When I walked in to Just Like Home yesterday the first person I saw was my Dad. Plaid shirt, patriotic hat, mustache, weathered face. Sitting there chatting with Nikki and Max. I did a double take and realized that it obviously wasn’t him. But put a few more years on him and a cane in his hand and the likeness was startling. Turns out he is Max’s son. I was momentarily thrown. I stole another glance just to pretend for a moment that it could be him, my Dad. Just to have a little glimpse of how things used to be.
I breathed in slowly and then I asked Nikki to get Mom in her wheelchair so I could take her outside. As we entered her room and I said hi, she looked up at me with a smile in her eyes and reached her hand up to touch my face. I was, as always, relieved to see her still know me. I help her sit up while Nikki gets the chair ready and then helps her stand and rotates her into it. Mom’s body is getting stiff. Her feet don’t move well – they are curling up from lack of use. Her head permanently lists to the left. She has trouble bending her knees when we put the foot rests on the wheelchair. In fact, she cannot bend them at all and we have to help her. She doesn’t seem to mind though. She is happy I am there and happy to be going outside on such a beautiful day.
As we walk around the perimeter of the building she holds my hand to her face with her left hand and I steer the wheelchair with my right. I tell her all about the last horse show, decorating the barn for Christmas and how we are going to a Festival of Lights in a few weeks. How I paid for the VIP tickets so I wouldn’t have to walk too much. I tell her about everything and anything and she soaks it all up. We hear Crystal out on the front porch animatedly telling stories about her lemon of a car and we go to investigate. Crystal is wound up and Mom gets a big grin on her face just listening to her. Crystal and Nikki are laughing and so am I.
Nikki comes over to tell Mom she’s leaving and she says “I love you” and Mom responds “I love you too.” I quickly say “but not as much as you love me, right?” Mom grins and says No! Nikki and I laugh. It is so good to see Mom like this. I ask her what she had for lunch and she pauses, then says “I have no idea.” We laugh again. There is still so much life in her. I cherish these times I get to be with her because I know the darkness that is coming.
Roxie, her nurse, says she’s aspirating some as she eats, which causes some coughing. Mom was very sick over Thanksgiving and I was extremely worried about her. She’s doing much better now, but I know our time together is winding down. Mom’s body and brain are failing her. Slowly but surely the disease marches its advance and there’s nothing left to fight.
I know Dad has gone ahead to “reconnaissance” the location. The problem is that he can’t come back to tell us about it. “I’m on recon” he used to say as he headed out. He also used to say that you had to be “postured” correctly before you could expect to get something done right. And he definitely was postured before he died. He made it very easy on my brother and I, he was a man that wasn’t leaving this world unprepared if he could help it. He made sure that Mom was going to be well taken care of. That we all were. He’s waiting for her there, so he can take her hand and show her the ropes of Heaven. He’s waiting for his “Muff.”
I, however, am so far from ready for it that I can’t even wrap my head around what it will be like when she’s gone. Right now I can still hold her hand, still feel her love, watch her smile and laugh. I always ask her when I leave “will you be ok until I get back?” And she always answers “yes.”
And I know she will be. The ladies here love her as their own. She is everyone’s mom and a bright light in their lives as well as mine. And I know she’ll be ok when she finally reaches out to Dad again – when she puts her hand to his cheek, instead of mine. When she sees the radiance of God and is free from the stranglehold life has on her. I know that Dad had to go first, so that none of us have failed her, so that she will never have been alone. She will have me until her last breath and then she’ll have Dad again in Heaven. I understand that it had to be this way.
I understand it, and I am happy to be the one here with her, but Lord, what will I do when she’s gone?