This Is The Day

Thanksgiving is over. The holiday that brings families together was a rough one for me this year. My sister and I worried endlessly about how we would celebrate this day with our mother. We talked it over and over and over and when our plan was finally made we continued to worry that we still had not managed to carve out enough time for our mother, time to be with her, time to share our thankfulness with her. (A trip to either of our houses was out of the question since simply moving her room from one side of the hall to the other set her back weeks!) At the end of the day, with our worry behind us and hours of time spent at the Nursing Home, our celebrations with our families orchestrated around our time with her, my mother looked up from her slice of pumpkin pie and wished me a Happy Easter.

My tears mix easily with laughter these days and they arrive often unannounced and with a rapidity that sometimes alarms me. This afternoon as I sat between my mother and my husband and listened to a choir sing in the gathering hall of the Nursing Home I thought of all I had to do at home and all I had to face in the coming weeks. I thought the choir was off key and the songs poor choices and then I looked at my mother. Her smile was genuine, her pleasure in this music apparent with her foot tapping and her hands brought together in soundless claps and all I have to do for the weeks ahead vanished and I let the tears fall and sang along with her...."This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.....This is the day that the Lord has made!" There are some things about dementia that aren't that bad.