I guess it bears telling. Three hundred years ago, but really just shy of three years, the phone rang. It was my parents neighbor or in Florida and she was concerned about them. So off I went early the next morning, down to Florida with my brother`s so I thought girlfriend but she’s a whole different story for a whole different blog. We arrived and were picked up at the airport by a resident in my folks community. We knocked on their door unannounced and life as I knew it was done.
It’s not funny yet funny that I can pinpoint the very moment my life, and theirs changed. I knew in that tiny moment of time, as my Dad answered what he thought was a friend stopping over for a chat, that they would be going home with me. Home to NY. I just didn’t know how,when or why.
They did come home with me, Mom by air flight that led to this nursing home. Dad in a box at my feet in a van filled with as much of their belongings as I could fit in.
By noon of that first day I had both parents in the emergency room of their local hospital. Soon Dad was moved to ICU with double pneumonia and Mom to another wing with a severe UTI. She never saw him again. Dad died four long days later. I signed the paperwork disconnecting his support and sat with him as he died. The monster of my childhood was gone and before he lost consciousness I promised I would become my Mother’s keeper. And so I am. My other monster is now my elderly child who looks to me for the simple things I can do and the impossible I cannot. These people who were so terrible had to be forgiven. I had to let go of anger and learn compassion. They could not change, I had to.
She is near me, I am here everyday. I reassure, cajole, comfort, defend, and tend to her. I clothe her, feed her, dry her tears and when she asks me over and over ”Tia, what am I going to do, what will happen to me”, I tell her “I don’t know Mom but we are going to get through it together. I’m not going to let you face it alone”
I am indeed my Mother’s keeper, I am her daughter in spite of our past and no matter the future.
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