I CAN HEAR HER VOICE!

I visited Mom on the 19^th, a Saturday and sat to talk with her. As she lies in the bed, I see someone who has no more control over her life, no more physical control, and her power to see things are in the order she wants them also diminished. She can’t feed herself, choose when to eat or when to sleep, and every order she now gives her children is based on her faith that her children will follow through.

Once she ruled the house with an iron hand, one filled with authority and one filled with determination, things that she always had but doesn’t anymore. Her children try to keep up a charade of obedience where and when we can, and when we can’t: we tell her we did since she can’t follow up.

Sitting in the chair and watching her is difficult, since Mom is not Mom anymore. We still love her but she is not the willful lady we once loved anymore. I look up at the walls and see all the pictures she has, some of it my art: paintings, woodcarvings and pottery I have done over the years, things like needle points her sister Marie gave her and some things such as religious articles that are scattered around the room that she choose that all speak about who she is. There is the pictures of herself as a child, her mother, and sisters, her children and it all tells a story of what once was, no longer an ongoing story, but one where they will soon run the credits.

I wish I could hear her voice strong once more, see her kneading the dough for pasta on a Sunday morning, the aroma of her sauce as it permeates throughout the house. I wish I could gather once more and sit with my sisters and my Dad and laugh and joke about our lives again, maybe one last Christmas Eve dinner with a large gathering of my sisters families and mine, the sound of Christmas music and Dad in his flannel shirt and his look of content on his face. I wish I could shout out more kudos for Mom over the masterpiece of a dinner she prepared or dessert she created.

In our lifetime, we all make mistakes: we all say things that we don’t really mean but we say them. I have and other have said them to me, but that is forgotten over a short period of time, fortunately we don’t carry them to an extreme, we all laugh at ourselves in the end. So there are no regrets, just wishes, just time to forgive and forget, and the wishes take up the time.

Because of Mom, we have kept the faith and stayed the course, we have been able to help each other, cooperate and be supportive of each other, for that we are all happy and have no regrets.

She has said to me today that she knows there is nothing left for her to do, the show is over and it is time for us to look ahead. She also stated that she is dealing with God’s will and that is all she can do.

Now time is running out, we as a family will divide into nuclear entities of our own, once Mom is gone.  But still I wish…