Emotion vs. Intellect = Anxiety

I’m having a r-e-a-l-l-y difficult time right now as my intellect cedes ground to my emotional (read small child) side. Mom’s conviction of her impending return to the Island is intensely challenging. She is my mother, after all. A mother possessing a most forceful, if not fierce, personality my entire experience of her. It’s almost like I cower and worry when away from her as a result for standing tall against the gales of her wishes when with her, if that makes sense… When my paranoia kicks in, and I worry about mom sweet talking a fellow (Independent Living) resident into taking her back to the Island, I have a number of self-soothing and calming phrases that my intellect (or inner psychologist) talks me off the ledge with, a few of which are:

• Mom can’t sequence enough to figure out the steps it would take to return to the Island on her own, particularly making a ferry reservation.
• She wouldn’t abandon the cat.
• The staff would be alert to mom, and whomever, walking out the door (concierge at the front door) with mom’s clothes stuffed into 35 plastic grocery bags. Her one suitcase is at our house. As you know, I’ve been seeding her apartment with additional clothing over the last 18 months.
• My daughter(s), husband, and I are what triggers mom, in person and on the phone. In the absence of triggers she has, for the moment, stopped talking about ‘going home’ to staff.
• Mom stepped over the line from independence to needing care long, long before the second car crash, which actually rocketed her where she desperately needed to be. While she can’t really understand this, I have medical reports and chart notes from four different doctors who all agree on her diagnosis.
• If she were to ‘escape,’ I’d call:
• Adult Protective Services, and have a Silver Alert issued across the state,
• Law enforcement across every county between her AL community and the Island, 
• Her docs here and there, 
• The state licensing department to let them know she’s gonna try to buy a car, 
• Her insurance agent for the same reason (she is uninsurable)…

• On her own, mom is a danger to herself. Not to mention,
• She would be medication-less should she actually achieve an exit, or an ‘elope-ment,’ as it’s called in the industry.