Happy 81st BIrthday, Mom!
Today is my mom's 81st birthday. I have been calling her just about every day. She sounds so happy when she picks up the phone and hears my voice. It makes me cry. They are tears of joy, sorrow and confusion...tears that express my sadness at the realization that with each passing day, our journey through life brings us all one day closer to her death. And I don't deal with that very well.
She lost her dad and never recovered from that loss. She was six; and has told me the story of how she comforted her own mother in that loss. "Don't worry, it will be OK. I will take care of you." No six year old should become the parent, the caregiver, the consoler. She needed her father as my grandmother needed her husband. But he was gone...
The representatives of God, who was there always, did a poor job of representing Him and He was shut out. Their father, their papa was gone, and the idea or belief in a heavenly father never filled the open wound in their hearts. My mom is still mourning her father's death. And that also fills me with sadness.
Because I have been working in nursing homes with my new job, it also reminds me of the time my grandmother spent in such a home away from home when she herself and later family members were no longer able to take care of her. My mom always patiently and lovingly visited and cared for her, even as her condition from Alzheimer's deteriorated. My mother is scared to death that she will develop dementia and it frightens me also at times. But for now that fear is replaced by the joy I hear in her voice when I talk to her on the phone. Why is it so difficult to maintain that joy when she comes to visit?
And now I am working in a nursing home, where I see aging people in poor health. And lonely. For some reason Nicole and her friend Cassie decided today to make Thanksgiving cards for the nursing home patients I may interact with on Monday next week. They decided that spontaneously. It was one of those affirming moments to me as a mom that maybe a message of caring and kindness that I try to impart is actually getting through...I hope so.
So I hope my mom doesn't let her birthday get her down. 80 was a big mental hurdle for her. But I continue to applaud her independent (sometimes to a fault) life. And am so glad she had a great day.
She lost her dad and never recovered from that loss. She was six; and has told me the story of how she comforted her own mother in that loss. "Don't worry, it will be OK. I will take care of you." No six year old should become the parent, the caregiver, the consoler. She needed her father as my grandmother needed her husband. But he was gone...
The representatives of God, who was there always, did a poor job of representing Him and He was shut out. Their father, their papa was gone, and the idea or belief in a heavenly father never filled the open wound in their hearts. My mom is still mourning her father's death. And that also fills me with sadness.
Because I have been working in nursing homes with my new job, it also reminds me of the time my grandmother spent in such a home away from home when she herself and later family members were no longer able to take care of her. My mom always patiently and lovingly visited and cared for her, even as her condition from Alzheimer's deteriorated. My mother is scared to death that she will develop dementia and it frightens me also at times. But for now that fear is replaced by the joy I hear in her voice when I talk to her on the phone. Why is it so difficult to maintain that joy when she comes to visit?
And now I am working in a nursing home, where I see aging people in poor health. And lonely. For some reason Nicole and her friend Cassie decided today to make Thanksgiving cards for the nursing home patients I may interact with on Monday next week. They decided that spontaneously. It was one of those affirming moments to me as a mom that maybe a message of caring and kindness that I try to impart is actually getting through...I hope so.
So I hope my mom doesn't let her birthday get her down. 80 was a big mental hurdle for her. But I continue to applaud her independent (sometimes to a fault) life. And am so glad she had a great day.
Labels: 81st birthday, message of love, Mothers and Birthdays, nursing homes
posted by www.kathypride.com at
10:02 PM
2 Comments:
Yay Nicole. Perhaps you need to make a list of the good things...they are so hard to remember when we are feeling negatively...even if you make it secretly for Nicole, and give it to her on a blue day.
I used to really get on myself for starting projects and never finishing them. So I decided to write them down, and by the end of the year, though there were a few projects still waiting to be finished, I had a huge list of things I HAD finished. It did me a world of good to see that on paper (well, index cards, actually) because all I would remember would be the unfinished one. It affirmed to me that what I believed about myself, "You never finish anything!" is not true, and I had the file to prove it!!
Sometimes we need hard evidence to counteract the negativity of the mind (or the darts of the enemy, if you think of it that way).
I like that idea...both for myself and Nicole, actually for any of us who have a tendency to get down and allow that negative self talk to infiltrate...
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