mind, whether it's that there was an envelope and the money was never in the wallet or that they make them eat dinner at four-thirty or that they assign them seats where they MUST sit in the dining room no matter how much she doesn't like a table mate. I just tell her the truth of the matter and she disagrees with me or shuts up with a resigned and hurt expression on her face and frankly, it doesn't bother me and I wonder- am I truly evil? I am quite aware that it does no good whatsoever to point out the truth to her. Her truth is her truth and nothing I say is going to change what she perceives that to be.
And really, this is the way she has always been and of course, it is the way she will always be, however long she lives.

And so I finally gave up looking for the money. I told her to please try and relax, that perhaps if she quit worrying about it, she would remember what she had done with it. She told me that she would be worrying about it for the rest of her life, no matter what I said. She had lost Mr. Moon's money.
I told her that no, it was HER money. And that seemed to calm her a little bit although she is quite certain that she knows exactly what she did with the money and it is just not there any more.
At least she isn't blaming any of the AL's employees for the missing money. At least she isn't accusing them of theft the way the table mate whom she does not like is constantly doing.

Oh, god. It would be funny if it weren't so tragic. She also told me today that the candidates running for the various city offices had come to speak to them and the woman who was running for sheriff is just way too little to be a sheriff. That there's no way she could handle a criminal.
I was thinking, dear god, does she believe she lives in Mayberry?
I told her that in Tallahassee, the sheriff probably never goes out on the street to deal with criminals and that size does not matter. She thought about that and I think she realized this might be true. That, she believed. But she does not believe that the hundred dollars was ever in her wallet and she does not believe that she can sit anywhere she wants to in the dining room and you know what else I think she does not believe?
That her husband sexually abused me when I was a child. Or that he may have abused his sons, as well.

And there you go.

That explains almost everything.

Except you know what? I think maybe she does believe it. I think she always had an inkling. Why else would she never have redeemed that gift certificate at the jewelry store from him from 1982 which was years before I told her about the abuse? Two hundred and fifty dollars in 1982 could have bought some sweet jewelry. And there it's been in that desk for thirty years where it was easy to see. I took her to buy a new watch at Walmart today and it cost thirty dollars and she thought that was an enormous amount of money to spend on a watch. She knew the value of two hundred and fifty dollars. She knew it. She just didn't want to accept any gifts from that man, her husband. Or at least, that's what I am thinking. I could be so very, very wrong.

It's all so tangled and so hard and if I was half the person I wish I was, I could figure out some way to heal things, to ease her mind. To be more loving. And maybe before it's too late, I'll figure out how to be that person.

I'm not counting on it though. Which only adds to the entanglement, the difficulty. I know that. I'm not stupid and I'm not truly hateful.

Well, I'm also not going to solve anything tonight.

But it's time to make supper and that I can do.

I'll see you tomorrow.

Love...Ms. Moon Who Talks Back To Her Mother And Who Does Not Feel That Good About It