full speed ahead

I feel like I have spent the last eleven months climbing up the highest mountain without the appropriate equipment. Tied to me, was my mother. I was pulling her along day after day hoping to save her. We finally reached the peak. We made it. We arrived. With most of our bags intact.

We have begun the descent into the new normalcy; it’s always easier as you go downhill, although you don’t have to pedal hard, you still have to apply the brakes. I am scurrying around for hours each day, shopping, delivering, and now making two other people happy and comfortable. The aide has to be fed so setting her up was a three-day project. Now she needs a TB shot. She has an appointment in September for a woman’s check-up–in Florida. How do we work all these details out?

My mother now refers to me as HER mother and says the roles have been reversed. They surely have.

But-

It is all worth it. She is eating and loving the food. In no time she has a table of friends with whom to dine. She goes to activities. Yesterday was an oldies concert, today it was exercising in the morning. Friday evening there will be a Hawaiian party after dinner on the roof. Honestly, I thought she was done with socializing…waiting to die. After months of eating all her meals in her apartment and refusing to go out, she is all over the place. Over and over I had so many doubts when the staff told me that she would do this, that,or the other, “yeah, right she’ll never go in that bathtub, eat downstairs, go to activities.”

As she got ready to go to dinner this evening, she had to decide what to eat from the huge menu. “Well, I already had a great hamburger for lunch so I can’t have meat again,” she said.

“Who says?” I asked. “You are eighty-three pounds, and ninety-five years old, you can eat anything you please! Have the corned beef if you want it, you need the B vitamins. Enjoy yourself!”

“I want to go to all the activities! I am just a butterfly!” she said.

I guess you can’t stay in a chrysalis in New York City.

This series is linked: see “continued here.” Also, below the line there will be links for the previous post and the next.

The series starts here

continued here