Good morning! In recent months, I have come to the realization that my life is a complete mess. I am well into midlife now, and I nowhere resemble where I thought I would be at this age. Let's face it, I am 57 years old, about to turn 58 in another month. At this age, my kids should be well grown, my husband and I should be retired, and we should be looking forward to grandkids, right? WRONG! Instead, I have a 13-year-old son named Thomas whom I adore. Although he is bright, witty, and very loving (well, as loving as a young teenager can be), he has a very complex constellation of special needs. He has dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, ADHD, APD, to name a few things. I became his mom at age 44 when we traveled to the Republic of Belarus in February 2003 to adopt him. After almost a decade of miscarriages, failed fertility treatments, and pure anguish, it was the happiest time of my life. I spent the next four years as a happy stay at home mom. Then he went off to school and reality reared its ugly head. He had difficulty reading, writing, and spelling. So to make a very long story short, I had to ditch a new career I had started as an Early Childhood Teacher, throw all caution to the wind, and begin homeschooling. Don't ask if he got help at school. He did and sufficed it is to say that it didn't go the way we'd hoped. At the same time, my husband, who had worked for a major piano manufacturer as a retail technician for almost 20 years, was let go when his entire department was shut down. He had no other good options but to re-start his own business. In the beginning, things went well, but being that the economy here in CT is not great, things have been unsteady, to say the least. Enter major financial distress.
If this weren't enough, I also spent the past 15 years caring for my parents. My dad, who suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis, passed on the very day ten years ago. The first few years watching over Mom were great. She had lots of fun accompanying our family to German cultural functions, school functions, and even planned her 65th high school class reunion. Then things changed. She began forgetting things. First small things, then bigger ones. She broke her pelvis and her wrist in 2008 and mentally deteriorated further, even though she survived the physical injuries. A visit to a geriatric specialist confirmed our worst fears. Mom had Alzheimer's related Dementia. I spent the next eight years shepherding her progression from living on her own to aides coming a few times a week, to her needing live in care, and finally to residing in a nursing home. She spent her last three and a half years in the home and peacefully passed away three weeks ago.
So here I am today, severely financially strapped, grieving my dear mother, even though she mentally left us years ago, and homeschooling a young teenager. The funny thing is, I wouldn't have things any other way. If they were any other way, I wouldn't be me, I'd be someone else, with a different husband and a different child.