I was greeted this morning by my mother telling me how worried she is. She was in one of her panic states and highly charged with stress. She rarely makes sense like that and a sense of rational logic completely disappears.
I live with her in the family home that I was brought up in. I have been there for the last 7 or so years. I made a mess of my last relationship, or should I say relationships, and I was at rock bottom in all ways as I was without a job and had no money! I returned to home as my father was weakening considerably and mother was not coping too well. So we all needed each other. I got a job pretty quickly and I spent five years watching father die from Leukaemia. Mother has had her ups and downs since! More about that another time!
Anyway today she was clearly upset.I asked her why she was so agitated. She showed me a leaflet from the milkman and the delivery service they offer. It was an invitation to use the website "milk and more" to order and pay! There was a £5 incentive. She said it worries her so much she goes into panic. She then tells me how she doesn't understand the world of Computers, the digital and virtuals worlds and the internet and THAT SHE WILL NOT try to learn. So I said "Fine-keep writing him notes and pay the bill when he gives you one"!!! "But he has given me this note-they want me to do it on a computer". I offered to do it for her if she wanted. "Oh no" she said.
Then she went into a tirade about how "none of it works" when she announced the Doctors have suggested she orders her prescriptions on line. "And that doesn't work", she said. She confirmed her current prescription was wrong this week, because the doctor and the pharmacist must use the internet to do most of it these days!
And then she said it doesn't work for me either! Why, I ask. Well Tesco didn't deliver at Christmas time was her reaction! I then told her, as I have told her a dozen times; Tesco did not deliver because of the heavy snow and the dangerous roads for the delivery times I booked!
So the internet does not work!
Then she launches into an attack on both family members and dear friends. She said she has been really upset by "all these people" that say speaking to your grandchildren is so easy using the internet. She is also upset by "all these people" that send each other photos to each other on the internet.
The trouble is that it is NOT the internet that hurts. I have never had children, and my sister and brother in law were killed in a road accident 25 years ago, so she has not got grandchildren. People talking about grandchildren just makes her upset, and then it becomes anger.
The other thing that happened this week is my cousin told her about her grandchildren, and over Christmas others had mentioned the emails they got from family. Also this week a 80 year old told her about some photos she got-but they were on paper, and not glossy, in a week a new shop opens in our village and advertises digital photos presented on traditional glossy paper in frames-"for pictures to treasure"!!!!!
Its all too much for her-but she gets angry about it.
Panic will come next.
Its all very confusing for me, but mainly her reactions and logic. Its incredibly confusing for her, she feels pressure to do things on the net and regards a leaflet or a letter as an instruction. She also feels stressed by the begging letters from charities she gets. She seems to think that all junk mail and begging mail needs to be read fully-whereas when I see the type of mail it is from initially opening, or even realising from the envelope, then I just throw it away! And she will keep it and read it over and over again! The problem will then just fester and multiply and then I have to cope with more ranting.
Oh dear panic is going to happen sooner than I expected. My Aunt has phoned-from Canada, and she has dozens of grandchildren and can't stop talking about them!
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