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Thank You and Elaboration

First and foremost, I want to THANK EVERYONE for their comments yesterday.... Abbagirl74, austere, Becky, and SF... each of you have been very kind friends to have given me such detailed comments. I appreciate all four of you and your efforts greatly. I have comments for each of you that I list below:

Abbagirl74 - You are very right. Your attitude is very strong, and very much geared towards justice. I appreciate your comments, and find they are quite similar in many ways to that of my wife... also a very strong woman. I agree with your sentiments and suggestions for action, but only in a theoretical world where people would listen, comprehend, empathasize, and react appropriately to my words. I will explain below more why, unfortunately I do not think this theoretical world exists in my situation.

SF - You also are right. Often, however, while the MEANS may be justified (in this case, telling my sisters of their shirking of responsibilities), the ENDS (disharmony in the family) make the value of the MEANS much less and perhaps not worth doing when the ENDS may be so negative. I will explain in more detail why your suggestion seems the most like what I am doing, but that there are also significant differences as well.

austere - as always, thank you for your comments and support

Becky - your suggestion is a wonderful solution, and I would very much like to use that suggestion. The problem, however, is that my mother would dislike that solution very much.... primairly out of SEVERE embarassement to her. I am currently getting two brief visits from a visiting nurse for her a week, a physical therapy session once a week, and an occupational therapy session once a week... but each was its own struggle... an extreme struggle that I still have to struggle to provide every day. A full time nurse (even for one or two days a week) would be exponentially more difficult to get my mother to accept. However, if I start to see some acceptance by my mother of the smaller visits from the other health care providers, I may broach that idea with her.

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Now for a further elaboration of my meanings to futher flesh out what happens in the scenerio's I have spoken of for the previous two essays. I suspect that some of my writing, out of trying to put thoughts and emotions down on electronic paper in a "free form" manner, may make some of what I say less complete than it should be.

I do try to talk to my sister's about helping out more, and contributing to the care of my mother more. The problem is that what they think of as care and what I think of as care are two very different things. When I talk to them about needing help, they say "Sure!" to the theoretical idea of helping out. Yet for them to actually accomplish anything that DOES ACTUALLY HELP is a pretty slim idea. Their ideas of helping out are to come over to the house once every week or two and sit with mom and watch Dr. Phil or Oprah and chat. Then they scoot off to do other things. This is usually the scenerio where one or the other also mentions a vacation they are taking, or a trip they are planning, and this then becomes a topic of conversation for my mother to talk about and then aggrivates me and my wife. This past summer, before all the really difficult health issues occurred, I decided to have my wife go with me on a trip to a scientific meeting where I presented research. It was like pulling teeth to get the two of them to figure out how to arrange being with and staying with my mother during the TWO days we were away. And other than staying overnight (which again was difficult as hell to get them to agree to), they spent very little to no time at my home with my mother during the day.

So, I may have misspoke a bit in my previous posts. They both express willingness to help when I do talk to them about it (which I have been doing for a very long time), yet their vapid, ephemeral expressions of willingness to help vaporize into nothingness when real time commitments are asked for. And, hence, having dealt with them most of my life, I know and understand their "intentions" are good and perhaps even noble, but the actual, REAL help they give is virtually nil. It is sort of what I had been speaking of previously about Don Quixote.... the grand fellow who tilted at windmills..... I do not have the energy or ambition to tilt at the windmills who are my sisters anymore. I tell them what I do, when I do it, what our mother needs, and what we go through. They both are all "sympathy" and "assurances" of helping, but nothing ever materializes unless I exhert more energy getting them to do something than I would have expended doing the task(s) myself.

To me, such a situation causes me to give up even trying anymore. They are not bad people, they are at the deepest parts of their souls, kind hearted people. They are just so self-centered and incapable of seeing (or comprendning when I tell them) our needs that it is just easier for me to do it myself. It really is not a "cop out" on my part.... although I can see why you might think so. It is just more exhausting for me to try to get them to do something of real value than it is for me to do it myself. I resent it, but my current method seems to cost less energy on my part for me on a day-to-day basis.

I still do not think I have explained well enough what it is that they are like. But I am so tired I cannot think of any further way to accurately portray them and my ideas of them. Simply put... they are caring, good people.... but they live in a world of intentions. I hope that I am a caring and good person.... but sometimes I complain like hell and grieve and despair and get angry.... because I live in a world of duties and tasks.

PipeTobacco