It's not her fault

Graphic from NPQ

Now that my mother is gone, we have nothing to hold us together my sisters and I.

I've recently forced myself to start visiting my oldest sister once a month.  It's easy to feel  overwhelmed by work demands and make excuses, let the time go way too long between visits.  Plus, if I'm honest, it's not really fun in any way to visit my oldest sister.  She's annoying and manipulative; but she's still my sister and she doesn't really have any friends. So I decided to just make a commitment to myself to ensure I see her once a month.  But I can't seem to even want to make myself go looking for my middle sister.  I haven't seen her since mom died. She's the sister who's a paranoid schizophrenic.

My middle sister's daughter told me that she's camping out in the orange groves over by where we grew up.  From before the time I was born in 1960, until the late 90s my parents owned 5 acres and a home out in what ended up being an area where people had orange groves.  They built their home with their own hands and added onto it as they could afford.  We grew up there and it was home.  But in the last few years of my father's life he became ill and wasn't able to keep it up, so that by the time he died, there was quite a bit of work to be done.  My mom sold it all (and then later squandered all the money). I don't think middle sister has come to terms with their death so it's as if she's trying to keep a piece of that life.  Plus it's quiet out there and. apparently, no one bothers her.  Maybe she has a PO box to get her social security disability checks and she'll rent a hotel for the too cold weeks.  Luckily the weather is rather pleasant all the time in southern California.  She was always really good at pioneer, camping type stuff.

I've noticed lately at work that the courts are letting people off conservatorship super easily.  On the one hand I understand that everyone should have the right to autonomy, on the other hand, people with extreme mental illness make such poor decisions that can cause harm to themselves and others. Middle sister never even got onto conservatorship.  She did end up with some acute hospital hospitalizations through her life.  When she was in her mid to late 40s she finally got onto social security for her mental illness.  It was a wonder she lasted so long.  She won't take meds and she has a lot of non reality based beliefs.  These beliefs are about things such as rays from TV/radio/cell phone infringing on her, or people being out to do her bad.  I don't think she sees things or hears voices, I'm not sure.  I don't think she would have ever told me if she did. As is typical for people who have schizophrenia, she has a difficult time pulling things together - she's unkept and so is any area where she lives.   She'll "clean" over and over sometimes, and things around her may even be damp from the cleaning, but it's always disorganized. 

My heart goes out to her.  I think perhaps I'm a bad person for not actively seeking her out and trying to help her in some ways.  She's just so resistive, and it hurts me so much when I hear her saying such delusional nonsense.  Why is it that I can work with mentally ill people but not even take the initiative to try to be there for my sister?  What's wrong with me?  So much of my life was burdened under the heaviness of her illness, I never felt any resentment, but it wasn't comfortable.  It was even painful.  It feels so hopeless.

Oh Father God, please protect Gail.  Please keep her safe and fed.  Bring her happiness.  If You want me to do something specific for her, please show me and give me the strength/ability to do it.  I don't think I'm a good sister but You are a good God.  Please bless her, she's so broken and it's not her fault.