This past year has been a terribly busy roller coaster of moving my Mom to a retirement home and trying to negotiate a whole new stage of life. It is compromising and working with a sibling whether you want to or not. Planning financially and making gut-wrenching life choice and health care decisions for my parent. It is forgetting to breathe. It is being cross-eyed exhausted from travel back and forth to a different city. It is busier than ever could have been predicted. It is me, now being the hostess of every family dinner/ holiday celebration because I moved my mother to the city where I live. (And I am no Martha Stewart hostess)
It is, oh cover your ears for this, ducking and hiding when at 8 a.m. on Sunday you find your Mom at the front door. It is teaching your kids words like Alzheimer’s and dementia and reminding them we still love the people we love even when they change. It is hearing them say: I want grandma the way she was before. It is heartbreaking, dizzying, rarely wordless, but occasionally rewarding. It is swearing often out loud because you lose your filter when you haven’t slept or eaten in days. It is calling your MPP giving them a crash course in what is wrong with the health care system. It is suddenly giving a shit about seniors issues. It is having an epic meltdown on the phone by answering machine to the carpet cleaning guy who just doesn’t get the crazy demands on your time.
And then you look up and see it is spring. And this is the scene outside my mother’s retirement home. And it is saying to yourself. Life goes on and today this tree, in full bloom, is enough. It is my one good thing.
Wordless Wednesday is a linkup hosted by numerous blogs.