Mom has always been busy doing things with her hands. What her mind can conceive, she has always believed she could do. And that is a trait that she has passed on that has often gotten me into trouble. Most recently, of course, she has been busily stitching—by hand—her white Wal-Mart pants to remake them […]
Mom has always been an avid reader. It’s where I learned my love of books, I guess. As I mentioned previously, she has the entire set of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series. She threatened to throw them out, sell them off, get rid of them, but since I haven’t acted to carry out her mission, […]
I thought, surely, that the outing to Houston with all its trauma (okay, my trauma, not hers), the walking, the serenading, the excitement would be enough to last at least the rest of the week. But when I offered her an opportunity to attend a Holiday Open House put on by my delightful Mary Kay […]
It is amazing what perseverance and determination will do. Yesterday morning I went out to feed Mom and found her showered and dressed in her sweats, her white hair (cut short by Sister Sara) washed and askew, sticking up in every direction. She couldn’t find her comb, but she wanted to go out, somewhere, anywhere. […]
I returned home to find Mom, still in her jammies at 5 in the afternoon, happily drinking a glass of caregiver Pauline’s wine and eating a bowl of ice cream. Checking the refrigerator, it seems she had reheated the bowl of spaghetti successfully for supper. Checking the sink, she had made herself a bowl of […]
Our elderly seem to have trouble with food – whether choosing what to eat or eating at all. Mom has started worrying about getting fat. As a hospice nurse friend told me, getting fat is not something Mom needs to worry about at 96 years of age. Eating all that toasted Italian bread lathered in […]
“Love you.” “Yeah, love you, too.” I said it as I left Mom yesterday. I said it as I do every day, without thought, perhaps without meaning, maybe even without real feeling. Was it guilt and resentment and anger, rather than love? What is love and why am I having such a hard […]
She calls it the “little red card”. It works in lieu of cash. No worrying about getting money from the bank anymore. No carrying her entire clumsy purse into the grocery store anymore. No concerns about paying us back for gas to take her to Conroe anymore. Just the card. An amazing and magical concept. […]
It’s not that we don’t trust her to feed or care for herself. As Mom told my cousin in a phone conversation the other day with considerable vehemence, “I’ve been feeding myself for 96 years! I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself!” True, she has and she is, but how do you tell someone […]
In the Hispanic culture, both in Latin America and throughout the U.S. Southwest, death is celebrated on November 2 with magnificent altars as a way of remembering and honoring our deceased loved ones. Many years ago our dear friends from Mexico, the Gottfrieds, created one in honor of the passing of their father. I remember […]