Casting troubles upon the water.

WARNING - Unlike most of my posts, this one is a serious downer. Please, please, PLEASE do not read this if a sad situation that is without remedy will make your day worse.

In my religion, there is a service where one walks down to a running body of water such as a lake or a stream, and symbolically cast one's sins from the previous year into the water, to be carried away before the start of the new year. I consider this message board to be a form of that practice-- a place where I can cast my troubles into the vast void that is the internet, and walk away from the computer with a lighter burden.

I have a sister who lives half way across the country. She is 12 years older than me. Her husband of 27 years died in December of 2010. They did not have children. She has faced and survived several very serious health issues in the past two years (diabetes, cancer, heart, etc.). She is somewhere in the middle of a downward health spiral that, whether in weeks, months, or years is likely to leave her unable to care for herself or dead. That is simply the reality of her multiple health problems.

I have offered to move her to live closer to where I am so that we (my wife and I) can take care of her. She refused, wanting to stay in her own neighborhood in her own state with her own doctors. I understand all that. I understand that she is terrified. I understand that she feels alone. I understand that she is in chronic and sometimes severe pain. I wish I could make things better for her, and I have both done and tried to do several things to help her quality of life. But I am not a physician. I can't fix what is wrong with her.

Here's the part that troubles me. When she gets to feeling particularly angry, afraid, sick or alone, she sometimes lashes out at me in anger that is misdirected at me. An example. She has pulmonary issues. Her doctors told her that exercising in a controlled, monitored environment instead of sitting sedentary in her house would be good for her physically. She found a pulmonary exercise support group affiliated with a local hospital in her area. She loved visiting with the patients and therapists there and enjoyed working out there to the extent she could. But she stopped going because it cost money. I told her I would pay for it. She said she'd think about it. In two more telephone conversations, I reminded her of the fact that her physicians said that the exercise would help her. Her response was, "You don't know what I'm going through. I'm older than you and I am in worse physical condition than you are. In all the years you let yourself get so fat, I didn't push you to exercise or stop eating so badly once. Why are you constantly on me about exercising?"

I told her it was because even though *I* might not be as old as her or in as bad of health as her, her own physicians strongly recommended that she do what I was offering to pay for because it would help her. She told me that she didn't need me to be pressuring her.

This sort of thing has happened on several occasions, such as her need to have a medical power of attorney, to redo her will, to make arrangements (both temporary during times of illness and permanent in case she passes) for her three cats. And on each occasion, she lashes out and accuses me for "pushing her."

I wish I could drop everything and be there to help her, but I have a law practice and a family of my own to take care of. I wish I could put on invisible ear plugs and not hear or take to heart the hurtful things that she says out of pain, fear, terror or alone-ness. Instead, periodically, I tell her that I just can't take her attacks and can't talk to her right then because I am too angry and don't want to say something we would both regret. And that starts periods of hours, days or even weeks where we don't talk at all. It's not that I wouldn't talk to her. It's just that I have no desire to pick up the phone and try to be helpful only to end up verbally assaulted. Those instances are very, very disruptive to me, since I am trying very hard to surround myself with positive messages, positive energy and positive people to help me with my weight situation.

I know that there is no magic answer to make this situation right. I just know that right now, I am hurting. But instead of wallowing in ice cream and pizza, or put myself into an anxiety attack or bout of rage, I will simply get dressed, put on my walking shoes, and dissapate the well of hurt that I know can't be fixed.

Thank you for listening. I'm sorry to be a drag on your day.