A Saturday visit...

I lean down to kiss Mother as I put my arm around her bony, sharp shoulders for a hug.  Her face lights up as she recognizes me and reaches for my hand to squeeze it with love. Her long tapered fingers are like the gnarled roots of an old tree and her hand is often cold.  No reflection on the warmth in her heart but just poor circulation from old age.

 Now in a wheelchair, it’s tricky to give her a big hug that I know she needs.  I feel clumsy and awkward bending over this tiny frail woman and, for the hundredth time, I think about the need we all have to be physically held and comforted.  There is no one left to give her that kind of physical reassurance but Art and me.

My daily visits to the Pisgah Manor nursing home have been ongoing now for six weeks and have become a pattern that frame my days. Mother sits in her wheel chair either listening to a book on tape, or resting with eyes closed. I think about how we have kept a wheel chair out of her life until the stroke happened.  Despite her scoliosis, back pain, and increasing frailty, the walker was her lifeline to getting around safely.  No longer…  

It is difficult to know if succumbing to the wheel chair is harder for me to accept than it is for her.  After all, she has always done what is necessary without complaint.  It is something I have watched in awe simply because it is not a character trait in me. She has become my role model for moving gracefully through old age despite the undeserved setbacks with health issues, death of my father and her closest friends. 

            I think about the humorous story Mother related a few years ago that happened when she was child.  She loves to reminisce and has enriched us all with so many tales of her growing up.

            My mother didn’t often cook but occasionally on a Saturday or Sunday she would make pancakes for breakfast.  I must have been very small – perhaps 3 ½ or 4 years old.  We never had a high chair for me in the kitchen but a small table low to the ground with a child-sized chair.  I can remember vividly sitting at this table watching Mother make pancakes.  Soon, she was to serve me one but upon turning it saw that the side was very dark and burned.  She said to me, “You can’t eat this, it’s burned.”  I answered, “That’s OK.  Just turn it over and it will be fine.”

            Mother told me the family laughed about this and teased her for years.  But as a very little girl, she seemed to know to think positive,  don't complain, make the best of what comes your way, and don't do anything to upset someone you love.  That is still my mother at 94.

            When it’s time to leave the nursing home, I give her another kiss and awkward hug.  She turns her head with a sweet smile and says to me, “Thanks, honey, for coming.”  I tell her I will be back tomorrow.