Hi! I'm back for an update. It's been almost a year since I posted this asking for advice and so much has changed. The property that my grandmother owns is now in litigation. One of those 'golden' children is suing because they say it was 'promised' to them. So now grandma even has more of a headache because she has legal fees, depositions and an upcoming trial that she is having to prepare for. Of course her lawyer says that there is no case and that they will not win. However it cannot be sold until litigation is complete. My relationship with my grandmother has gotten much better AND she is actually enjoying spending time with me and my family to give my mom a break. She comes over and sits and watches tv with me and the kids make her feel like a million bucks with all of their coloring and 'gifts' that they make for her. My older daughter enjoys helping to fix grandma's hair and likes to help her open doors and things like that. Smothering my grandma with love has seemed to work in the last few months. Her relationship with my mom has gotten better. She is still pretty mean but she no longer calls the other siblings to complain about my mom. She will snap at my mom but quickly apologizes. She has seen the devotion that my mother has for her and I think that has really changed her. As the weeks and months go on, my grandmother becomes even more confused about things and that is very frustrating for her but she leans on my mom where this time last year she would lash out at my mom. She actually enjoys being around my dad too. Our family dog passed a few months ago and my grandma took it pretty hard. We didn't realize how attached she had become to the dog but she tells us that in the afternoon the dog would go in and sit in her room and watch the kids walking home from school through the window. They bonded which is not something my grandmother is good at. The passing of the dog seemed to bring her closer to my dad which has really surprised us all. She says I love you a lot. She says thank you to my mom. I've caught her calling my mom honey and sweetie which are not names my grandmother ever uses. One sibling has stepped up. Well his wife has stepped up but at least my mom has help now. My parents have been able to travel on three vacations which they had not done in over a year and they were travelers before my grandma moved in. My grandma stays with my uncle and wife for several weeks and actually misses home. That's right she calls it 'home' now. The situation is not perfect but it seems to have gotten better. With her acceptance of how her life his now, she seems to be much happier. She doesn't want to go to a home and so I think with the fear of that happening she has straightened up a bit. She still has those moments but she seems to realize when she has been ugly and shows remorse. She actually sits in the living area with family instea of shutting herself off in to her room. The dr's say she is doing well. She had a scare not that long ago but seems to be much better now. I'm not sure what changed my grandma but she is not the miserable old lady she was last summer. She is a much nicer person who allows her family to love her and help her. Just wanted to give an update.

Thanks everyone for the pep talk, I feel better knowing I'm not being lazy and that we have actually accomplished a lot. My current to do list is Finish tiling the mudroom floor so I can move the desk back in and get it out of my dining room Tile the pantry floor so I can FINALLY get my food out of all the totes Paint and install all the trim Stain and finish my wet bar Install pulls on the wet bar Install counter on wet bar Install sink in wet bar Things I can enjoy: In the main part of my kitchen, all the cabinets, counters, lights and appliances are installed and fully functional. I actually HAVE a dining room to eat in now instead of serving meals in the living room (NOT fun w/messy eaters and carpet) I now have TONS of natural light flooding my house thanks to opening up walls and adding windows and a French door to the backyard Last week, instead of working on the reno, my wonderful husband opened up our pool AND he bought a hot tub yesterday that I got to enjoy last night with a stiff drink. Once the kids are in bed, I think I will grab a drink and go sit in the hot tub with hubby to celebrate his birthday and not think about the reno for a while. Maybe we will even have some cookie dough. That or the key lime pie I made him. :)

Sue, the Etap hotel is a few steps below a motel 6...quite a few steps in fact. LOL! The rooms were tiny, which were expected but the floor was really grungy and the toilet/shower area were a one piece porta potty plastic unit that had been put into a corner of the room. It was very small and the floor area by the toilet got soaked when you showered. The shower stall area was barely big enough to turn around in. Now I wish I had taken a picture! Patti, I think the house I used to live in was torn down and a new one put in it's place, there were a lot of new homes there. The town was very small, just one street with one tiny restaurant and a coffin maker. That was it...not even a post office. Stacy, yeah, I think I should've learned after our trip out west. Some of it was fun but for the most part they weren't interested in a lot of it. I've downloaded my pictures and will start posting them. Wish I had taken more videos, they are pretty funny because they are so BAD! LOL!

popi, both myself and my siblings are so happy my mother did not die alone. But I did feel awful at first that even though I was right there, the last thing she saw was my panicked face, and I wasn't even holding her hand, which probably would have been so comforting to her. My DH had stepped out into the hall momentarily to prop our door open so the paramedics would find us easily when they arrived. So I was alone with 2 crying kids and desperately trying to talk to the 911 operator. I planned to comfort her right after I got off the phone, not realizing that her last moment of life was passing in front of my eyes. Had I known that, I would have held her and said "I love you so much Mom, you were the best mother ever" instead of kind of yelling at her "Try to relax Mom, the paramedics will be right here!" So don't feel too bad that you weren't physically there when your mother died, because even though I was, I wasn't actually comforting her as she passed. I think that's something we can't always control and I'm o.k with that now. She knew how much I loved her, your mother did too, and that's what really counts. mammie, please don't worry that your mother was seeing something terrible because of the look on her face before she passed away. I think that some people are fortunate enough to just kind of lose concsciousness and then slip away without any awareness of anything about to happen. In my mother's case, she always hoped she'd just pass away in her sleep some day. So I believe the frightened expression was more of momentary fear of how she would pass, since she was obviously aware it was happening, and definitely not that she saw anything terrible at her moment of death. shay13, my condolences for your mother's recent death, the pain will become less intense as time passes. I'm not 100% sure which anti-anxiety med my mother took because it was 5 years ago. I know that she took the pill to relieve her anxiety, and unfortunately she passed away before it kicked in, but I don't believe it CAUSED her death. I do have the pocket guide for perscription drugs and Ativan doesn't list any side effects like loss of consciousness or cardiac arrest. I believe the fact that your mother never regained consciousness after her last blackout was not related to you giving her the anti-anxiety medication. Remember that you didn't give your mother an overdose of it, and her doctor who perscribed it was aware it was to alleviate anxiety when she sensed she was about to pass out. So I doubt he'd prescribe something that would risk her not returning to consciousness afterwards. I didn't intend my post to stir up any sense of guilt in those of us who tend to second guess things about a loved one's death. To shay13 and anyone else, I no longer hold any guilt for anything related to my mother's actual death. My post was strictly related to my guilt from continuing to lie about it to my siblings. I just felt that if I was expecting you all to take the burden of guilt off my shoulders, I'd just give you the whole story of what happened. We plan our regular visit to my sister's house between Christmas and New Year's. My other siblings that also live in Windsor all come over for a family gathering on Dec. 29th, because that's the day my mom passed away and we like to have a big crowd and play games and laugh, knowing how much our mom would love that. Just turning to all of you at the KT has really helped to relieve my guilt about lying to my siblings. I felt it would be much better to reveal the truth to a large number of people who could take the burden from my shoulders and throw it away for me, than to reveal it to four who would just place it upon their own. I'll let you all know how the visit goes, and Happy Holidays to everyone in case I don't post any other threads before then.