My Patience Jar Runneth Empty

I am so incredibly busy at work these days that it seems that every thing else in my world has taken a back seat temporarily. I know- NOT good. We have a full weekend of stuff planned too starting off tomorrow evening... I suppose no rest for the weary really applies here! And on top of all of that, the dreaded is happening right before my very eyes... yes, my grandmother seems to be teetering these days on the fine edge of reverting back to her old ways. It has been over five months since we moved her into assisted living and here in the past three or so weeks she has been showing clear signs of her old behavior from the first couple of months... and it feels awful! I started noticing it around the second week in May and it sort of peaked on Memorial Day morning. I was brushing my teeth after another wonderful morning of getting to sleep in until 9:00am (Yeah!) when I heard the cell phone ringing. I called her back noticing that I had 2 missed calls from her earlier in the morning (I am thinking to myself... why is she calling me early on a holiday?).. She answers and her words are just LACED with sarcasm and sassiness. I do not ask what is bugging her at first... it just eventually erupts in the conversation... she is sobbing so hard I can not understand a single word she is saying... something about hating this place and I want to see my friends and I have no way to go anywhere...I cannot drive... I want to go to my house... it all comes out in loud phrases... I am speechless as I ponder to myself- how can this be happening AGAIN? I wind up confessing that I just do not know what we are going to do now at this point... she knows deep down that she will never be able to go home on her own. By the end of the call she is calm and I am mentally exhausted. I do some investigating the next day... turns out that a 3-day long holiday weekend with absolutely NO activity happening at the facility was just too lax for her and there is also a culprit to blame for re-embedding the seed of flight in her mind. Yes, the loud-talking resident two doors down from her has been ranting for days to any one who will listen about leaving and going to a place of her own and how her children have robbed her blind and she is abandoned and poor now... yada, yada, yada... and my grandmother chooses to listen to that crap and somehow mimicks it in her own mind. Thanks a lot old loud lady with the walker! You have just turned my life back to the hell it was in the first 3 months of this journey as a Caregiver. Lord, please grant me patience...