Psychedelic Lemons, Spoon Theory, Creepy Dolls and Mom Mayhem

 Written in mid June 2025

I disappeared into the ether. I genuinely didn’t mean to but life handed me some psychedelic-soaked dramatic lemons and the lemonade is warped as a result. My mother.

Before this is all over I may end up in a psychiatric facility myself. Ready a bed down at the state mental hospital in Mandeville, Louisiana! Ha! Where my long departed mean as fire great grandmother taught art.

Oh, almost a month ago. Right around the time we returned from Jim’s radiation treatments I got a call from the Aunt Heap telling me that my mother was in the hospital with A Fib. Talking with her doctor I started to get a more complete picture of what was going on – she’s going into end stages of anorexia. Her body is breaking down the muscles, including her heart. It’s that serious. I don’t think she’s long for this world at this point.

One thing that the doctors could all agree on is that she cannot continue to live in her dusty mausoleum of a haunted house alone. They didn’t approve her for in home care, she was ordered into assisted living. Since then it’s been a fight, Jim and I taking her to the same place my late maw in law lived for ten years and loved. She hates it, hates it with a passion and begs to leave once a day.

See my picture above. I have to remind myself of this fact, that I am doing great even as she pleads with me, or when dealing with the locals when I have to break the bad news I’m canceling this or that thing. Like earlier when I had to tell the gardening crew that they’re likely going to have to stop mowing weekly for biweekly. Look, I get it, it sucks. But I’m doing great. Yeah, keep repeating that! I still feel horribly guilty about all of this. I know what it looks like too, like I’m dumping a little old lady at a nursing home. That’s not it, she’s in the finest place in a city, in an apartment overlooking parkland. The apartment is much nicer than her haunted house.

Her living room in this new retirement place. I'm ready to move in. 

That horrendous haunted fucking mansion! I’m currently ensconced in it, overlooking the fifth hole at the country club. Her late husband owned this home, built it in the early 1960s before effing off with my mama for many years. He would not divorce wife #3 for my mother because of this house on the fifth hole. He was determined to wait out his wife. She died twenty five years ago, my mother moved in and they finally got married. It only took about oh forty some odd years.

But for years now the house has absolutely felt creepy as heck, just this weird spidery sense when I’m in it. It’s not a happy place, you can just tell sometimes in these houses. Plus it’s filled with the creepiest thing on the planet – dolls, lots and lots of dead glass eyes in her dolls on every surface like some bizarre reliquary for the dead.

Oh my greasy gospel gopher guts! Just a few of the glass cases of dolls.

 

The first night we arrived here we walked into my mother’s bedroom, the only room in the house with a bed, and there they sat, Antonio, Trisha and a new arrival Jesus. All dead eyes staring at me!

I never liked dolls when I was a kid, save for one baby doll I had, and my Barbies. At least with the Barbies they had all sorts of outfits to dress them in and role play the future.

My mother has pretended for years that Antonio and Trisha were real, and really her babies. As in car seats in the back, a bassinet for the dolls, etc. but the absolutely weirdest thing about it all was when my kids were in elementary school and visiting down in Louisiana. Both of them started asking me why the only photographs on the mantle piece were of the dolls in various costumes. I never had a good answer for that, even as I found a box of framed photos of my family stashed away.

Ended up sending Trisha, Antonio and Jesus into assisted living with my mother, even if there are glass display cases around the house of her doll collection still. I have to come back and pack them away soon.

Mother tried all kinds of schemes to not go into assisted living. I offered her the choice of assisted living or flying to Costa Rica to live in my guesthouse with around the clock care. Neither were acceptable in her mind. So she started doing things like hiding her purse and pretending she didn’t know where it was, so she couldn’t possibly go into assisted living. Had to break the news to her that the retirement community had copies of all her id, so losing the purse wasn’t going to stop a thing. I found the purse hidden in the locked garage workshop.

In the few weeks I had to take care of Mom before her apartment was ready she exhibited again and again why she could not stay alone. She eats two or three spoonfuls of food a meal, but the worse thing was the games she played with her medications. Even as we divided her meds up in those “am/pm” pill packs she’d still mix them up. So many times I’d catch her trying to take the wrong ones.

When my kids were here helping me with her they saw it too. She took her nighttime sleeping pills at 8 am before we could stop her and it was lights out for the day.

Mom kept wanting to know why she had to go into assisted living, and I kept whipping out the hospital paperwork and notes from the doctors appointments I took her to where it spells out “assisted living”. I had to keep pointing out that legally I must do this since the doctors have decided it’s the best place for her. She cannot care for herself.

She cannot write a check. I have had to write checks and have her sign them. Once I realized how bad things were we took her to out lawyer to get power of attorney over her financial and medical needs. Being this responsible for her is something I just did not want at all but I’m the only child and my aunts aren’t in the position to help much.

Just being here, the scene of so much bad and abusive that happened to me, some at the hands of my mother, has been extremely triggering. The few weeks before she moved she did that thing she does that I absolutely hate – play the radio all night long at full volume. She used to listen to the BBC World Service all night, now it’s these hog-calling hollering rural preachers and gospel music instead. Had to go get ear plugs, and after talking to the doctor they upped the sleeping meds. She wasn’t sleeping. She'd roam all night like a hungry ghost.

The funny is that I know beyond a shadow of doubt that she’s an atheist who has always hated anything to do with religion. So I’m not sure what that’s about.

Mom let me know she thinks my butt length silver hair is “inappropriate” for my age along with my hippiesque clothing I wear in Costa Rica. Shrugs. She’s never approved of my tastes and it not shy about telling me.

Asthma went haywire and I ran out of spoons quickly. I think it’s likely because I was driving past all of Exxon’s multitude of poison-spewing facilities on my way into town daily. South Louisiana always makes my asthma go haywire. The stress I’m feeling and the copious dust in the house isn’t helpingThe good, because there is some good. She’s where she needs to be, she’s safe. I got to eat some of the finest food in the world including at a place near her new living situation where I started talking to the owner. It turns out he’s Nicaraguan and we had a long lovely natter in Spanish and then he brought me delicious Nica seafood soup to try along with other Nica foods. I ate my expansive weight in shrimp poboys, crawfish etoufee and those New Orleans gingerbread planks. I saw relatives I haven’t seen in years.

Plus I figured out a way to sleep deeply on my blowup mattress in the living room with the staring dolls– by having a delicious THC laden soda every night before bedtime. This started to be even more important when the asthma ramped up. Edibles, and now I guess drinkables, make the asthma tolerable by relaxing my tight airways. Plus it stops the doll creepy-crawlies in my mind. I had known that Louisiana was recreational legal now, but not that you could buy some of the drinks and edibles at the local gas station or grocery store.

~~~~~~~~

August 2025

And so I am now back in my Costa Rican home, which has been mostly empty since March because of first the husband, then Mom and I snuck up to visit my kids. We took a few days at St. George’s Island on the Chesapeake Bay.

Watching sunset start to creep in over St. George's Island.

 

I am furiously scrubbing and now the house is clean again. Had a few bad bouts of Sahara dust wacking my asthma hard. Getting ready to schedule another visit to Mom. The facility told me to stay away for a month or more to allow her time to settle in, and I have.

Now I get to go back to start shifting through the very disorganized dirty house. First thing I need to clean out the dining room since it’s the only room in the house without heavy dark drapes over tiny windows so the room is sunlit. It’s away from the dolls, and there’s a door I can shut. The bedrooms are full of junk. I need to make a list of remodeling goals, have the house cleaned, have a security camera system installed, try to figure out what to do about her car. I love the car, but knowing that the blue book value on the two year old car is 34K makes it a problem to import to Costa Rica. Plus I have a car of the same age here, and no reason to have a second. Import taxes here on autos are insane. But I love, love, love the way it drives! A family member has asked for it, and I’m going to have a conversation with Mom about that when I get there. The family member's car is ten years old now with lots of miles on it.

So I have my work cut out for me when I go back. Not looking forward to any of it. Would rather stay here on my slice of Costa Rican paradise, particularly now when we have a painting crew working on the outer wall, installing a new gate, a new security and camera systems. I’m getting a bathtub and a large sunroom off my bedroom soon. Other upgrades are in the works.  

My home here. Cannot describe the feeling of peace and happiness I feel every single time the gates open for me.