Where do I start and end this? The past 24 hours have been maybe a bad dream, but my body feels to weak to have it anything else but real. It started last night, as I have already posted, at the DQ, with Al not getting his own way.

We brought it home and Al decided on his own, to carry the turmoil into the evening. After his idle threats and temper tantrums, my body felt so scared with goose bumps, a hot feeling all over, and tense neck and shoulders, I broke down and forced him to go to bed, and then went to my phone and called a friend, that I was hoping would help me to calm down.

We talked and it seemed to help and by the time we hung up, I was able to smile again. I decided to go in and check on Al one last time before I checked into sleep land, and he scared the crap out of me. It was dark except for his night-light, and I was standing in the door way not yet in his room, when I heard him say, what do you want?

I know that I jumped a little bit and then told him I was just checking to see if he needed anything and he claimed he didn’t need anything that I had to offer. I saw him stirring a lot in the bed, so I walked over to him to see what the problem was, and he had a hand towel at the side of his body and it was wet.

I asked him what was going on that there was a wet towel, and he said he was wiping up pee. I told him I was going to pull the covers back and check the bed, and it was wet. We talked about the urinal, and then I went so far as to replay how he has to use the bed remote to sit up in the bed before he can use the urinal properly. He said he could not. He said that he could not get it in, so as we re-enacted the scene, I saw that from him getting older, there was a shrinkage problem with his personal body part, and knew then that this was a definite problem in bed.

In the end after talking and him still being snippy with me, I decided that it would be better to wear a brief, in order for him not to have to try to make something work that would not work. I had him roll from side to side as I changed the bed pad and chux pad, and then I placed him in a brief.

He called me some choice names as I made sure he was comfortable, dry and warm and then turned and left his room. It was then about 2am. In my room I could hear him through the baby monitor still calling me names, and I tried very hard to ignore it but my heart and soul were crying as this whole evening had broken my strength, I usually can manage to carry.

I tried to go to sleep but he was noisy, and he never went to sleep until 5am this morning. To say the least, I did not feel good at all today physically or emotionally, and to top it all off, he was still on his roll from the night before.

I had decided this morning, that no matter how much I love my brother or how very hard I tried to please him, it wasn’t going to ever work. It would take a miracle from God to change the despair and sadness in this morgue, we call home. Because I loved him so, I made up my mind to place him. Maybe if he didn’t see his dad in my face, he would maybe find some happiness in his life.

A therapist leader came to our house and he instantly took her back to his bedroom and tried to convince her how mean I was and that his room had plenty of room to hold more cars. I instantly grabbed her and pulled her to the living room and briefly explained what had happened the night before at the DQ, and that he was trying to play her against me, and she understood.

He made a big mistake by telling her he did not want to live here and that he wanted to go to a nursing home and that he just wanted to die, because she took this news back to her head nurse in charge.

After she left, he decided to continue his badgering of me, and I stood up from the couch and told him I didn’t want to hear anymore talk, and I wanted him to return to bed. He fought me but I won and I got him safely placed in bed. He went to sleep and I went to the couch and fell into it with a large headache and tears running from my eyes. I was exhausted and prayed that he would sleep for a nice period of time.

God must have answered that prayer because he slept right through lunch, and by this time, I realized that I had taken my own diabetic medications in the morning and had never made it to my own breakfast, and now I was skipping lunch also, due to wanting to sleep.

The phone rang and woke me up and another therapist wanted to stop by in an hour or so, so I said alright, and at the final moment, I went and woke Al up. I was still dragging and Al made sure he told the therapist how bad he had it here and that he was miserable, all because he was still throwing a fit about the car at Wal-Mart. By this time, it was four pm. She is a very good therapist and worked with Al’s muscles some, but the main topic was Al’s attitude towards his own dad and how he still carries the bitterness and hatred of his dad, and how he pretends that I am now his dad and so he treats me exactly the same. The therapist listened to him and talked and gave suggestions to him on how he needed to drop the past, and live for today. They talked about how I did love him and that I was good to him, and she explained that his sister does even spoil him, but he did not buy any of it.

She explained to me that he has a block in his brain and he is stuck in the past with the emotional abuse of his father. He went on to tell her that he wanted to die, that he had nothing to live for, and that he wanted to go to a nursing home. She tried to talk to him about how nursing homes are so much more restricted than being home, and that he would not receive the love there that he does here, and in the end, with her holding him in her arms, she and he were crying, and I was sitting on the other end of the couch crying myself, he made a comment that he did not deserve anything in this world, that he was a bad person, that dad had mistreated him and he just wanted to die.

His body was sobbing and shaking and my heart was breaking, as this scene unfolded. The therapist spent a lot of time here off the work clock trying to help Al see that he is worthy, but at this point I don’t know if it helped or not. All I know is that she tried, we all cried, we all know the problem, but the only one that can fix it all is God and Al.

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