Wishing every mother and/or grandmother who reads this blog post a very Happy Mother’s Day.
My mother, who turns 92 in June (exactly one week after my birthday), has been slowly deteriorating.
She has been housebound for several years. With my brother wheelchair bound and me a day’s drive away, we had a caregiver who went to her place twice a day to ensure she ate, got her medication and ensured her physical needs were met. The rest of the time she was all alone. And that bothered me.
But mentally? She has her good days and her bad days. Some days I’d call, and she didn’t recognize my voice. Other days, she was jovial. And that was cause for celebration.
But this year has been a particularly tough year for me… and my brother. My mother had to be hospitalized and then taken to long-term care. And while my brother fought this, he realized based on her lack of interest in using her walker and her continued physical frailty, she needed 24/7 care that neither of us could give her.
The heartbreak of this ordeal has been to clear out decades of stuff from her home. It’s been daunting, and it’s not done yet. While I was going through her garage and donating the vast majority of stuff in there, It struck me that we are born with nothing and we die with nothing. It’s all just “stuff”. Stuff that we don’t need or want.
I
’ve come to terms with my mother’s frailty and the fact that it may not be long before she’s not with us, but rejoice because we still have her… even if it’s just for a little while longer.
If you still have your mother in pristine health, rejoice and spend time with her. If you don’t, search your memory banks for the sweet times you spent with her and relive them in your heart and mind and know you were blessed to have her.
So Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. You are loved.
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