Connections

It's difficult to know where to begin, where to focus after several days of emotions that soar one moment only to crash the next. Grief is exhausting and once again I find myself weary. Weary and yet thankful for the friends who support us and love us and family who do the same. At this point in our journey I would not be whole without them.

There is subtlety that comes with having someone you love live in a Nursing Home, an unspoken language of averted eyes, nods of acknowledgement and sadness, always the sadness. This is the almost telepathic communication the families have with each other as we pass in the halls, the dayrooms or even in the parking lot. We do not have this connection with the staff. Theirs is different, their connection is with our loved one not with us. They know our person, my mother, in an intimate way that I no longer claim. They have not replaced me or my sister in my mother's life, they have simply taken up residence in her everydayness, her waking and sleeping, her meals and snacks, her jokes and smiles. They can do this because they haven't lost her.

My mother made a connection this weekend. A connection I have dreaded. The connection that she no longer lives in her home, her safe haven. Her world has dwindled, shrunk, evaporated into half a room with a bureau and a chair. She understood for the first time that she must stay at the Nursing Home now and no matter how many times she takes her photographs off the bulletin board and puts them in a bag, we will take them out and pin them back up for her. That is her view now.

My view is to smile at the staff, say hello to the others who live there and share my sadness with the other families.