Hey y’all (IDK where that came from),
It’s been a long day. Today is my mom’s 78th birthday. My youngest daughter and her daughter went with me to visit mom. It’s a short road trip, but a road trip nonetheless.
Mom lives in a nursing home. She isn’t physically well and gets around mostly via wheelchair. She’s still sharp-witted, but her short-term memory is G O N E. This makes for a difficult visit.
We know going in that we’ll talk about the same five or six stories over and over. Same stories we always hear when we see her. And if she has something new, we’ll hear it several times while there as well. She simply forgets she’s already said it. For instance, today we took her a lovely little spring robin sculpture (pictured). Last year we’d taken her a similar gold finch. Today, she kept mentioning that she has a gold finch (which we know, we gave it to her), but that she couldn’t find it. She wondered if someone had taken it. At one point she picked up the robin and said “is this for me?”, even though she’d opened the gift a short time earlier. It’s hard.
And it’s frightening.
You see, I already have short-term memory difficulty!! I think I’ve mentioned before (see what I did there? giggle!) how I can sing you almost any popular song from the 70’s and 80’s, or recite any TV theme song, but cannot seem to remember that my granddaughter told me several times that her turtle didn’t eat over the winter. OUCH! It’s happening. I’m becoming my mother in the most unpleasant ways.
Besides the fact that I see her in my mirror and hear her voice come out of my mouth daily!
Please allow me to say here to my children…”I’m sorry” and “thank you”. I’m sorry that you’ll have to deal with that as I get older. It’s tiring and very difficult. And thank you for continuing to come visit me anyway! I love you all so very much.
By the way, we found mom’s golf finch. It was hidden under some other things she’s collected in her tiny space.
OK y’all (there it is again!), let’s all THINK SPRING together this week. The robins have returned to the Midwest so we are ready! See you next time.
I think that we should reserve rooms in the same SUPER fun assisted living/senior housing communities.
We can tell each other new/old stories day after day and neither one of us will know that they’re new/old.
Wait.
What?
Love you.
YES! I’ve told hubby for years to make me a reservation at the local facility. He thinks I’m kidding, but not so much. ❤
How great is this? As I was leaving a comment about your memory. I totally typed in the wrong email address. I am so sorry SDRunyon… it was meant for dsrunyon!! I noticed it as it was leaving my screen. How cool am I?
I am sure it made her day to have you all there. Shelly
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 23:45:56 +0000 To: dsrunyon@hotmail.com
My Uncle and Aunt (mom’s brother) were there too. It was nice to see them.
This post brought back so many memories for me.
Thanks for stopping by! 🙂