I need cake

a diary of my mother's stubborn resistance to accept help

13 February 2025:

I need cake. I need kindness from a loving oven.

The struggle continues.

At what point can a daughter turn her back? When the skylight falls into her kitchen after a raccoon walks across it and my mother insists she’s got it under control? When I begin to clean out her refrigerator and she tells me to fuck off and kicks me out of her dark home? When she loses her credit cards, her medicare card, her i.d., but carries the replacements loose in her back pocket to lose again? When her sweet little dog looks embarrassed because she’s not been let out and has again peed in the living room? When I pay for longterm care insurance but my mother refuses help and/or refuses to move to assisted living and so we do not access the resource? When she tells me, “You’re the best thing I’ve ever done.” As if I am the result of her doing? Which maybe, I suppose I am. I suppose my self-reliance, my love of reading, my ability to chef it up (my mother never enjoyed cooking), my love of jazz, m

y capability, my vigilance and fear and anxiety all come from growing up in her home.

All that fear and vigilance is raging right now. The doctor tells me conserving someone is nearly impossible. Do I simply let entropy happen? Apply the Let Them theory? I cannot make her move. I cannot make her accept help. I live in another state. This is my second month long visit to try to make her life safer. My to-do list is as long as my arm and I’m so depleted.

I need cake.