Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Living Old
As I work on the computer I watch different things via the internet. One show I entertain myself by are episodes of Frontline on PBS. The "Living Old" I just finished and why I watched it for a second time is puzzling to me. It is as if thinking hard enough and long enough I will change the outcome of the inevitable-growing old. The experience I had with Mom yesterday has got me suffering again with her aging. I am so sad that there is nothing I can do to fix this part of her life. I can't do this for her and it is not just a passing faze. I can't carrying it; I can't take her away from it; we can't throw it away; we can't ignore it; the weather won't make it better. It is the hard final agonizing lap; it is death coming; it is the deterioration, pain, isolation, boredom. Mom is going out slowly. And somedays I just hate it. Somedays I loose hope. My biggest fear is she has lost hope too.
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Recently, I was attending our annual mid summer dinner for the scandinavian society. Most of the members are 70+, and I honestly dreaded going, but I went because its important for our child to see her culture. The lady who host the dinner, lost her husband a few months prior. She went on with the dinner, frail and wearing some new "meds" from her recent doctor visit.
Concerned, I asked her, "who is helping you?" She said nobody really. I told her I wanted to check on her once a week, and asked what I could do.
She told me, "I need help finishing my fairy and gnome garden in the back of the house". I couldn't believe it. Out of all the things she needed to survive. And she is lucid. She said, I just go with the flow these days, and I love that idea of the garden. I want to be doing something, don't care how small it is. So here you have it, I will be digging some dirt and making hills and planting flowers for garden fairies and a few gnomes. I found myself wishing I had half the desire she had for living her now meager but functioning life. I think we all have to make plans for a garden so to speak, even if it seems to be a task that won't fix or help anything. Otherwise, we see what we are lacking. I keep telling myself this.
Thank you so much for this wonderful story. I will come back to this from time to time for a lift.
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