Transitions

We are a family in transition. For each of us there are challenges, joys, sorrows, beginnings and endings and we see in all of us the past, present and future. As my mother weakens in her hospital bed my grand-nephew incubates in my niece, my grandaughter leaves her crib and sleeps in a bed, my grandson's first loose tooth places him squarely in the midst of the 'big boys'. Our daughter Michelle counts down to her wedding (12 days!) while our nephew and his new wife arrive home from their honeymoon. My sister's granddaughter crawls to the coffee table and stands, her smile reflected in the eyes of her parents. The sweet joys of life.

There are more changes, shifts in our lives and the lives of those around us, although none more profound than my mother's. None that equal her advance from the hospital to the nursing home. Not just any nursing home, the one where my career began, the one whose halls and rooms I know so well. The one where I learned to bathe, position, and feed those who lived there. The one where I learned to care.

My sister and I have been told by so many of you that we should take heart in how much we cared for our mother, that we've done more than could have been expected of us and we should not feel guilty. In my head I know this is true. It's my heart I'm having trouble with at the moment. It's hard to forgive the frustration and even outright anger I felt during some of my time with her even though I knew at the time that one day I would miss being at her house with her. That day is here already. That day was today. Today I told my mother she wasn't going home. She said she didn't like that, but that was all she said.

I've prayed for a lot of things in my life, strength, tolerance, peace, money (I know...I feel guilty about that one), mended relationships with family and good health. I've prayed for my family and my friends, for healthy babies and happy marriages. I've prayed for safe airline flights, good decisions and happiness and all the things most of us ask God to help us with. Big things and little things, majors and minors. Today my prayer is for time. Time for transitions. Not years, not even months. Simply days. Enough days so that when Michelle walks down the aisle to join Jay at the altar where my mother and father were married, the altar where my husband and I and my sister and brother-in-law were married, that my mother is there to share that moment with us. That she sees the third generation of our family married in her church, our church.

As most of us do when we grieve I have become acutely aware of the transitions in our lives and have attached deeper meaning to everyday occurrences. The lyrics of a song, the clouds around the moon, even the date on the calendar can evoke tears and a sense that life is profound. Profound when it is new, profound when it is old and profound in all the transitions that take us from one to the other.