Foreshadowing
My Mom just had her 82nd birthday. She didn't get to celebrate the 80th because on that day my Dad's pacemaker battery finally bit the dust. It was a frantic rush to the emergency room with my Dad's pacemaker laying quietly in his chest, unable to perform it's function of keeping my Dad's heart beating regularly. It all worked out fine and my
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Profound words. I think it is something that sticks in the front of our minds when our children are little and we are trying to remember we love them even when they do the dumbest, craziest things. When our children get older and we are dealing with them as adults and when we are dealing with our parents as aging adults, I think it is something that we have to work harder to remember. The other thing that is hard is that it is not all about us. It is about giving and receiving love for the benefit of people other than us. I think some of us do better at becoming mature adults and learning we are not the center of the universe, but I think there are some people who never learn that.
I had a discussion with my sister-in-law D the other day. I asked how her mother-in-law was doing. She said that it is so hard to go visit her because she often doesn't even recognize D and when she does she asks the same questions so it is as if you had never been before. D said she often leaves wondering why she bothers, especially when she goes by herself. She said when she goes with her husband she knows that she is there to support him because he needs to visit his mother and hope that she is doing better, so those times she goes for him, not for her and not for her m-i-l. I remember my mother visiting her mother and being so frustrated and sometimes taking it personally. You could almost hear her thinking, if I were my sister J you wouldn't act this way. In her brain she knew that was not true, but in her heart there was just so much pain at losing her mother. At least her father was right across the hall and would be very glad to see her, I know there were times that they would cry together over the loss of the woman that no longer inhabited the body they both saw across the hall. "Loving through the anger and hurt" can take many different shapes at different times in our lives. We just need to remember that the parent that seems so different cared for us when we weren't able to communicate our wants and needs. Maybe it is all part of the circle of life and it is our turn now to give love no matter what even though we don't receive love in return. I think that Dad would want us to care and worry about Mom the way he did, like Grandpa did for Grandma. I think part of that is helping Mom live rather than just exist, however we figure that to be.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I really appreciate your insight.
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