exhaustion and revelations

What is today? only Wednesday, I'm exhausted. Today being the 12th of August, is my oldest daughter's birthday. She turns 30 today, is facing jail time for writing checks, which are surfacing, and that which she and hubby did together, but she will go down for it. Hubby is already on 5 years probation due to recent drug offense. Both of them have substance abuse problems, and more than likely both will do some jail time.

She informed me today that she might not live to see another birthday; not necessarily because of her drug addiction and liver issues, but because the doctor believed she had cervical cancer and that it had spread. I only got bits and pieces of information about this. She told me that she went to have an ultrasound and there were cysts, one as a big as a silver dollar. She was told back in March that her pap smear was abnormal and she was supposed to follow up carefully for more testing, but her and hubby's interests were not in their health, but that of fulfilling their drug habits.

As a parent, when your grown kids can't seem to get their lives in order it is heartwrenching, you sometimes feel guilt, you judge them, you alternate between loathing and loving them, try to give them advice, give them tough love, but none of it really matters; they make their own choices regardless of how you raised them.

She already has hepatitis C and now this, if in fact it is true and one can believe what she tells you. Both him and her have been known to a few stories and it is not above them to do so. I don't know what to think. It's hard to be sympathetic after the havoc they have both reeked upon the family. Her hubby almost died of a drug mixing just two years ago, but he still abuses. They expect everybody else to bail them out, not only financially, but emotionally. They have become quite the Bonnie & Clyde too, and my nickname for the two of them are "The King and Queen of Thieves." They are not above stealing from their own family. It's so disheartening.

Did I mention they have two kids? My granddaughter BellaRose, at 7, is not my daughter's husband's biological child, but Wyatt is theirs together at 3 years old. Little Queenie (BellaRose) has taken care of Wyatt under the worst of circumstances when they were shooting up heroin a few years back. She has really been through it, and she is so smart and beautiful, and I hate seeing her family life in such upheaval. Kids don't deserve that.

This news comes on the heels of news back in the Spring that my son had the early stages of esophageal cancer; a lesion in his lower esophagus caused by reflux. He tells me it was caught early and after a course of chemo orally he is going to be fine; at least that is what he tells me. This kid was never a worry and he wouldn't want me to worry about him. He will be 35 his birthday this month.

August is one of those bittersweet months for me; a time of joy and sadness. Both my grown children were born in August; my father died in August, my first husband, John died in August, and my brother died at 15 years old in August 1974, on the day we buried him my son came into this world. I don't know why I would be surprised to receive bad news in the month of August.

God only knows what will happen next.