Mother’s Day is two months away—too long to wait to share my thoughts about my mom. Her time is short, at least that’s what hospice tells us. But, to be honest, hospice has been giving her ‘less than six months’ for over a year now. She may well make it to Mother’s Day this year, next year and the year after. For most of my life, she’s battled one ailment after another, always expecting each year to be her last and now, after eighty-seven health challenged years, these may truly be her final days.
I wish she could read the words I have been saving for over a year. Not only are her eyes too clouded with disease to see the page, her dementia precludes her from understanding the simplest thought. Perhaps I should have said this all before, but it was probably a conscious decision on my part to wait until she couldn’t respond. This way I don’t have to worry about whether she understands or accepts me—I get to say what I feel.
Mom 30 years ago
Anyone who knows me well, probably expects me to pass judgement and criticize the woman who pushed my buttons from my late teenage years on. We were never on the same wavelength and after years of trying to explain myself and justify who I was, it has come to an end. We have agreed to disagree, not by any verbal contract, but by just giving up. And, maybe that’s a good thing. I guess I probably pushed her buttons, too.
Mom had a rough beginning—she was placed in an orphanage at eighteen months of age. She has no recollection of those days, including her birth parents or her subsequent adoption by my grandparents, but I’m sure they left a scar. Could that be the reason she has always looked at life with a critical eye? Her criticism and judgement still stings at times, but what hurts more is the fact that I sometimes find those traits creeping into my personality. She taught me to look for the flaws in those around me and here I am doing it again. Sorry, Mom, I want to blame you, but I’m a big girl now and it is time I choose a different path. I’d like to think I have been traveling the positive path for a while now, but that negative thing creeps in there once in a while.