The way it is

Now at 60 mine & the life of my immediate family-(those with whom I live) &  has turned around completely & utterly. We now have living with us my 86yr old mother.
She suffers from, Diabetes, vascular dementia with the associated confusion & memory issues, mobility problems as well as other physical illnesses. The lady suffered from behavioural issues before she become demented which periodically rear their nocuous  head & injury me as they have over many years past.Such is the nature of the beast that is vascular dementia it waxes & wanes ins its effects upon the sufferer.
 Thus the lives of my family have changed as the seasons change at he end of summer. No longer do we have time alone together, evenings or a few hours out alone together. Gone is the time I formerly spent on solitary exercise & gone is the time I was able to spend listening to the joy of my life- my music.

Thus we spend our lives caring for a woman who gave birth to me but gave me away to my grandmother when I was a baby. A mother who has said in the past that she "didn't give birth to me" & "didn't like me". This makes the caring at best difficult. harder still because nightly we are woken by her wandering about the house, turning on lights & going into bedrooms telling us that its time to get up-at all sorts of ungodly hours.
The local authority are conspicuous by their absence viz a vie their actual help in any form & my brother-my mothers 'golden boy' has said that he is unable to offer any support even for a few hours of respite. His family are untouched by the events currently unfolding in mine & his life unaffected. He has abdicated all responsibility to me & my family
We awake tired, downcast & negative & I try my very hard to be kind & caring to a woman who in the past abandoned me.
I take a crumb of comfort from the fact that there are thousands like us caring for elderly relatives in their homes with little support. But I wish that our lives could improve , that we could have some time together as a family. And I wonder if I'm being selfish when I long for some of my former own time?