Webcam Revelations: A True Story of Family Lies and Destruction

By Lila Karoub

Webcam Revelations is a true story about a domineering and oppressive mother who controlled her children, adult grandchildren, work associates, and anyone that could enhance her social and financial status. This mother was relentless and showed no mercy to the ones she used and left behind. Even as the mother started declining, she wanted full-time monitoring of her actions while sleeping to make sure she would not die in her sleep. Without the use of her legs and one arm that were paralyzed in a massive stroke, she was still able to keep control of it all by the webcam. Little did she know that it would all come out and her true self would be revealed because of a final stroke that took her mind. The ones who agreed to help this mother stay alive were dying off themselves, and the ones who were alive were becoming crippled and disabled from this mother's twenty-four-hour, seven-days-a-week monitoring. It was a never-ending nightmare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889609780

Book preview

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Webcam Revelations

A True Story of Family Lies and Destruction

Lila Karoub

Copyright © 2024 Lila Karoub

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2024

ISBN 979-8-88960-966-7 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88960-978-0 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Part 1

Chapter 1

Not Willing to Die

Chapter 2

The Evil Cousin

Chapter 3

Caregiver Entitlement

Chapter 4

Jerry Dies

My father was seventy-three when he died, about half a year to go before his seventy-fourth birthday. He was not fond of Jerry and his Jewish background. This was never a consideration as far as loving Jerry. He was a man of religion and followed it. Jerry would be seventy-three and also a little over a half a year before his seventy-fourth birthday. Where these two men could not find common ground in life would certainly find it in death, two lives cut short because of genetics and neglected health. I cried for weeks and months after my father died and could hardly manage my life. It was the way he died with an aortic heart dissection and the sadness of him dying alone. Jerry would die alone in the middle of the night from a complete cancer takeover, and there was not any treatment in the world that would save him. The fact is we all die alone in mind, in spirit, in consciousness, and in body. I am forever connected to the two great loves of my life, and there will never be a replacement.

Part 2

Chapter 5

Webcam Revelations of My Siblings

Chapter 6

The Bitter Truth

Chapter 7

What Will I Do When My Mother Dies

Chapter 8

Dishonesty Hits Home

Part 3

Chapter 9

Marijuana and the Current Generation

Chapter 10

The Nightmare of Sam

Chapter 11

The Webcam and My Brother

Chapter 12

My Ex in the Closet

Chapter 13

California Survival

Chapter 14

A Crazy Idea

Chapter 15

My Partner

Chapter 16

Michigan Reality

Chapter 17

Death

About the Author

Lila Karoub is a retired psychotherapist and started writing early into her retirement. She was raised in Detroit, Michigan, and relocated to California, where she married and had three daughters. Her ideas for writing came early on when she was in her counseling career and is now on her third book. In her private time, she is an avid gardener and maintains a lovely cactus garden with surrounding trees and succulents at her home. She loves to cook Arabic cuisine.

She lies in bed for twenty hours a day and looks around for someone to come to her, anyone, as her hand is extended to grab whomever or whatever she can reach, as she lies with little to no motion. All day, the television is on, and I Love Lucy is the day's DVD. Sometimes, it is Arab television or Leave It to Beaver , and other times, it is the Hallmark channel, but she does not know what she is looking at. She continues to extend her arm and reaches for the television, waving at Lucy and Ricky, but no one will come to her from this feeble motion. She begs these television characters to help her, but they do not answer her. She swears at them for not coming to rescue her and swears at anyone else that may be passing the bed, as she now lives in her living room in a hospital bed and will die there when her body gives up. If she sees you pass the bed, she will yell and demand to grab her hand to help her out of the bed. This woman, my mother, does not want to face the lights out forever.

My mother does not know she is a vegetable, as she insists that we take her to the bathroom or help her get dressed. She has been there for nearly two years and does not realize that her legs no longer work or that she wears a diaper, or that she is skin and bones with multiple bedsores. She has not been in her bedroom or the bathroom for this long as well. She stares all around, screaming as she has always done for her entire life. My mother begs for help, and while changing her to make her comfortable, one has to stop and make sure that we have this right. She has a full conversation with herself, insisting that she needs to get up and go to her recliner. We set up a second webcam where we can have live conversations with her while away from her, and she knows she is in bed and asks that we call her later when she is not sleeping. It all seems so real with my mother, who has lived in a world of pretense for the last five years, hiding her dementia. She is still hiding but does not know that she is fully exposed.

The webcam is a story about obsessions and confessions. Obsession because I was losing momentum and balance each time I would access my mother's webcam camera in her home in Michigan, by live remote access that my brothers set up for the two sisters in California. What started out as an occasional check-in to my mother's bedroom ended up with a crazy, obsessed, insane, all hours of the day and night invasive event. Now from her living room, she is monitored twenty-four hours a day. It was much more than that. As I checked in so often, my partner told me that this new addiction was not healthy. As my defenses grew against this statement, so did this obsession, a sickness, so to speak. It was so much more than a camera, and each day, when I would begin my writing, I would log in and socialize without ever speaking a word. I had a lot to say, but this would have meant I would have been found out, revealed, unveiled, exposed, and uncovered to the habits of the web camera.

The webcam was moved into the living room when that became my mother's bedroom. This is not unusual for a loved one to be out around people instead of isolated in a bedroom when the end is near. She was terrified in her spacious bedroom and would scream all night, even with the caregiver, the webcam checks, and her cousin, who could do nothing about it because she, herself, was too old. After my mother's hospitalization, she feared most things, but the bedroom was nonnegotiable even though she did not know where she was or who she was most days. She felt isolated and wanted out. When this move took place, her life changed, my life changed, and this addictive personality of mine was ruling my heart and mind. I knew my siblings were tuning in as well, but either from embarrassment or shame, neither of us shared our hours of operation. Mine was day, night, weekdays, and weekends nearly twenty-four hours a day. I could hardly sleep knowing that my mother was all alone in her oversize, palatial living room. My mother's language and ability to understand grew worse each day, and soon, she would know no one or know the wonderful life she had lived while confined to her hospital bed.

I am not too proud to say I was a victim of a complete mind takeover with this obsession of tuning in, not because I had to see if my mother was dead or alive but who the surrounding players were. I would learn of innocence and evil from the webcam, and it became so difficult not to push the talk button. I recall my mother's cousin who lived in this home while I was listening in, telling a caregiver how she hated the eldest daughter, who was me. I felt like the one that was wrong from this constant obsession of essentially spying, but the confession from this cousin made my blood turn white. Soon, tuning into the webcam camera, one could find another world. After this remark from my mother's live-in cousin, I never trusted her again. One cannot come back from such a comment.

My partner felt helpless with the constant check-ins, the discussion of what was witnessed, and the nightmare of inadequate caregivers. He would tell me to stop because he claimed it affected my mood. As I indignantly denied this, I hated it when he was right. I was changing into this other person that would criticize these employees who were too busy doing other personal things while my mother lay there and would beseech them for constant attention. After all, they were there to ease my mother's condition by keeping her company, but most of them just watched the clock so they could get out of there. It was too much for any caregiver, and in the last couple of years, the turnover of caregivers was too much to keep track of. In fact, we went through every available caregiver with every agency in the Detroit area who eventually would turn in their notice or never show up again.

I am not a judgmental person because I understood very early in life that this habit would not be in my best interest, and I did not want to become alienated from others. Most times, I was discarded for speaking the truth and being forward. This would not bode well with family, relatives, and friendships. I had two aunts that I was close to growing up, one of them was an ambitious, cutthroat, type, and the other was always kind even if she did not want to be. I wanted to be like the soft, gentle aunt, who would never criticize, but she was always sad and died in her early fifties. A very sad existence, indeed. The other bolder aunt was relentless in her pursuit of the top of her profession. Both of these ladies affected the course of my life. I have practiced kindness with a Teflon-coated personality. I did not want to be seen as weak. Now this kindness has gone by the wayside when it comes to these incompetent caregivers, but it had to be included because we needed the caregivers more than they needed the job.

There were visitors and family members that would come into the monitored area. Also, the in-home medical staff would say aberrant things and make horrifying statements about our mother living in this condition. We were a psychotic family, one caregiver stated, and keeping my mother alive in this way was inhumane. My mother was a vegetable and had no control. She was scheduled to die more than a year ago, but she lived instead, if you want to call this living. One could also observe with these webcam family members, friends, and the live-in elderly cousin acting shamefully arrogant. Since the camera was on day and night, any five siblings could check in on her. It became an obsession to look in on my mother, but the truth is that there was so much more I was checking in on. Anyone who had access was definitely looking at more than my mother and not deliberately. How could one not observe what was really happening? The webcam observation was a mixture of incompetency, neglect, and abuse.

After the nightmare with opiates, I would sometimes entertain the thought of returning to it. It is a struggle that I wish on no one. I have lived a full life since I buried this habit and still have opiate cravings after ten years clean. This addiction was a sickness that was also deep within my personality. One would have never noticed. So quitting opiates was only part of the problem. What was left was an addictive personality. I thought it was the way I adopted a new way of life, with healthier eating and exercise. I became dedicated to this like a habit or an addiction. But this was not the case. Instead, I fell into another type of habit, and at first, I thought nothing of it. Then after one year of tuning in to the webcam camera, I realized that I could not help but tune in as much as possible. I was after more than what it was intended to do. It became freakish, strange, abnormal, and eccentric. I was becoming different with this deleterious addiction. It was changing the way I view things.

It all started innocently, as this camera was installed in my mother's bedroom, and one could check in on her after 9:00 p.m. when she retired for the evening. Each day, there was a caregiver that would leave after they put her in bed. Once in bed, my mother would not get up, and the morning, caregiver would come early to help her out of bed. Thus, one could check in on her through the camera in the morning before she left her bedroom and at night when going to sleep. No one talked about their camera habits until my mother ended up in a coma. My sister and I, who both live in California, thought the camera to be a touchstone until we could return back to Michigan, and we would reluctantly share our notes. This was the sister that had nothing to do with me until my mother went into a coma, and we both moved into the ICU unit of the hospital for over thirty days. We had joined forces.

The first thing we shared in our displacement was how often we were actually tuning in, and our concerns were regarding the caregivers. We could see how a particular caregiver would treat our mother, but more importantly, we wanted to know if abuse occurred because my mother acted as if there was. There were several caregivers that would suddenly stop working for my mother. Since it was difficult to keep caregiver help, she usually just put up with their ways. Actually, my mother had gone through every available caregiver there was, and still, it did not stop her demands. Eventually, only private pay caregivers were available that were paid out of the pockets of the siblings. This was the situation before her health spiraled downward, for which there was little hope of recovery.

The original job of the caregiver before the final stroke was to drive my mother to work, wait there until she was done, take her back to her home, and, all the while, be active in a two-way conversation. It was too much for any caregiver whose main job was only to make sure the client was comfortable. This went way beyond their normal and customary duties, and every single one of them flew the coup, as they say, but finally after another stroke, not knowing the time or day, and being bedridden finally stopped the walking out of caregivers. They stayed when my mother quieted down. In other words, my mother could not talk or express herself any longer, and this is the way these caregivers wanted it. Even this was temporary because with a bedridden patient comes the changing, the constant turning of the body to avoid bedsores, and the slow process of feeding.

There was also my mother's cousin who resided with her. After my mother's second husband died, this cousin moved in and basically took over. My mother had a stroke that stole her ability to walk without a walker and then not at all. The stroke changed my mother's way of thinking with cognitive deficits, such as dementia, memory loss, language problems, reasonability, judgment, as well as a decline in physical abilities. To say that her cousin took advantage is an understatement. It is my opinion that this cousin tried to replace my mother. I never liked this cousin, but more importantly, she was on to me. I called her a scoundrel behind her back, and I was shocked to know how correct this was. In fact, one time in the webcam camera, a doctor was giving my mother her physical exam and asked a few questions from this cousin. The answers from her were out of a modern-day nightmare.

My mother's parents were wealthy, but her cousin's family was not. This cousin was not that lucky, being raised with lower socioeconomic standing. The predominate culture is conservative and hospitable. My mother followed these cultural ways in America, where her cousin could not afford to, as she was always clear to say this. I never believed it because she got rich off my doctor brother alone, who was duped by this woman. The other siblings followed suit and used this woman's expensive babysitting services. According to my calculations, when she came to live with my mother, it was free board; they should rent in exchange for some help. There was also a financial arrangement that alone would invalidate this cousin's pleas of how broke she was. I knew this could not possibly be true, and she knew that I did not believe a word out of her mouth. This cousin has a bank account in the millions.

Then there were my siblings themselves in the camera. Each sibling would tune in daily to do a virtual visit of my mother's last place on earth before her inevitable death. Everyone knew the camera was there, yet they still made disparaging comments about each other. One would learn very quickly what their position was in the family through this webcam. Being out in California meant one was not privy to the true stories of Michigan. That was part of the deal to enjoy life out there, as one had to live in Michigan to know where they actually stood. My mother kept things private, but the camera did not. At times, before this webcam was moved into the living room and still in the bedroom, she had the cognitive wherewithal to shut down this device, but that was all in the past with her recent strokes and subsequent hospitalization.

Having four siblings makes it difficult to understand who was telling the truth or who was not. There was something mystique about the camera showing the truth to all of us. It all started with my brother not wanting to drive over to my mother's home at 2:00 a.m. because of some real fear of hers just to find out it was an overreaction. I never imagined that this app would be the beginning of the revelation of the many dark secrets of the family, ones that were unimaginable, ones that are disturbing, and ones that will surely cause one to be at war with the perpetrators. One's camera habits were meddlesome, a type of snooping, inquisitorial, and just plain weird. This benign beginning of a webcam camera ended up with a terror-stricken end.

The webcam is a popular notion for those older adult children who want to monitor their parents' movements without interfering in their life. This usually happens when an elderly person starts to lose their faculties and can no longer use a phone. When my mother was well enough to use her phone, she would only abuse her children by calling night and day. When you did not answer, she would call until she was blocked from calling. This is not a new concept because back in the day, the blocking feature was synonymous with taking the phone off the hook or unplugging it. My mother did not understand that calling in this way was causing unpleasantries in the family. Her dementia would not allow her to be reasonable any longer. Last Christmas, while vacationing in California, she called my brother seventy-three times in a row while we were visiting her at her timeshare. My brothers did not understand this type of behavior, and my mother had taken her final turn. She almost died four years previously, but lived, and with harshness that life imposes on sick, old individuals.

This is a part of life that is difficult to understand. Why do we have to get some terminal illness and go out withering in pain? Why does ugliness affix itself to an old person who is trying to stay alive? Why is it that we must be put on morphine and breathe in our last precious breaths of life? Why is it that euthanasia is only a popular notion on paper, but when it comes down to it, it's rejected? Why is it that people have to live a perfect life, or they will end up flawed, unsound, unfit, and with a faulty existence that would be better off dead? Why is this? Who wants to die is a question that will be unsettling to hear the answer. My mother will be dead soon, but nobody knows why it ended up this way. I would watch her and my deceased ex deny they were sick, claim they would beat it, and get back to life. Thirty years ago, I watched my thirty-nine-year-old male roommate deny his terminal illness and was promised he could extend his life with selenium. He died within months of his grim diagnosis but swore he was getting better. Of course, most everyone thinks this and believes it, but it is rarely the case. This part of life with pain and suffering is simply a cruel way to die. In fact, there is no good way.

Part 1

Chapter 1

Not Willing to Die

When the great actor Humphrey Bogart died at fifty-seven years old, he did not want anyone to know what had happened to him. His legendary Hollywood character was one of toughness, and he became unmatched as an actor, a husband for the third and final time, and a father of two. His advanced esophageal cancer was diagnosed one year before his death, and he vowed to beat it. He was a heavy smoker and drinker who thought he was responsible for his eventual, early demise. His claim was that he smoked sixty cigarettes a day. His surgery was a nine-hour ordeal and was mostly unsuccessful. He would remain in this weakened state and be awaiting his next bit of strength to go back under the knife. He was to rest at his home and build strength. He never made it to the next surgery.

Subsequently, his family and friends could not believe his frail condition, only weighing eighty pounds when he died. He looked old and worn out. Yes, he was still smoking and thought it was too late now. He never regained his strength to do any other surgeries, and he passed away. Esophageal cancer occurs in the tube that connects to the throat on one end and the stomach on the other, with symptoms that include dysphagia (difficulty swallowing), unintentional weight loss, severe and constant heartburn, and a chronic cough. Two main factors that contribute toward the disease are smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol. As the cancer advances, it becomes difficult to swallow food and for liquid to pass. Still yet, at eighty pounds, Mr. Bogart wanted to be cured and wanted to live.

As Mr. Bogart thought he may live and beat this cancer, my mother did the same. Both carried a facade that made one believe that death was not for them while slowly slipping away. My mother said she would live to 120 and told anyone who would listen how her grandmother had done the same. There was no evidence of how long my mother's grandmother lived, but it was entertaining to watch my mother impress others with this claim. Like Mr. Bogart, she knew that dying was not part of their agenda, rather, to get busy living was the preferred method. These two people thought that one could escape death. My mother has lost fifty pounds in her bedridden state, unable to walk, does not know where she is, and at the same time, and continued to eat little bits of food and sips of water. They may have been two different people living their lives, but in the end, they would be the same two people dying.

For almost three decades, I have been living in California and continue to travel to Michigan to stay close to family there, including my late father and my mother, who has lived a long life. When my father died, I was thankful that my mother was there to pick up the pieces. One by one, the siblings would grieve, and each one of us stayed private about it all. My mother was able to reach us and continued to be there as the surviving parent the best she could. She remarried long before my father's death, and all five of us disliked her husband. There was too much to process with a man who was close to our family and to have secretly been involved with my mother. The secret was out, and the only one who cared, my father, was now gone. For years, he had been sullen and despondent about this surreptitious affair. He would no longer be in agony, and this thought helped with our grief-stricken ways.

I remember thinking that my father died much too early and that my mother could never replace the feelings of love and honor one felt toward him. From the very beginning of his death, my mother pushed her established lifestyle on us, explaining it was time to be a family again. All five of us discarded the mother/child relationship and helped my father through the difficult divorce and living alone in a life he had not bargained for. My mother chose happiness with a man that was not my father and not even close in comparison. Her new husband had abandoned his family of five and headed down a path with my mother that was inconceivable. We all thought that my father's life was cut short because of his agony. My mother was indestructible and still is, but at ninety-four, there are certain realities.

In truth, my mother has never been ill in her ninety-four years of life. Her health issues include a sick uterus, which was removed, and a common cold. Never has she been hospitalized for anything else and is really a bull when it comes to staying healthy. It is as if she will make her body regret its existence if there are any diseases waiting. Each decade of her life only proved to be stronger and invincible as if she were not human, and each one of her children, her friends, and all who adored her could attest to this unbreakable woman who has maintained her good health for over nine decades. Her lungs are perfect as of her last check-up, and all organs are functioning normally. My mother is one that will not die easily, and watching this makes one believe that one is willing to live is the key to a long life. I guess it helps to have two physicians in the family, something my mother takes a lot of pride in.

The webcam camera is necessary to watch and observe my mother's movements. She has a cousin residing with her, but this woman is too old to do more than keep her company. This is not an easy thing to do with my mother's latest condition. Last May, my mother called my two physician brothers who lived close to her home. The cousin helped my mother with the call because she was in excruciating abdominal pain. The nighttime caregiver was also there and accompanied my mother to the hospital with the two brothers. This did not bode well for my mother, and she would be in a lot of trouble. Since 2017, the stroke partially paralyzed my mother's legs and arms, but she still managed to hobble around with the walker. She would not be stopped, but now with this latest decline, my mother would lose control, something she was unfamiliar with, and refused to cooperate.

My brothers sat with my mother in the emergency room, and it was deemed necessary to put her under anesthesia. The emergency doctors claimed it was a ruptured gallbladder where the gallbladder wall leaks. These ruptures are due to an inflamed gallbladder organ caused by gallstones, which get trapped within the walls and linings. Her diagnosis concerned my brothers, and they agreed to do an exploratory procedure to see what was going on. This is where the problem lies and the beginning of the end, so to speak. My mother was put under by an anesthesiologist, and two on-staff doctors did the procedure. My two brothers were not allowed in the procedure room. After forty-five minutes, my mother did not wake up from this and started the next twelve days of a coma.

Up until 2017, my mother has lived an independent life and balks at anyone suggesting anything else. This particular year, my mother's first stroke left her crippled, and most would have withered away and died. Not this woman, as she has a complete set of her own rules about when she will die and when she says so. I realized we all have that dreaded expiration date, but my mother thinks otherwise. She has no interest in dying and makes a living her highest priority. In this year of 2017, my mother proved her strength, survived the stroke and her crippled body, then returned to her hospitality position at the office of my brothers. The stroke left her face contorted, hunched over, bladder incontinence, and barely able to walk with a walker. Despite this, she survived and, for the next four years, did not miss a beat. This was also the year that she was diagnosed with dementia.

My mother's brilliance was starting to fade, and no one thought the wiser, not even the two family doctors. Her anger was exactly the same as when we were kids, so this would not have been an obvious clue that this diagnosis of dementia was on the horizon. We were tuned into the webcam, which was in her bedroom, because she was mobile and still slept in her own bed. There were no obvious signs of dementia until one day when she was at my brother's office, and she made an impulsive decision to barge into my younger brother's office and yell at him in front of the staff and patients. My mother had zero regard for what was appropriate, and we knew something was off. Since one can still function with dementia, we attributed this behavior to older age which was eighty-eight years of age. It was not until her driver's license was revoked did any of us have a clue.

Digression

In 2017, before her first stroke, my mother took her driver's test and flunked. She had also been in a couple of fender benders, which were suspicious. You see, my mother could thoroughly convince you that the guy that was holding the blower to clean up his driveway was at fault for being in the way. Another incident involved another man that was riding his bicycle in the bike lane, where my mother smashed his bicycle, but the guy was not hurt. She claimed that he was not in his lane, but the police report stated that my mother had an eye issue with depth perception. She was 100 percent at fault, and until we read the police report, we just assumed that she was correct. Not to be denied, she flew out to California for her annual trip, not able to legally drive for the moment, and convinced my sister and I to help her drive. We did not know much of anything at that point about her health and readily agreed she could drive my truck, which she did with excellent skills. She returned to Michigan and had a stroke within one week, and her driving days were over. I was happy that we did the driving bit and never told anyone. The subsequent health issues continued to occur, and finally, my mother was done with fancy cars. Her leased car was returned to the dealer. I do not regret granting my mother her driving wish. Even with dementia, she was able to pull herself together after she lost her license to prove she could still operate a vehicle. The vehicle was an oversize four-wheel drive and four-door truck, and she drove it like a champion.

*****

My mother loves money and finds ways to make it. With her second husband, she did not marry legally (only religiously), so they could have more income. Eventually, just two years before his death, they married their local minister. With her job at the medical offices of my brothers, she created her own position and a salary to go along with it. With her children, she sends a bill, which we must pay if we are to visit her in Michigan. In other words, you could visit, but it would cost you. It was a double whammy: pay for the trip across the country and my mother's visiting fee. If the bill was paid each month, you were welcome to her home. If not, one was disregarded for not having the same mindset. She allowed her children to visit but would be aloof, cold, and showed favoritism to the ones that gave up the funds. She had more income coming in than most people her age, and she lived well.

After the 2017 stroke, each sibling had a day and a time to monitor and report back to the siblings. One could check the webcam camera when they wanted to but also had a scheduled day as well. I started to notice that my mother would not let on to how sick she really was. Why was this? Was this because if she continued to deny and lie about her condition, she could keep up with the monetary duties of her children? Was this because she did not want to burden us with the truth of things? Maybe it was because when one is sick, they pray to get well, and sometimes they do. In this case, my mother was only growing older, and with each additional day she lived, she was positive she was beating the odds. Not one of the five siblings ever disagreed with her and went along with whatever she wanted. She did not want to die, not then, and not ever, which added to the strength of this woman.

Good habits have kept my mother going for more years than anyone she knew. Everyone was dying but not her. She had two physician sons that kept track of her health and gave her everything she needed to go on living. Once, I said to my mother that we all were going to the same place, and she replied that she was not going to go there for a long time. She was ninety then, and in her mind, she wanted life to never end. One part of me understood this because death is an unreasonable prospect. No one is ready for it, and life goes entirely too fast. The rest of my siblings feel the same and cannot comprehend the finality of death. My mother has shown us that one must live life to the fullest before one no longer can. It was always hard to keep up with her.

When my mother went into a coma, we all got together to take shifts at the hospital, and I mean all night long, sleeping on a bench-like seat in her ICU private room to keep an eye on her. The eldest brother would bring the holy book and his religious words daily. This was his contribution to her, as well as financially helping her for too many years to count. He was a wealthy doctor, and my mother was his main contributor. My youngest brother was wealthy too, but his wife put conditions on his money because it was hers, too, working at her own practice as a dentist. The middle brother took care of my mother's affairs, and this was a job of his own choice. He also worked full-time as an attorney. My sister and I flew to Michigan the night my mother was to die in this coma. We left our homes in California and flew together although we were no longer close. We would move into the hospital intensive care unit (ICU) and would only go back to my mother's condominium to shower and take a quick nap just to return and do it all over again for several weeks.

To say this was a hardship does not quite embrace what really was going on. First, my sister did not like me and made this clear. I did not care much for her either, but I wanted to be a big sister, an understanding one, a loving one no matter what, and I buried it all so we could work together and support each other during this time of my mother's coma and hospitalization. The entire family, five siblings, nineteen grandchildren, two step-grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, and the spouses of the five siblings, knew that my sister and I did not get along.

Since there was nothing to be done about this, life went on without her, sadly. During this ICU phase, we buried it all to be supportive of our mother. Still yet, we were away from our homes and too exhausted to describe this hardship. My mother remained in this coma, but the two of us sang songs, spoke to her with compassion and love, and helped the nurses where we could. In fact, the staff spoke to us about the reality of the situation and told us to prepare for her death. My two physician brothers had opposing ideas of what needed to be done for our mother. One wanted her to die naturally without any type of intervention, and one wanted my mother to go into rehabilitation. The hospital wanted her to go into a hospice program and die a peaceful death.

Both brothers blamed themselves for allowing the staff physicians of the hospital to have administered the anesthesia because they knew that my mother might die, and the risks were too many to name. It was 4:00 a.m., and both of them could only think about getting back to their beds for a couple of more hours before their workday. This was when it happened. The staff doctors who oversaw this gallbladder procedure told both of them to get some sleep, as my mother would be admitted after the procedure. They were barely back to their homes when they got the news that possible brain damage had occurred, and she was placed in a coma. Not before this day had my mother ever been hospitalized or ever been in an emergency room, apart from when she spray-painted the fence and fainted decades earlier. The poisonous fumes became too much. She would be okay that time, but this time, she would never be okay again.

The hospital staff could understand how the five of us insisted that everything be done for this ninety-two-year-old queen that we adored and respected. It was the exception, not the rule to keep her on life support. On the nightshift with my sister, we sang Perry Como, and at the end of the song, my mother raised her eyebrows. None of the staff were impressed with this, but all five of us saw this as a hopeful event. My mother woke up from the coma, and then things started to get tough as if things were not tough enough. Now, my mother, in her confusion and delirium, would call out every few minutes to help her because she had so many tubes that could not come out. She was in great discomfort, could not talk, but continued to cry out day and night. Mother queen or not, this was too much, and finally, the five of us started with the blame game and who was responsible. The five of us could not agree on the next steps for my mother and would argue with vigor and earsplitting expletives with the backdrop of my mother in this coma.

No one could understand how my mother woke up and started to scream all night long. The hospital staff wondered how long they would have to endure it, and a few days later, my mother was released to her family. The staff had enough, and they wanted to get rid of the ninety-two-year-old screaming woman who refused to die. This was amazing but very scary. How would we be able to care for her round the clock, and how long would it last? My sister claimed that she had to get back to her job, as did my three brothers. I did not have to return to a job, but I did want to return back to my life and my writing. Before this accidental hospitalization, my mother had endured COVID-19, the vaccines, and was planning to return to her part-time position at my brother's office. This happened on a Thursday, and the following Monday would have been her first day back after the COVID-19 closures. She was in no way dying, only living to the best of her ability. Then the second stroke occurred and paralyzed the rest of her body.

The day my mother came home from the hospitalization was the day she wished that she were dead. She begged for someone to help her and continued in this vein for the next several months. Her second stroke and excruciating abdominal pain had not killed her, but the siblings knew that living like this would only tear us apart and tear us apart, and it did. We were now helping caregivers and changing diapers. I dutifully did what I had to do, and so did the other four siblings. We all thought that our mother would die as soon as she was out of the hospital. The two physician brothers were sure of it, and the lawyer brother wanted her gone instead of living on a stretcher hospital bed in the middle of her living room. Me, well, let us just say that I thought many times during the last five years that she would die of her ailments but continued to survive them. My opinion was to go with the flow and leave my mother to do what she will until a natural end.

Trying to predict my mother's death was something no one was good at. She continued to beat the odds. She had already lived twenty-two years more than my father and was the perfect likeness to good health looked like. She never smoked, never drank, and stuck to a Mediterranean diet that she grew up with that is popular in many cultures. Her lungs matched those of someone half her age, and her energy was off the charts. Her five children did not have that much energy altogether, and she motivated all five of us to do more with our lives. A life without our mother would surely change all of us, and we would all disintegrate into the abyss without her. The problem was this lady in her berth in her living room was no longer our mother. She was a vegetable that spoke in nonsensical tones until she stopped speaking altogether.

My mother's good habits were not all that she had, as she had bad ones too. She taught all five of us how to lie or stretch the truth without missing a beat. She also taught us to keep secrets and to manipulate others. My mother left her marriage to be with her lover and thought this was a good idea because she was unhappy. She wanted love plain and simple. One has to ask if she had loved all along, would she have practiced these dirty habits with her five children as witnesses? I want to say yes, but as a trained professional therapist, I would say that my mother, although brilliant, lacked maturity. She screamed too loud and yelled obscenities too often. She would go silent with anger and burst out with terror. All five of us have been damaged by this and had to fight our way out of it.

The office of both my brothers became my mother's healing place. She was seventy-five years of age when she took this job and fifteen years into her second marriage. This was how she was all along, and if one were waiting for her to change, they would die waiting. Never did she relent, never did she give up, and never did she admit to her faults. She was always right, and saying anything else would only cause heartache. If you did not want to go along with it, then the trouble would begin. My mother did not have the courage or the wherewithal to admit to anything other than what she wanted. My father always said, Do not try to beat your mother. You will never win. How right he was! No winners except for my mother each and every time, every conflictual situation, and all battles were won by her and her alone.

My eldest daughter has the highest regard for my mother, and my youngest brother does too. My sister is not fond of my mother for various reasons and will only participate in my mother's care if needed. She does not want to care for her because she felt slighted many times over the years when my mother would pick the brothers to vacation with instead of her. I knew my mother was in the wrong, but it was not my show. I had my own battles to fight and accepted my mother. I would get angry at her, of course, as this is normal, but never to be noticed was something which I did not bother with nor be part of because it was a waste of energy. My sister could not let go of the past. We all had issues with our mother, but honestly, who does not? Mother issues are pretty common, especially among older adults.

It was disturbing to be part of a family that only noticed the brothers, but I was happy enough not to care about the trivial details. I loved being part of a family, whatever the situation was. For me, my mother had died, and this lady living in her body was a bad substitute. You see, my mother did not become nice because she was crippled and confined to a hospital bed. She would scream to get her out of bed or scream to help her to a bathroom that she could no longer use because her brain said yes, but her body said never again. She called us pigs, liars, and thieves because no one, including me, wanted to go near her in this condition. She was not our mother, and she was also unrecognizable.

One cannot blame my mother for not wanting to die. Who does? As I said, no one is ever ready to die. My mother could no longer move the left side of her body, nor could she sit up on her own. She was in diapers, and this in itself was something none of the siblings could tolerate. She was our dignified mother, not some almost-dead person. She did not know who she was or where she was. She would call us different names and thought this was okay. We were helping this woman, my mother, live, and no one knew the goal. My brothers in Michigan were exhausted. My sister needed to keep her job and no longer had the time that she initially had when my mother was hospitalized, and then there was me. I wanted to help, but as an older adult, I did not have the strength any longer. I made five trips to Michigan that year, and unbelievably, my brother, who is the conservator for my mother, brought her to California for the Christmas holiday in her condition. I was the only one who devoted so much time to her care and comfort.

Remember, my mother was bedbound, could no longer walk, and eventually became mostly paralyzed, partially blind, and did not know who she was, who her children were, or where she was. My brother's thinking was, if she was a vegetable in Michigan, why break the traditional family holiday trip? She could be a vegetable in California, and the caregivers could get some time off, and I would not have to travel to Michigan for the Christmas holidays. I know this sounds insane, but my mother had always had some resistance to going to California because she loved the Michigan holidays and the decor that went with them. Once the other two brothers started going to Florida for the holidays years ago, California became a regular event for my mother. This particular Christmas would be no exception despite her condition.

The airline said that it did not matter if my mother wore diapers and not matter if she was out of it. They would take her and recommend first class, which my brother did. He had been bringing my mother out to California for several years now, and no one expected her to make it to another holiday last May when she was in a coma. Guess what? My mother made it out with the help of my brother and some caring airline staff who really did not know what was going on with my mother. When I explained this to a Michigan friend, she was tempted to call the Department of Health and Human Services and report elder abuse. She did not do it, but she never looked at our family the same for doing it. I often say a judgmental person is unhappy in their own life.

The miracles of my mother are too many to name, but somebody in the universe liked her. She made it onto the Delta Airlines flight, and she had an uneventful flight. Maybe she did it because no one wanted her to die, or maybe it was because she was so unhappy with my father. My brother was able to get her to my home in California, and with a hired caregiver, she spent a couple of days with me. She had turned into a young little girl who called for her mama and sometimes had moments of lucidity. My mother would ask who I was, and when I told her, she remembered. It was a bittersweet event to have her, and I realized I wanted her to live with me from here on in. I had made so many trips to Michigan and was thoroughly exhausted. To be exact, since 2017, I have made four trips per year. Sometimes when I would wake up out of a sleep, I would not remember whose house I was in, and to catch my bearings would only occur after walking into a wall in a sleepwalking misdirection.

The holiday was during COVID-19 but more relaxed with the vaccines in place. Still, yet, gatherings with masks were recommended. Despite my brother's best efforts, and mine to keep her in California, it was a mistake to bring her, as my mother did recognize one thing, and that was she was not in her home. She wanted to be there, not in California. My brilliant mother, in a dementia-ridden stupor, knew she was not in her home. Despite my efforts and pleas, she returned home to her hospital bed in her living in Michigan and will stay there until she passes. One cannot predict that any longer, and she will go when her breathing stops. Nobody really knows when that is.

The many factors described and more let all five of us to monitor her twenty-four hours a day. I often thought about what it was like for adult children of mothers