Time and Memories With My Mom

My precious mom is here with Ron and me. What a glorious gift of time I have with her. Life is at that moment for my mom that she so dreaded. Her memories have faded and her legs are wobbly enough to need support from a cane and a daughter. The beauty of this season is that mom isn’t focused on what she has lost but is grateful for the little things. Her sense of humor is still in tact and often throughout the day she threatens to throw something at me for teasing her. No longer are her favorite foods her favorite foods. Like her memories, her tastes have faded. She still likes to read but can read the same words over and over now. Her love for pictures is still here but without her memories she is more silent about who and when her photos were taken. Mostly, Mom is content to look out the window at the park and narrate for me all the people who are playing in the snow or walking along with their dogs. She still enjoys Blue Bloods and comments on what a nice family they are as they sit at family dinner. Yesterday we took her to church and she laughed at Pastor Shawn’s stories and commented over and over what a beautiful voice Moises had as he sung with passion about Jesus.

 The greatest gift I could be given is this time with my best friend, my Mom. I dance the tinkle dance for her when we go in the bathroom because she won’t let me do the pee pee dance. I am still not allowed to say pee or fart that has not changed. She brings out my dad in me and I love that I am so like him. He could always make her laugh and he gifted me with the same silly, random spirit that charms my mom.

Mom has had a lot of loss in her life but she faced every heartbreak with a positive outlook. She lived half her life without my dad and never remarried. When she had a mastectomy she turned to me and said she was going in to lose five pounds, what was I going to do in the next hour. Losing her own mom to Alzheimer’s was so hard because just like she is my best friend, her mom was her best friend.

She is still the one to say YES whenever we ask if she wants to go somewhere or do something. Don’t even think about going without her. She may need help getting her shoes on but she will not be staying home. Mom and I have made many cross country trips that I treasure my own memories of now. When Natalie needed to be in Tennessee in four days, Mom hopped in her car in Arizona and picked us up in New Mexico with Elissa in her car seat. We had a fabulous trip speeding across the country looking at all the grass and trees that are definitely not the Southwest. We took our time coming home and taught Lis to swim at the hotel pools we stayed at each night. Mom and I both love swimming so that is a particularly fond memory for me. My hope is to take one more trip with her while she narrates what is going by out the window. She will tell me she wouldn’t want to live there to every place we go through. Whether it is downtown San Francisco’s too crazy traffic of the farms of northern California where the wife’s have to work too hard, Mom is happy she lives where she lives and not the places we are driving past. The next trip will be in our rv rather than in and out of hotels. That way Mom and I can be in our own little traveling cocoon with our same beds and bathroom every night. We can stop and nap when we want and order our groceries online and have those helpful employees bring them right to our motorhome. Only God knows if that is going to be possible. What is possible is our spending the next few months together laughing and enjoying just being together. For this time I am grateful.

In Him,
Joyful
1-7-19