It’s been 4 months since my last blog piece back in April. Somehow, it’s already mid-August. Time moves more quickly the older you get, I’ve discovered. Gone are the days of my youth when, like most other kids, I’d wish to be older and I’d want the clock at school to move faster. Now I wish I was younger and the clock would move more slowly. But here we are: Mid-August 2026 and in just four months I’ll be 61 years old.
After my last blog piece in April, I received a reply to it that hit me hard. Not because there is any truth to this person’s vile, mean words, but because it was one more drop of inhumanity spewed into an already often-cruel world. The person wrote: “Filthy shameless scammer – trying to make money off the death of a child with your little begging buy me a coffee site. No shame, no dignity. You don’t deserve to be a mother”
I leave that comment here as a mere suggestion of how not to be toward other human beings.
So, this is me checking in after 4 months. Not that anyone is actually listening or wondering how I am, but I am struggling. The peripheral neuropathy in my feet, on top of the degenerative discs in my lower back, keep me from being able to walk as far as I’d like. I can’t be on my feet for too long. Most recently, my knee has gone out. An MRI has shown I might need surgery on it. Cue the infamous Irish medical waitlists. Now enter to the conversation me trying to find some minimal part-time work (hopefully remote) to supplement Disability Allowance. Yes, I am on Disability Allowance. My health isn’t great. I have multiple chronic illnesses, including the chronic pain. I’m not able to make financial ends meet. I started an Etsy page where I’ve created a number of custom items and have sold a few things, but it’s not going as I hoped. I’m selling some household belongings and clothing on various sites, but that doesn’t get much traction, either. I am trying.
I don’t go anywhere. I don’t buy steak or salmon or expensive items at the grocery store. I said to a friend the other day how I can’t remember the last time I had a steak. It’s been years. How I’d love some filet mignon! As I scroll through Twitter/X and see all the delicious meals people post up and see the holidays they go on, I wonder how they can afford it. Once upon a time, I could, too. It’s hard to see those posts and I’ve debated not being on social media, but it’s frankly some of the only interaction with people that I get.
How did I get to this point?
Being a long-term, 24/7 carer and then having it end at the passing of my precious son was like being dropped off a cliff’s edge in countless ways. Emotionally, physically, financially, spiritually. And as I hit the bottom of the abyss after being dropped off of that cliff’s edge high above, I shattered. I’ve scrambled to pick up all of the shards around me – those pieces of myself now broken – but it’s as if I can’t remember how they all fit back together. In fact, I’m not sure they ever will again because there are simply pieces missing now.
At this point, approaching my 61st birthday and trying to contend with all of my health issues while desperately, achingly, missing being so physically active as I had always been, I often wonder what’s the point now? Once my youngest son…that beautiful, amazing, artistic young man…once he’s found his foothold in his life as an adult, that’s my work done, isn’t it? I can’t see that I’ll ever be able to afford to travel to my bucket-list places nor be able to roam around them if this neuropathy pain, back and knee are still disabling me (as they likely will do).
That leaves me asking myself, what exactly do I have to look forward to?
