Who did this, and how did this happen?

The dynamic is this: Helen is too sick to realize she can’t take care of herself and refuses to go to a nursing home — in this circumstance, however, every authority supports her instead of me. it’s as if you take your dearest loved one bleeding to a hospital and the security guards immediately start beating YOU with their nightsticks. I would say more, but a vital process is in motion. The fact is that no one can legally force another, not even a sick old woman, to accept care. As unbelievable as that sounds, it’s absolutely true. You can’t make them go to a nursing home or anywhere else, especially not her.

For the record, I was with her when she shit her pants in public, and she regularly pisses the bed. She moved into a dump, lost $2,500 in cash she had withdrawn, can’t really cook, can’t take a real bath, left most of her makeup and jewelry at the old house, needs new dentures and eyeglasses, and can’t walk farther than a few yards without resting. That didn’t stop her from cursing me and yelling for the police outside the doctor’s office this a.m. while trying to hit me with her cane.

You would think the above is evidence enough to get help for her, but you would be wrong. Not if she doesn’t want it. I broke down in the doctor’s office this morning because the doctor refused to do anything except recommend family counseling, and then she said: “I think YOU’RE a danger to your mother!”

Subsequently, I learned that the doctor had alerted Adult Protective Services about me! As I had an appointment with the lawyer I absolutely needed to keep, I packed all my clothes and things into the rental car and got the hell out of the house so no one could find and detain me. My attorney told me later that if APS did come around, they’d only ask questions first. But of course, I couldn’t have known that…

Her eyes turn black when she’s raving: small, shiny black eyes with a frightened fox-in-a-snare look. It’s like something is trying to escape, as if her soul is trying to leave her body but can’t get all the way out. I was able to talk to her about this, believe it or not, assuring her she wasn’t crazy but “different.” I told her that I wanted her to come to Taos with me (to a nursing home, of course), where I could visit her every day. She won’t come, though. She wants to stay in the grave of her dingy dead man’s trailer.

There are other solutions than nursing homes, but she would still have to agree, and there is no one to manage her care in Tucson unless I leave her in the hands of strangers — and she would have to agree, which she will not do. After this morning’s horror show in the doctor’s office, I’m not seeing her for a while. Who wants to talk to the police?

I will do what I can, EVERYTHING I can, and as completely as I can. I will follow through. I love her still, no matter what, even though she rejects me in her sickness, and I will not let her die alone if I can help it.