While streaming Facebook, I come across this beautiful writing.
I have many thoughts surrounding this paragraph.
The one more prominent is that
I miss my Momma.
Like I miss her lots, not in the way that it makes me want
to cry or anything, more a melancholy type feeling.
As I read the paragraph, I realized that although
I wanted to always live by those words, the fact
is I am human and there were times I lost my patience with her.
Mostly before I realized dementia was settling in to take
the Momma I knew away from us.
When she forgot things, when she misplaced money,
when she lived with us and it was a struggle sometimes
when raising my own children and she was there to
go against what we had decided was best for the kids.
I was thankful that the years she lived with us,
my two kiddo's always had someone home waiting for them.
She not only waited for them, but she had a snack ready
and supper cooked. My children have been blessed
with so many good memories of my Momma, their Mommee.
I hope the times I lost my patience with her are not
what they remember because I really wanted to be so kind to her.
When we moved to Thibodaux, she decided not to come with us.
Instead, rented herself a small studio apartment on the bayou.
I knew we would miss her but I also knew that what was
best for my family was for us to leave the bayou.
She was healthy and happy and clear minded on the days
she moved into her apartment.
When I would go spend the night with her, we always ended
with reading and talking about something we had read.
She hid the beginning of her dementia well,
because I didn't see her every day, I didn't see
the change in her behavior, I would sometimes still
loose my patience as she kept asking same questions all the time.
Then, one day everything changed for me.
I had given her an awesome book to read.
She began it the same day I gave it to her.
The next morning I was happy to see her bookmark a few
pages into the book.
I asked her how she liked it.
"Oh its so good, I can't put it down"
then the next time I visited.......
the bookmark remained in the same place.
I questioned her about it and she said,
Oh I am reading it again.
That day I realized she could no longer remember what she read.
She could still read, just could not retain.
Each time I visited either at her apartment or at St. Joseph Manor
once she moved, the same book remained on her nightstand.
the bookmark never left page 10.
I began to see her as more like a child to me and just like
that my impatience with her was gone.
Yes, I still would get irritated sometimes but I kept it to
myself making sure she would never see or feel like a burden to me.
Although she died at 92, many years after I removed
the book from her nightstand because it hurt me each time
I saw the bookmark remain on page 10,
I treated her like a child of mine.
I lost my Mother, the caregiver, the unconditional lover of us all,
long before she took her last breath.
Love your parents as the natural order of life will
have you burying your parents one day, its the way
this life is intended to be.
Right now just love them.
You will miss them when they are gone.
(look at the hand in the clouds)
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