For once, I haven't known what to say
Dec. 6th, 2008 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonIt's been a strange couple of weeks with my mother getting so ill. I haven't known how to talk about it, haven't felt like talking, been superstitious about talking. I wanted to make sure mom was well recovered before I said anything because I fear irony more than any other force in the Universe. Even now I feel a hinky creeping up my spine as I write.
But mom has fought off the infections, she's back from the hospital (5 days in), and she's fought off the cold she got after the hospital. Her energy is pretty good, if not back where it was before. She's always been the Valkyrie, so her energy levels have always been exceptionally high, her physical condition that of someone twenty years younger, and I have taken that for granted. In the last two weeks I've had to face the shocking realization that...wow, she's 87 years old.
I know it's ridiculous to have made it all the way to middle-age and not have realized this. I faced it a long time ago in myself. Having cancer, even a non-aggressive form, does tend to put one on notice that they are mortal. And it's not as if I haven't lost people—two fathers, all my aunts and uncles, a brother, cousins, friends, grandparents, surrogate grandparents—and yet somehow I was cruising along on the assumption that my mother would be the one exception to the rule.
It's shaken me, and changed me in ways I can't fathom yet, and even though the abyss blinked this time, I know it's not forever—in a heart way this time, not just a head way. The same week my mom went into the hospital, a work friend's mom, who's been semi-comatose for 11 weeks, died. Another friend's mom had a stroke in the early part of the month and is going to have to long-term 24/7 care for the foreseeable future. November was a bad month for moms.
Things could have been so much worse for me. I got mine back for now. I am so very, very, very grateful. I'm going to try hard to appreciate what I have while I have it.
But mom has fought off the infections, she's back from the hospital (5 days in), and she's fought off the cold she got after the hospital. Her energy is pretty good, if not back where it was before. She's always been the Valkyrie, so her energy levels have always been exceptionally high, her physical condition that of someone twenty years younger, and I have taken that for granted. In the last two weeks I've had to face the shocking realization that...wow, she's 87 years old.
I know it's ridiculous to have made it all the way to middle-age and not have realized this. I faced it a long time ago in myself. Having cancer, even a non-aggressive form, does tend to put one on notice that they are mortal. And it's not as if I haven't lost people—two fathers, all my aunts and uncles, a brother, cousins, friends, grandparents, surrogate grandparents—and yet somehow I was cruising along on the assumption that my mother would be the one exception to the rule.
It's shaken me, and changed me in ways I can't fathom yet, and even though the abyss blinked this time, I know it's not forever—in a heart way this time, not just a head way. The same week my mom went into the hospital, a work friend's mom, who's been semi-comatose for 11 weeks, died. Another friend's mom had a stroke in the early part of the month and is going to have to long-term 24/7 care for the foreseeable future. November was a bad month for moms.
Things could have been so much worse for me. I got mine back for now. I am so very, very, very grateful. I'm going to try hard to appreciate what I have while I have it.