The farther my mother slips into the past, the more I look into the future and while I long for a return to my normal life with my husband I know that when that happens she will no longer live in her home. Her home of more than 40 years. The home she shared with my father. The one place she is comfortable in now that her world has become fragile, unreliable. My loyalties are divided and as much as my husband is understanding of the need for me to be away from him and from our home, we miss each other. We miss our life, much like my mother must miss hers.
Today she focused on her photographs. I marvel at the fact that she has almost all of her pictures in albums. Hundreds of them in dozens of albums. It doesn't matter that you go from her childhood to my grandchildren with the flip of a page, at least they are in albums. I never know which picture will capture her attention, Walter spiking the punch at an Anniversary party ("and he didn't drink"), Barbara and Thelma at the piano ("something was funny") or her parents ("wasn't my father handsome?"). Today it was my son ("wasn't he cute?"). I cannot look at the picture again. His smile reaching out from the page, a smile I haven't seen in a while now, now that he's chosen to to live his life without us. Chosen to separate from us. Her gift to me is that she doesn't ask where he is, how he is, why he is not here when all her other grandchildren and great grandchildren share her days. Somehow, on some level she must know not to ask, not to touch that pain. I don't know what I would say if she did ask, how to explain to her what I don't understand myself.
Today is filled with my attempts to hold on to people and times that are unable to be held. People move in their lives, at their own pace. A pace I am out of step with, either just ahead or just behind. A look forward, I lose. A look back, I've lost. If I had time I would simply stop looking and find my own pace, my own timing. But I don't have time, not today. Today I have my mother's time and with that time we look to the past, a past that is filled with people and places and events and joy and tears and love. It could be alot worse.
1 comment:
I so totally agree! As I was reading your post, I thought about a poem I read many many years ago by Zelenn-Deis....I couldn't remember all the words, but enough of them to find it on the internet... It's called "Live Your Creed"
I'd Rather see a sermon,
Than to hear one any day,
I'd rather one walk with me,
Than just to show the way,
The eye is a better pupil,
And more willing than the ear,
Advice may be misleading,
But examples are always clear,
And the very best of leaders,
Are the ones who LIVE THEIR CREED,
For to see good put into action,
is what everybody needs,
I can so learn to do it,
If you let me see it done,
I can watch your hands in motion,
But your tongue to fast may run,
And the lectures you deliver,
May be very fine and true,
but I'd rather get my lesson,
By observing what you do,
For I may misunderstand you,
and the fine advice you give,
But theres no misunderstanding,
How you act and how you live
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