Being around my mother, there are funny experiences and there are sad ones. I am trying to get used to being around both.
The funny: Today we went to order Mum her hearing aids. She couldn’t hear the lady who was asking her questions about the style she preferred.
The sad: Mum left her cane in the car when she went in a grocery store. She couldn’t find a cart, and she was almost in tears when I found her because she was getting tired and needed a cart to help carry her own weight. She didn't think of asking anyone for help.
The funny: Mum is much more vocal, opinionated, and extroverted than in her early years. Her newest favourite phase is “What the fuck”? (She is not into texting, so she doesn’t even know what “WTF” means)
The sad: Mum tends to get very cold even when her apartment is warm. She sits shivering in the 90F heat.
The funny: Mum sometimes places her false teeth in unusual and disconcerting places. This morning she made me breakfast and beside my fork was her bottom teeth.
The sad: She told me today that she wants to start cleaning out her apartment so that we don’t have a lot of stuff to go through when she dies.
The funny: Mum gives me rather explicit advice about my relationships with men. For example, she made sure I understood clearly that certain intimate experiences with a man may cause throat cancer, so be sure to gargle afterwards. (Trust me, I would rather find false teeth beside my plate than have THAT conversation with my Mother!)
The sad: Mum isn’t comfortable walking the 30 steps outdoors to my apartment because she is afraid of falling in the snow. And there is only about an inch of snow on the ground.
Overall, this is becoming a very fulfilling experience, spending this much time with my Mum. But I have to re-read my book “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” to remind myself that both living and dying are all part of the same spiritual process, and that neither exists without the other.
