My Mother

My mother is 89 years old! My father and his father both died at 73 years. I would like to make it to 74 just to set a bit higher standard for the men of the family. I don't know if I want to be able to celebrate my 89th birthday. Almost a year ago, my mother moved into what we would have once called an "old folks home." I'm pretty sure that term isn't considered politically correct now a days. She doesn't require a lot of special attention, but she needs more than the family is capable of providing should she live in one of her children's homes. In truth, at her age, she would probably drive us crazy even if she needed no special attention. She has advanced dementia now and won't ever be going anywhere else to live. Sara, my sisters and brothers-in-law, and I have been working on getting her condo ready to sell for the past few days. My knees won't allow me to do a lot of picking up and moving nor bending and stretching to do painting, so it fell on me to clean out her desk and safe and get her paperwork organized a bit better. I've stumbled across what she must have considered important documents and keepsakes. To me they all represent memories. I found a picture of my great grandmother surrounded by her children, including my grandmother. I found her birth certificate and her wedding certificate. I found vacation pictures, old letters - including some I had written to her, and newspaper clippings. As I sat here tonight, thumbing through these things, I felt like an interloper. I found myself smiling and having tears running down my cheeks at the same time and I don't know why. I think that it must be that her memories trigger memories of my own. God knows, trying to raise four children, with only six years between the oldest and the youngest, should qualify her for sainthood. She loved us, nurtured us, and did her best to have us be the best persons that we could be. I'm ashamed that I probably failed her miserably. I haven't heard her sing in years, but my memory is of her singing like an angel. When the six of us piled into the car to travel on vacation, she would often sing the old gospel hymns. I learned "The Old Rugged Cross" and "Swing Down, Sweet Chariot" and met Jesus through my mother. Today, she lies in bed or sits in a wheelchair mostly lost to the world around her. I have no idea what the mind does when one has dementia. My prayer is that it takes her to times and places when the world was a wonderful place to be. I hope that she gets to play with her three sisters as a young girl. I hope that she still takes pride in joining the Army when WWII broke out. I hope that she still smiles as she holds me and watches my father graduate from the University of Nebraska and that she knows he couldn't have done it without her. I hope that she still misses him when he gets called back to serve in Korea. I hope that she still cruises to the Caribbean with her sisters and their families and enjoys their home at Myrtle Beach. I hope that she swells with pride when all four of her children graduate from college. I hope that she still wonders at the joy of being a grandmother and then a great grandmother. I pray that all bad memories of all bad times are gone and that these, her last days, are a wonderful time for her. God is good and I pray that He will be especially good to my mother.