The Circle of Life

My family may have moved out of the house in which I grew up, the scene of some of our greatest transgressions, but we haven't completely relinquished our right to create a spectacle there.
I never suspected my mother's stay in assisted living would be uneventful, but when she skipped out of there in the rain two Sundays ago, distress set in for some people. Then I got a phone call from the current resident of our former house telling me that my mother was there, and since the police already were involved, I told the officer where she had landed. A short time later, according to another phone call, there were four police officers and two emergency medical technicians there. The police had visited that house before, but I don't think they had been there in more than 10 years. Nevertheless, just like the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh, I bet a cop car could make its own way to that address.
Partly as a result of that escapade, and partly because Mom's 30-day trial in assisted living will end in a few days, my siblings and I convened at the facility to confer with the staff. They think she should stay there, as do I, since the alternative of returning to live with my brother probably would precipitate her demise. The staff members said they can redirect her easily when her rancor surfaces, which brought to mind puppy training and the concept of providing the dog with an appropriate object on which to chew when she nips at the kids' heels. But the situation presents a dilemma: When a parent isn't thinking clearly some of the time, at what point do the adult children step in and try to impose what they consider the optimal solution on the parent?
When the children were young, the parents assumed responsibility for making decisions and ensuring health and safety. Even if said parent made numerous suspect decisions while rearing children, how much weight should the child lend to the parent's often-delusional perspective now? For kids to become parents to their parents appears unnatural. Two of my brothers refuse to make a call; they have abdicated. My other brother lacks the capacity to comprehend the gravity of my mother's condition and the potential ramifications for him. My sister insists that assisted living provides the most suitable environment for our mother.
An unjustifiable anger, therefore, has settled over my mother. She apparently believes her kids have poisoned their relationships with her by having her involuntarily incarcerated and through inept decision making. She still talks to us like we're retards. I guess old habits die hard. That might be one of the reasons she has lived with my brother for so may years, because she has her resident retard around. She always has known best and still knows best. I asked the assisted-living people what they would do when my brother showed up if my mother ends up staying there. I told them they had no chance to fix 50 years of dysfunction. They said she sure was right when she informed them that her son "Tom doesn't beat around the bush." But they "like that." They seemed to like it in the same way people like looking at cobras through the glass in the zoo, wondering about the adequacy of the containment.
Would she be happier dying at home, and does she have the right to make that decision?
She broke down crying in our gathering because she hasn't seen my children in months, her "little grandkids." Despite my latent and sometimes-not-so-latent resentment arising from growing up with my mother, the sight of her lamenting her estrangement from my children weighs heavily. I told her that my responsibility involved assuring my children's well-being. My older son came away from a previous conversation with her disturbed and has said he doesn't want to see her in this condition. My sister asked my mother what my son would think if his grandmother told him about the two men coming in her room, for she told us that in fact had transpired, and she chased them down the hallway while informing them that their presence wasn't welcome and that they should make themselves scarce, lest she call the police. During another incident, she brandished a flashlight to threaten an intruder. I won't sacrifice me children the way she sacrificed me. I have school pictures of myself from about third or fourth grade, and in them a greenish film covers my teeth. Peer pressure made me clean up, not parental guidance. On some days now, my own emotional weather vane already points south and conspires with the weight of circumstances to exact a toll and sometimes leave me about two seconds from tears.
Through my mind courses a continuous series of short movies. As a 3-year-old, I stand in my parents bedroom and watch as my father pushes my mother backwards over the footboard of the bed. One night, I huddle on the bed with my siblings in the master bedroom and listen to the doorbell, doorbell, doorbell. I hear my father screaming at my mother and coins clinking off the flagstone as he throws them. And my sister lies to me, but my precocity gives me a window through which I can see the truth. My brother on more than once occasion pumping as shotgun, threatening another brother and a combatant with whom a fight started in the street. My cousin riding me down the alley behind my grandparents' house on a bike, and my other cousin swinging a baseball bat over our heads as we passed, thoroughly convincing me that he would hit me. Some people. Sometimes I only get the audio, and I hear talk about how Dad pushed Mom down in the middle of the street and the police were there. Mom telling me how Dad told her she would never change as long as she had a hole in her ass. Rings true...not sure why she graced me with that nugget.
As kids, we hit lightning bugs, a.k.a. fireflies, with Whiffle bats as their intermittent flashes began to pierce dusk's veil and they hung suspended in momentary relief against the darkening backdrop. When we made contact, they would remain illuminated as they traced funereal arches in the night and settled on the grass. Or we captured them and committed them to live out their days confined in a jar, hobbled by the sticky residue of summer-heated mayonnaise. Oh, to be a lightning bug.