Saturday morning we finally got around to making the trip I’ve been dreading lo these many weeks. We were forced to make the decision Friday night because father-in-law took a turn for the worse. This all started because he’s diabetic and never made an effort to control it. As a result, he suffered a series of strokes over the last few years that left him largely incapacitated (though he did manage to make it through our wedding as my husband’s best man). But he still didn’t make much of an effort to control the diabetes. Last month he suffered a major stroke that left him almost completely unresponsive. Then he suffered another one a few weeks later. When he was stable enough, he was moved into a convalescent home where he wasn’t bathed, nor was his catheter taken care of, and he was left laying in his own waste. An infection set in which developed into pneumonia and he was taken back to the hospital. I asked my husband’s aunt if they were considering a lawsuit but I think right now they’re overwhelmed dealing with doctors and funeral arrangements. When she called him Friday, they weren’t sure his dad would even make it through the night. So Saturday we packed our bags and headed to Sacramento. Unfortunately, MIL just had to tag along.
MIL and FIL were never married (to each other, at least). They haven’t had much to do with each other over the years, though last summer I think FIL knew he was in trouble because he kept calling here asking if MIL could come down and take care of him. His girlfriend was less than dedicated and his sisters wanted to put him in a nursing home. He finally asked MIL to marry him (only 26 years after the baby was born) so she could be his caretaker. Of course she turned him down (dammit; I’d have been more than happy to pack her bags and drive her to the airport–bye bye!!).
So, for whatever reason, she invited herself along (don’t criticize my husband’s lack of balls, I don’t think I could have told psycho hose beast no, either–Pleased to meet you, we’re Mr. and Mrs. Door Mat). So what should have been my husband’s opportunity to see his father, probably for the last time, and say good-bye turned into a 3 day bitch fest. MIL is broke and living in a women’s shelter (I won that battle and kept her the hell out of my house), unwilling to get a job. She thinks she’s disabled. Whatever. My husband has to drag me out of bed by my ankles and dress me but I still hold down a 40 hour a week job. I honestly believe she is a case of the spirit being weaker than the flesh. Anyway, she barely has a dime to her name but she insisted on coming on this trip with us. She borrowed money from her mother to come! Her mother is a little old widow living month to month on Social Security checks and she goes to her begging for a handout so she can make this trip!
My husband was going to do the driving because I’m not that safe behind the wheel anymore. I wanted his mom to sit behind him because he drives with the driver’s seat pushed up further than I had the passenger’s seat and I also wanted to be able to recline my seat. So she insists on sitting behind me and I have her knees in my back for 500 miles. And she bitches and moans about everything. She tells Joel to adjust the fader on the car stereo so music only comes out of the front speakers because she doesn’t like what he picked, then she sings along with every other song. She criticizes my husband’s driving. She doesn’t like the way my car goes over the mountains (fine, next time drive your rusted out Ford Grenada). She’s pissy because we stopped for lunch at a place she and her ex-fiance/husband/whatever that guy was used to visit. She won’t eat there, she gets hot-dogs from a gas station on the other side of the freeway. :rolleyes: When we finally get to the hospital, she puts on a big show because she used to be a nurse (so get a job as one now!), checking his vitals, checking his IV, fluttering around telling everyone everything she knows about everything. Feh. (I say that because I’m too nice to say fuck.)
Since my husband and I hadn’t been planning on making this trip right now (we were hoping FIL would last until we got our tax refund), I used all our money paying bills and we had $60 to get us through until his next paycheck. So we’d planned on staying the night as his aunt’s house, but this was before MIL was in tow. When aunt found out we had a third wheel, she more or less withdrew the welcome mat (or at least offered it a little more reluctantly). MIL pissed around about how the aunt’s house would be “a zoo” (she has 3 kids in their teens/early twenties, at least 2 of which are still at home) and wanted to go to a motel. Thanks for helping us spend our money, mom. I don’t know how much money her mother gave her, but she was able to pony up $10 for dinner and about $30 more for the room the first night. After that we never saw another dime. She insisted there was no more, but I’m not so sure. Meanwhile, we went through our $60 on food and gasoline PDQ and had to resort to the dreaded credit cards which we’ll be living on until next paycheck, dammit!
I guess it wouldn’t be ladylike to discuss her nasty, nasty snoring. I mean, I thought my dad’s was bad because you could hear it from one end of the house to the other. But at least it was a regular snore. The sounds coming out of this woman weren’t even human! OK, some of them were, but they were sounds you’d expect to be coming from the other end of a human. Compound that with the infernal ticking alarm clock she insisted on using despite the fact that the motel provided a nice quiet digital and you see that I didn’t get a lot of sleep that weekend, and the sleep I did get was haunted by the bizarrest of nightmares. Oops, oh well, I never claimed to be a lady.
The peas duh resist ants came Sunday night in the hospital. She prompted Joel to say something to his comatose father. (I was busy looking out for Death and hoping that if she didn’t take Joel’s dad that she’d take me.) The conversation went something like this.
Joel: Well, dad, I’m here to see you one final time…
MIL: Joel, don’t say final!
Joel: I just wanted to say good-bye…
MIL: Joel, don’t say good-bye!
Joel: I love you and just see you one last time…
MIL: Joel, don’t say last! Now tell your father you forgive him.
Joel: Forgive him for what?
MIL: He knows he was a lousy father and feels bad, tell him you forgive him.
Joel: But I never held it against him. There’s nothing to forgive him for.
MIL: Just say it! Jeez, Joel, when I’m dying I hope you don’t try to comfort me!
Joel (later, in the car): When she’s dying, I think I’ll hold her to that.
Joel finally got so fed up that we left her there to say whatever the hell she wanted and went to his aunt’s house to visit. Since we had the luggage and stuff in our car, I almost wish we could have gone ahead and spent the night there and left MIL at the hospital.
I guess there isn’t much more to say (as if I haven’t said enough). The whole weekend went this way. Sunday night MIL developed a martyr complex and quit eating so we wouldn’t have to spend any more money on her (shame she didn’t sleep in the car that night so we could have gotten a motel room with one bed and saved even more money, or better yet stayed at the aunt’s house). It was all I could do to keep from quoting Linda Richman at her, “I’ll just sit here eating wet cigarette butts, alone like a dog!” On the way home, she kept saying, “When we come back down for the funeral…” I promise you, I will beg, borrow, or steal a set of someone’s balls and tell her, “Honey, ‘we’ is Joel and me. If you want to go back down, start saving your pennies and buy a flippin’ bus ticket.”
I promise I will.
Otherwise, Sacramento was very nice. The freeway over the Siskiyous was dry and clear. The weather was pleasant, it was nice to see flowers in bloom and a shock to see oranges on trees (native Oregoni
