Three of my paintings burned in the River Fire. The pieces were with my family, in their homes. They weren't the family that I was born into, but the family that adopted me when I was young and had not yet found "my people." They are my people.
I was nineteen when I started seeing Bob. Bob had one arm, sparkling eyes and a dynamic personality. He was super charged and never quit. He was funny, loving and and everyone was drawn to him, a magnet. When we were together we could communicate telepathically, I know it sounds strange, but I believe we had many lives together. We were together for six years. During the time I was with Bob, his family embraced me with open arms. They were the most loving people I have ever known. They merged and blended with my family and though Bob and I separated, the bond of our families never did. His sister is still my sister. His parents are still my parents. I adore his brothers, and their wives. All of the children, even Bob's. call me Auntie. I never thought twice about leaving the paintings. During the time I was with Bob I painted these pieces. They were a self portrait series when I was getting my Art degree at Sacramento State University. His little sister got the pieces that have the images of me praying and screaming and Bob had the tiger. Since I made them when I was in school and they were assignments, I wasn't really attached to them, but I liked them enough not to paint over them. Then, I gave them away. The ones his sister had, at least were gifts. In the midst of a bad break up I made Bob pay me for the tiger. The art was created 1998. When I ran into Bob right after the fire, I asked how he was. He said he was surviving. His house burned down, they lost everything they had, but his family was safe, thank goodness. They were all out of the house when it happened. He told me the tiger painting burned. My automatic reaction, I said it was a "sucky" painting anyway, probably the first thing I ever painted. I watched his face fall. He liked it. He lost something special, something he cared about and cherished. There are so many of those things that are valuable in ways that can't be explained. Monetarily, it was only worth a couple hundred dollars, but to him, it was a connection to a part of our past that can never be replaced. When I went home that night I realized his sister's house that also burned down, next door, had a painting as well, and his mom and dad's house had another of my paintings in it. They were also next door. Three houses, three paintings, all gone. Nothing left but ashes. These weren't just normal people. They were all volunteer fire fighters. They were EMT's. They donated to their community and took care of people with special needs. There isn't a better or more family on the planet. They have a go fund me page set up, and if you are so inclined, please help. Thank you. gofund.me/7ce6c4e5 The paintings, like all their belongings, can be replaced by other paintings. What was will never be again. We're going to rebuild, together, as a community. I gave Bob's eldest daughter a new painting, one that she told me she liked. I know it doesn't make up for losing all her belongings, but she knows she's loved. One little thing at a time.
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Failure is inevitable. My eyes are finally dry. Exactly four years ago, today, my family uprooted from the comfortable home that we had renovated in Sacramento to move to Nevada County to care for my mother.
Our new home was my mother's home. My dad built it in 1987. It's big, it's unique. We're getting used to it. My mom almost lost the property to the bank because she borrowed over a half a million dollars then gambled it all away. Dan and I purchased the home, so she wouldn't have to move into her boyfriend's trailer, but begrudgingly, because the state of repair was incredulous. We are not rich, and now we own a battered, dilapidated disco mansion in the hills. Who would have thought? And Dan is the best unpaid "Dandyman" in the world and he's fixed so many things I can't even begin to describe them. The scope of work has been ungodly. Dan didn't want to do it, but he liked the idea of helping my mother, leaving the city, and moving our family to a safe, old fashioned environment with better schools. We were thwarted with every step. My mom fought me before I even came through the door, as it was barricaded by couches and came with 5000 square feet of hoard. Every bag of unused clothes, TV, table, dresser or couch I donated to goodwill or dumped was met with a screaming childish fit. I had seen "Hoarders" enough times to pretend to care. The psycho stress out can cause blood pressure issues, and I found out my mother's blood pressure was off the charts. As a rapid cycling bipolar, she should have been medicated. She refused all medications with the exception of her blood pressure medication. I don't know if she took it, but she said she did. We endured the fights, suffered the ongoing daily battles and remained steadfast in our goal to make the home livable. I left just enough knick-knacks and random spaced out items to keep her comfortable, and removed just enough for me not to twitch with clutter stress myself, A locking door to my mother's giant suite allowed her to hoard whatever she wanted in her room. She stockpiled furniture and created piles around herself. Those piles grew without my knowledge, as other bedrooms, the kitchen, home offices, family room, dining area and living room were cleared. It took these last few years to realize my childhood trauma, the pain of existence, mass amounts of spiritual baggage and my deep rooted psychic wounds were NOT MY FAULT. My mother was never kind to me, not even when I was a baby. My father confirmed that she was "jealous of the attention I got" from him or from anyone else. Thank goodness I came back to the hill, otherwise I would have continued to carry the burdens of my many disorders. I would have never properly nursed or healed the festering wounds of my childhood. The last four years of torture has been worth it, because I am mentally, spiritually and emotionally healthy. They call it "shadow work," diving deep into past traumas to rediscover and unpack, then dump the baggage we hide in the closet of our souls. It was cathartic to have other witnesses who saw the daily behaviors of a rapid cycling, bipolar suffering from psychotic delusions. My mother was and still is the definition of a raving lunatic. I got the brunt of the attacks. But I knew what was coming. And I wasn't 3 or 4 years old anymore. I was no longer afraid of her rage or alienation. I don't know if the Alzheimer's disease made her behavior better or worse. She believed she saw me and her boyfriend of 17 years having sex in the laundry room. He's 78 years old, and a very kind and caring gentleman. But that broke him. He left. They are no longer together. He explained he just couldn't handle the thought that the next person she would accuse him of being with might be my 15-year old daughter. So he moved back to his small trailer in Sacramento, alone and defeated. My mom tried to attack me, yelled and screamed in my face that she saw us, and there were multiple witnesses to our sexual encounter. I was actually pretty proud of myself, as I reacted to her violence with love. I offered to drive her to the doctor's office so we could discuss the situation with a health care professional. I explained she was having a delusion and we could get her help. She stomped off and refused to look at me or speak to me for over a month. I had to give my teen daughter the food trays and coffee to deliver to her because she remained angry and upset about the made up incident. Over eight months later she found something of her boyfriend's in her room and gave it to me. "You can give it to him when you see him in Sacramento." I told her I hadn't seen him since she kicked him out. She did not believe me. She believed we were having an ongoing affair. Every day my mom accused one of my family members of stealing her jewelry, her money, her wallet, her purse, her car keys or even her make up or hair dye. She lived in a locked room. It was filthy in there. She constantly hid and misplaced her items. I always responded, "Clean your room, you'll find it." I tried to remain calm and kind, but my husband got snappy sometimes. He'd say no one wanted her things or she should go to her room. But I still tried. I quit my regular job at the school as a behavioral assistant and declined another position that was offered at a fancy "School of the Arts," because I needed to care for my mother. I took a part time position that was less demanding and worked only two days a week out of our home. Five days a week I made my mother coffee, breakfast, lunch and/or dinner. I catered to her needs, and deflected the accusations with love. It was tiring, but she is my mother and I felt I was doing God's work. I used to work as a social services advocate and I loved that position. If I could care for other people's parents I could surely care for my own, no matter how unkind my mother was. When my mother looked me in the eye and asked why I ripped the diamond ring roughly from her finger at 7 AM that morning and then ran out the front door down the road, I knew she was declining. I explained to her that I was outside taking photos of my garden at the time she believed I had accosted her. She said if it wasn't me it was a lady that looked just like me. I convinced her it was a bad dream, and we eventually found her ring on the floor under her bed. From that point on her delusions became worse. She lost items daily and began having more lucid hallucinations. I contacted an aunt who is the director of social services at a local nursing home and rehabilitation facility. I asked her about our options. She told me my mother was never kind to her and she wasn't interested in helping. She said there was one doctor in Nevada County willing to assist dementia patients and it required her referral and $400 cash for a meeting. I told her it wouldn't be a problem, but we both knew my mother would refuse to take any medication. My mom's doctor had given her pills to stave off the Alzheimer's a few years before and she refused to take them. She would not admit anything was wrong. She insisted she was fine and also continued driving, though she got lost driving to her sister's house which was less than a mile away. Her sister's husband texted me when he had to drive to go find her and lead her home on multiple occasions. As my mother's condition worsened, her greedy sisters began popping out of the woodwork, expressing that they believed my mom owed them their father’s portion of a home in Thailand, his portion being $10,000. He died in the early 2000's. They could have brought this up with my mother during the last 20 years, when her brain was still actually working, but they waited until she was showing major signs of Alzheimer’s symptoms and obviously suffering memory loss from the dementia. My grandfather was a poor and miserable little man without a penny to his name, because he mooched off of others, their claim was ridiculous. I found out from my father that my dad had actually purchased that home and my mother received it as part of the divorce settlement. Grandpa would have been lucky to have two nickels to rub together. I do remember him having to pay $10,000 for a rape/molestation settlement a few years before he died. Could that have been where the money went? Look, ladies, so lucky, I found your money! My mother's sister brought opals to my attention that my mother sent to her favorite cousin's daughter, with love. Her cousin took her in, and cared for her for a month when my mother was visiting in Thailand, and when my mother returned from Thailand, she gave the opals to her willingly with full forethought of gratitude. My mother's sister believed she was somehow “owed” those opals because she offered my mother money for them and my mother declined to sell them to her because of a superstitious Thai belief about who should wear opals. She thought she was doing her sister a favor. The opals would be bad luck for her sister because sister's birthday was not in the "lucky to wear opals month." I was livid when I found out my mother's sister used my mother’s key to get into my mailbox and search for my mother’s stimulus check to “pay my mother’s bills.” When I asked her to give the key back, she said she didn’t have it. I checked my mother’s key ring and searched her vehicle. She did not have her mailbox key. Her sister also convinced my mother to put all her cash in a safe, at her house, to protect the money. My mother is currently being sued by Bank of America for $16,000. She owes five times that to all the major banks. She defaulted on multiple credit cards with Chase, Wells Fargo and others. She's on a fixed income and retired. There's no more money. My mother was vulnerable. I tried to protect her. I took her to a lawyer and we began the process for conservatorship. I gave the lawyer $1000 to do it legally. Before the meeting I asked my mom to grab her wallet in case we needed to show or copy her ID. She couldn’t find it. We searched for an hour, and I told her I’d help her look later, after the meeting. We went home, and I helped her look for her wallet until 12AM, over ten hours. We did not find it. The last time she used it was when she was shopping with her sister, the week before. I did find $3000 cash that she had lost about 9 months before (gambling winnings) and I put that in her safe with a lot of jewelry I found stashed all over her room. It wasn't valuable jewelry. At 1230AM my mother's sister called. Whatever she said to my mother put her into a frenzy. She started yelling and ripping her room apart. I told her I was going to bed because we had a doctor's appointment the next day. The doctor’s appointment was the second step of the conservatorship process, per the lawyer. My mom was angrily throwing things around her room looking for the missing wallet. She had previously accused me of dumping her purse on her bed when she was looking for things, and then 10 minutes later couldn't remember that she had dumped out the contents and was angry with me. She couldn't remember doing it, so it automatically was one of my family members, though she was in a locked room. We never have had a key to her room. She believed people were going into her room and trashing it. We were very "disrespectful." I was used to the abuse and the accusations so I just went to sleep, like every other time. My mother believed I threw things all over her room while she slept that night, because she did not remember doing it. In the morning my mother wouldn’t look at me or talk to me, she refused to let me drive and took off without me. I followed her in my vehicle. Her sister was sitting, waiting at the doctor’s office with a stack of paperwork she had filled out with my mother weeks before. Her sister was not invited to the doctor’s visit, but apparently she had assumed conservatorship without my knowledge or consent. When we started discussing the recent events her sister told the doctor, in front of my mother, that I was hiding my mother’s wallet to keep her from driving. I told her that was a ridiculous accusation, as I had searched the room with her for ten hours. Her sister also said my mother was perfectly capable of driving. Because my mother’s blood pressure was so escalated and the doctor did not want to become involved in a family dispute, I stepped away from the situation. I asked my mother what she wanted to do, and she said she wanted to live with her sister and she wanted her sister as her conservator with her physician as the witness. I took back the paperwork the lawyer gave me, that I had given the doctor to fill out. He said he had already filled out those same forms a few weeks before with my mother and her sister. Though I had been caring for my mother for the last 4 years, her sister had also filed paperwork with the county to collect "In Home Health Care" monies to care for my mother. I went to the lawyers office and was able to get $500 back. She charged me for two consultations and the work that was already done. I rescinded my stance. I no longer wanted to be her conservator, if that was against her wishes. The sister that was the director of social services had helped my mother's other sister file everything legally. I stopped by Adult Protective Services in Nevada County to investigate some sort of recourse, and they said they were unable to help if my mother was not being physically abused. My mother's sister came over that night and grabbed my mother’s safe and took it to her home. I cried all that night and the next day because I felt I failed my mother. I was two months too late, and unable to protect her from her manipulative, greedy family. I do believe my mother's brother in law has my mother’s best interest at heart and that he will look out for her financially. He is a good person. My mother has been staying there for two weeks. I opened communication with her brother in law. He stated that my mother will get mad at them and want to come home. That is no longer an option. If her sister wants to care for her, she needs to do it at their place. While I dealt with the endless accusations and burden of caring for my mother full-time, her sister capitalized on her property. Now, I am free. It feels surreal, and I am still in shock from the entire parody of events. I will attempt to communicate with my mother's brother in law so I can visit my mother maybe, eventually, on holidays or even help move her items over there as smoothly as possible. I forgive them all and wish them well. Maybe this is for the best, as they grew up together and somewhere in her heart and soul, if she has one, I think my mother's sister must love my mother. My mom is wrapped up in the web of a master manipulator and she is too mentally ill to help herself, but I can finally take a breath. I hate losing, but what did I really lose? I did my best. My mother's disease progressed greatly and she is painfully difficult to communicate with. I hope she will be happy. Her newest delusion and the reason she wanted to leave is that she believes I dumped her bathroom trash on her when she was sleeping (what?!) and have been driving her car (only drove it once to take her to see the lawyer). It will be something new next week, and I wont be around to hear it. I will make sure that someone is still looking out for her and I’ll be there for her, and call the cops and report elder abuse if they treat her unkindly. She will no longer be in the house she loved to hate for over 32 years. Now, I can dump this hideous hoard in their driveway. Enjoy it all, my greedy garbage eaters. You earned it. |
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July 2023
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