Posted by:
GregS
(
)
Date: December 05, 2018 01:19PM
My wife is seeing an LDS therapist to deal with some issues that I think are exacerbated, if not actually caused, by the church...nuther conversation.
I overheard part of last night's phone session...hard to miss when my wife walks into the room I had retreated to to give her privacy with the speakerphone on.
I think she's a good therapist for the most part, and most of what she's told my wife is consistent with what I've been telling her since we married.
However, there was one bit of advice from the therapist that made me sit up and take notice. It was concerning my wife's youngest brother, and sense of guilt and responsibility she feels for his current situation.
He has had a series of traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), multiple drug addictions, a stint in prison, and several years of being homeless over the past 30 years. He's now 50.
It wasn't until the last head injury a couple years ago in California that his mental capacity had diminished to the point where my wife was able get him in a facility where he would have 24-hr care and supervision, and away from drugs. My MIL was living in AZ at the time, so my wife also arranged to have the brother moved to be close to their mother.
(Efforts were made to help him before, but he was cognitive enough to fool the evaluators and to stay on the street where he could continue his drug habit.)
My wife did all of this from out of state and with several extended trips to CA/AZ to make sure everything was being done as promised by a string of bureaucracies that were unconcerned about the brother falling through the cracks...nuther conversation.
Another brother recently retired and moved to the east coast, and my MIL thought is was a good time for her to move there, as well. She thought that she could just have the TBI son move in with her, to which everybody yelled, "NO! You can barely take care of yourself."
Once again, my wife moved heaven and earth to find a new facility near Mom's new home, and to make the brother's move as smooth as possible.
Despite my wife's best efforts, there was month's delay before the brother could move into his new facility, and the old facility had already washed their hands of him once his care was signed off to the new state. In the meantime, the TBI brother is staying with his Mom, and the other brother (who is now retired) is stopping by everyday to check in on them both.
The TBI brother's health has taken a visible downward turn in the last couple weeks, and my wife is deathly afraid that something will happen to him and that she would be blamed if she doesn't drive 12+ hours away, and take several days off of work, to fix everything...again. She has already directed her mother and the other brother to bring the TBI brother to get checked out by a doctor. She is constantly reminding them that they can't just accept the brother's claims that he feels fine because, with his head injuries, he really doesn't know whether he is well, and can't remember having been in pain minutes after the pain subsides.
As both I and the therapist have told her, it is because of my wife that her brother is off drugs, is safely off the streets where he was regularly robbed and beaten up, and is enjoying the highest quality of life that he has enjoyed in decades. He is less than a week from moving into his new facility because of her. She is THE MOST BLAMELESS person in this entire drama.
And then the therapist said something that I kinda get, but it really doesn't sit well with me. "It doesn't matter if your brother dies because he will finally have his body back in its most perfect state. Though he has a better quality of life now than he did before, it is still horrible and death may not be the worst thing because then he can return to Heavenly Father."
Apparently it was the right thing to say to my wife since it calmed her down considerably; but it felt rather cold to me and very dismissive of my wife's efforts to get her brother the care he needs now, while he is still alive.
I'm still trying to sort out my thoughts and feelings on this.