People Disappoint.

You know what? I am having quite possibly, the most stressful, horrendous time of my life. Let's just summarise events of the last few months:

• After months of travelling up and down to hospital, my beautiful mother, Wise Woman, chose to leave this life on her terms. Best way to go ever, but I still lost the only person who completely understood, supported and could kick my arse into line with a look.
• Boy 2 is dissolving emotionally. He is grieving and being socially ostracised by so-called peers, we have now pulled him out of school as it failed miserably in its duty of care and put him at risk.
• I had to evict a psychotic tenant from my holiday houses, all whilst enduring threats, abuse, and slander. Yes, she had done a runner when I arrived, but she had trashed my cottage and stolen property. It also meant I had to fly down there and leave my baby at the worst possible time.
• I have been ill. So ill I could not leave my bed for three days - something my children have not seen in their lifetime - and even now, over a week later, I am still ill.

You'd think people would realise no matter how strong you are there is only so much a person can take before breaking, wouldn't ya? Nope.

It is at times like this you soon find out who your real friends are. And it seems to be true, old friends are the best friends. Even though they are miles away some of the most caring support I have had is from the friends of MY childhood.  E-mails, phone calls, love.

And then there are my internet friends, some of whom have crossed over into reality. Again, support, contact, and caring. Just a few words or lines sent at unexpected times can mean so much. It is when we feel truly alone that the demons surface, and the pain can overcome the joy of being. You let the dark thoughts dominate, but then a message or e-mail saying "hey, thinking of you" sheds light into those black crevices and gives you a way to start to climb back up.

Then there are those conspicuous by their silence. Always the ones you do not expect. Sadly, after listening to years of judgement on how other people have let her down I now am going to direct her to a mirror. For someone who has such high friendship standards she has no idea how to be a friend. And I no longer have the energy to waste on someone who does not realise friendship is about cycles - sometimes it will not be all about you.

I have come back in to elaborate as I have had two friends contact me thinking it was them. I am not talking about a short silence, I am referring to a silence from the point of my mother's death. I am talking about a quick, "oh, I'm sorry. But she was old," upon my announcement. Then it was back to her. Then... nothing. No quick "you okay" calls, or how ya doing. Some would say, well how would she know? She knows, believe me. Through facebook and mutual city friends. She does not read this, she does not know of this blog (thank God), and I guess normally I would just write her off without a backward glance. But I am not the everyday me, I am hurting and this adds to my hurt. We do not see each other often even though we only live an hour apart, but when we did it was nice. Fun. I guess I feel betrayed - a decade of friendship down the tubes. Sadly I think I should have seen it coming a while ago and it would not have hit when everything else is.

Thank God for the people I do have around me, for they are gold.

Today the Angels Cry - Happy Birthday Tookie...

Happy 7th Birthday T'Keyah!

Not because they are sad, oh no. They are celebrating the heavenly birthday of the glorious T'Keyah, one of the brightest angels in their midst. No, today the angels cry for the veil of sadness that enshrouds Tookie's family. It is okay for the angels, they have the joy of being with her, but for her parents and siblings, whilst they feel the warmth of her love showering down upon them, well, it is just not the same as having the warmth of her little body to hold, her smile to light up their days, or her wonderful laughter to bring happiness into their lives.

And so the angels cry, and yearn to comfort T's family. They long to say: "It is okay, she is happy, healthy and free of sadness and pain. She watches over you and still lives deep within your heart and mind, and wants you all to know she is still with you."

But they know right now they will not be heard, that tears and pain stop T's family from being able to hear the tiny angelic whispers of comfort. So today, they too cry. They weep for the grief they witness, for the agony they watch from above. And they wait for the day their tiny voices will be heard, when they will allow one small voice to join them to tell the family:

"Wub you to the moon and back..."

You are sorely missed Miss T.

It's The Little Things

The twenty times a day "I'll just ring Mum" flashes through my brain. The numerous times "Oh, Mum'll know..." comes to the forefront of my mind. The inability to sort anything of hers out, and her voice in my head lecturing me on procrastination.

It is the fear I am doing the wrong thing in my attempts to help Boy 2 and my need to ask her advice as she was always my voice of reason and calm. It is my desire for reassurance that the action we are about to undertake on his behalf is the right one, and knowing she would be the only one I would trust to ask.

It is the large, dark bird of grief that hovers in a corner of my brain until I shove it away, unable to face the magnitude of my loss.

It is the thought that I may let her down if I make the wrong decisions, or am unable to make any at all.

I miss her with every fibre of my being, but am trying to be strong for it is what she would wish.

I am sick and even when I was in the midst of Prague I had the security of Mum calls to get me through illness. It is part of the year of firsts. My first virus without my Mum.

Recent events have been hell, and I am holding it together but cannot mourn. Not yet, not now. And so the black bird swoops into vision at the times I let my guard down - and it is driven back again and again.

Ideas?

Yep, I'm back. In one piece. Will post later about the trip and the consequences but for now just want to keep this simple.

I have a dilemma. Big Boy works until late Christmas Eve, it is the busiest time of the year for our retail business. We cannot go away until after Christmas Day.

But... I do not want to be at home, I do not want to be surrounded by years of memories of Wise Woman Christmases. But I have no idea what to do instead. Add in the fact that Boy 1 will not cope with change and neither child enjoys eating out, then you have my dilemma.

How on earth do I make this a joyous time for my children whilst not allowing the memories and grief to swamp us?

Any ideas from blog world?

Something To Lighten The Load

For the first time I am joining in with the Special Needs Blog Hop. Please be gentle - after the last few months I am slightly delicate little petal-ish.

Rules:

To join in the Special Needs Blog Hop is simple. We will ask a question or give a topic and you go back to your blog create a Special Needs Blog Hop.

Post with your answers to the question or topic. Then come back and link up with a DIRECT link to your post.

We ask that you follow Autism Learning Felt and Super Mommy To The Rescue.

When hopping from blog to blog please let them know you came from the Special Needs Blog Hop in the comments.

We have noticed that some participants are not following the directions of this blog hop. If you link up to this hop, and have not followed the directions, your link will be removed.

This Weeks Topic:

Tell us a funny memory involving your child or children.

And don't we all have those, special needs or no special needs. My oldest, Boy 1, is my master of Aspergerisms. He is black and white, the monitor of all being right in the world. Actually he is the holder of all being right in my world due to his tight grip on my heart, but back to the giggle moment.

Being the information guru that he is, when he asked (Age 5) how he came into the world as he knew he grew in Mummy's tummy, we decided the best call was to give him the bare biological facts. Young, I know, but with a forever never-forget-one-little-detail memory we knew we had be truthful even if skimming the topic at hand.

And so I explained how normally one is birthed via the birth canal and the vagina or giny as we called it. Nodding wisely, he wandered off to ponder the complexities of biology.

At bedtime he came in with a big grin, ear to ear. He had mulled it over and come to the Boy 1 theory of his creation.

"I understand now Mum. I was in your tummy, then I came out of your tummy and you washed away the wees and named me L!"

Ah, if only it HAD been that simple. Gotta love life through the eyes of a child, even a little professor such as this.

 

Should Never Have Even Considered

that life was going to get easier. Know how I mentioned in my last post about the sun peeking through? Well, the storm clouds rolled right back in just after I hit publish.

I have a business I run from interstate. I own two cottages which I rent out as holiday accommodation. And I have someone in the full throws of a violent, delusional episode refusing to check out. She was meant to leave Friday, and I had another booking coming in that afternoon - confirmed and paid in full. Instead I dealt with many abusive, ranting phone calls, plus agressive e-mails. Spent day on the phone to police, lawyers, tenancy , Dept of Fair Trading, psycho tenant, employee, new booking, friends and relatives in the village.

You cannot reason with someone whose mental capacity is in full meltdown. No matter how calmly you keep communication they are irrational and in full victim mode. I have been accused of being a terrorist, a bitch, a liar and a thief. She screams and writes that she is telling everyone there what a cold, money hungry cow I am. She is threatening legal action. I do not tell her I am fifth generation in the area, and grew up with most of the people she is ranting to, I do not tell her that I am told how everyone in this small village abhors and reviles her - especially as they know me well and her bad-mouthing only makes her look more of a crazy, stupid female. I do not tell her that the legal team she is supposedly threatening me with has worked with my family on and off for three generations, and this time have been our lawyers for seven years straight. I want to, I want to rant and scream back at her especially as she throws in the "don't care if your fucking mother has died" comment (a fact she learnt from my friends in the area, probably  attempting to get her to be rational and show a little compassion). But I don't. However, I no longer have any compassion for the plight of her own creation, and I will have her removed. In one of her rants she visciously screamed at me: "You have no idea who you are dealing with."

She is still there. So, when my youngest son truly needs his mother by him I now have to fly off to evict her accompanied by security, sheriff, removalist and locksmith. Legally she is now a trespasser. As holiday accommodation we do not fall under the Tenants Act but the far more reasonable Innkeepers Act.

But seriously - this is just what I don't need right now. I have no pity left for this woman, I am fighting too hard for my own family's survival and sanity. And all I would say to her as I prepare to fly out in the next few days:

"You have no idea who you are dealing with you stupid, stupid woman. But by hell you are about to find out!"

The Unbearable Lightness of...

Stuff. I know this blog has been steeped in sadness of late, but this is the one safe haven I come to for sorting things out in my mind. And in words. Today, I have awoken to a sense of relief. Why? Because I picked up Boy 2 and he had had a good day yesterday. When all is right with my boys that weight laden block in my heart eases off. I won't go into details here, but suffice to say he has been recognised as not the only one responsible for recent events. We are not now minimising his total over the top out of control reaction, and we will be continuing to work with the school and his psychologist on a constant basis, but there is a glimmer of light! He no longer feels the world is against him totally (and I happen to know a big part of this is due to his amazing brother and his black and white/right and wrong outlook).

For those of you who have offered support and help - thank you, and I will be continuing to beg, plead and grovel for all advice.

But today, today I have my boys home and we are going to laugh, love, smile and live. Today the sun is peeking throught the clouds. Today I can smile a little.

Oh, and it's Flog Yo Blog Friday, some come and join in.

Trying to Make Sense of It

My second son is in crisis. Serious crisis. We knew things were bad for him, but yesterday found out just how bad, and how dangerous his behaviour had become. He has threatened another child, actions we knew nothing about and I am seriously mystified as to WHY nobody told us what was happening. I have expressed as much to the school, how are we to help him or change his behaviour if we are unaware? How does it help anyone if we are not told? If I am only hearing his side, and the teacher is confirming snippets, how on earth are we to know otherwise?

Please do not think I am excusing his actions, we are taking this very seriously but are now scrambling to catch up. And it is extremely serious - he threatened the life of another. He has threatened to take his own life, and we had and were still dealing with this, trying to guide him and give him the emotional tools to get through the darkness. But then it turned outward. Eleven years old and in such a terrifying emotional state as to feel desperate enough to do this, to seriously intimidate another. But I understand why he feels this way, I get why he felt so lost and alone and irrational because he is like me.

The child he threatened has always pushed his buttons (and I am not blaming this boy, everyone has someone they like but butt heads with, and these two have had a love/hate thing for many years), and my child preceived this as him being the cause of the loss of friendships. He grabbed hold and fixated on this boy being the root of all his issues, and to be honest, we thought he was isolating our son. Whilst we understood Boy 2's actions were why (along  with the long standing rivalry) it was occurring, we did wonder why now, when our son so desperately needed his mates, was this child excluding him from everything? Obviously we had no idea how extreme our son's reactions had become. We now understand this boy was trying to protect his mates from the verbal and physical lashing out, the out of control emotional responses. We now understand because finally we were included in the loop, which we had not been. Not in the full sense.

His behaviour started to fall apart when Wise Woman fell ill. I have to wonder if he, being highly intelligent and as his psych says, emotionally articulate way beyond his years, knew deep down as I did that this was leading to the end of her life.

He became possessive and controlling to friends, a trait he and I share but one I have learned in my teenage years to control. He was losing one of the few people he could depend on, someone who loved him unconditionally, and he was scrambling to find solid ground. We are not blessed like a lot of others, we have little family and our really close friends are all interstate. You know, the ones that are like family who will be there for you and your kids no matter what, the ones who don't pull punches and will tell you in no uncertain terms exactly what's what because you have those long, solid years of history that bind.
And so, here he was, dealing with really, really hard stuff and trying to grasp tightly onto something, anything. And by doing so he pushed them away. The more he tried to hold on, the faster they ran. A completely normal reaction for ten and eleven year old boys. And the more alone and desperate he became.

Take a step back and think about it. He is a young boy, they are claiming he may be on the gifted side so there is no doubt he is smart, he constantly deals with a brother on the autism spectrum, he watches his beloved Nanna slipping away from life, and then loses all his friends. How would you feel? And you are an adult remember, not an eleven year old very scared totally lonely grieving little boy.

There are other issues, obviously. His perception of friendship was completely rocked by witnessing the verbal attack by my former friend turned stalker and the emotional repercussions it had on me, the one person he believed to be invincible. Financial pressures as our business struggled through the recession. Puberty hitting his already emotionally volatile older brother. All these emotional triggers building up inside this one small body.

Am I excusing his actions? No. But I am asking for compassion and understanding for whilst others see a child who they do not want their kids around, I see my son falling deeper and deeper into this destructive cycle that could take him from us. He is now the one parents will tell their children to avoid. The one who has no friends for sleepovers or playdates. The one alone. My baby, broken. And I am desperately trying to hold the pieces together whilst we find some a way to help him heal.

Flog Yo Blog Friday - Life As It Was...

The Rules

Follow the Random Ramblings of a SAHM.  Not that any of this is her idea anyway- FYBF is MummyTime's brainbaby. RRSAHM stole it.
Grab the bubbly button and post it on your sidebar. Link your First Name and/or Blog Name and URL of your post or blog.
Add a short description (max of 125 chars). It could be a description of yourself, your blog or a teaser to your latest post. 
Follow at least 1 linkyer/blogger (Be nice and spread the love).
The list will be open for linkyers on Fridays (and for the foreigners Friday as well).
A new and fresh link list will open every Friday. And you will have to link up AGAIN. The previous link list does not carry over to the following week.
And lastly, have lotsa fun.
 

Warped realisations that a Wise Woman would appreciate.

My mother was a lady through and through, but there still was this slightly mad, quirky, mischievous side to her (where did you think I got my weirdness from, huh? Huh?). In my earlier years (and remember I have just turned forty seven, so by early years I mean in my early twenties) WW and I used to shake up the house of my childhhood by boogying our butts to two songs.

This one:

Sadly, looking at the clip now I can see a lot of similarities between it and my hometown... Whoopsie.

And this one:

We would crank up the volume and run around like a pair of silly buggers as Grumblebum used to complain. Now, these were always our songs. Whenever we heard them we would automatically be transported back to those fun afternoons bopping in the lounge room. And so, me being the Madmother I am, I was tempted to succumb to my warpedness with Wise Woman's burial. The funeral director asked me if I wanted music played at her graveside as the casket was lowered. And I was so very, very drawn to request - have you worked it out yet -

Workin in a coal mine

Goin down down

Workin in a coal mine

Whew about to slip down...

She would have loved it. Been slightly horrified and a little mortified, but laughing behind the hand covering her mouth. And no, I didn't. Our older relatives would have been rather unimpressed.

I miss you Mum.

It's My Birthday and I'll Cry If I want To.

The year of firsts has begun. The first Halloween on Sunday, when small my children only ever trick or treated Nanna. As they grew older she was always first on their ever growing doorknock list.

And today. Today is the first of my birthdays without my mother. Today I woke with tears on my cheeks. Today I want to hide under the covers and pretend it is not happening. I want to stop the world from spinning. I want my mum. And I cannot change any of it, for we all know there is no stopping the year of firsts no matter how much we wish it to be otherwise.

I think W.H. Auden summed it up best in his second version of

Funeral Blues: Stop All The Clocks.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

 

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

A motherless