I thought I knew everything there was to know about my mother. Boy was I wrong! She loved my father until the day he died and never considered remarrying. “Till death us do part.” That promise was not just until HIS death but through and until hers as well. He was her one and only husband and the vow she took in church on her wedding day in 1946 was a sacrosanct pledge.
She successfully raised eight children, two of whom were still minors when dad passed away. She buried one daughter because of a myriad of complications with diabetes. She became grandmother to seven and great grandmother to five.
I have come to realize that she was so much more than a wife, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. She was the glue which silently held my family together. What I never knew about her until recently, because I never really took the time to discover, was that she had hopes and dreams for her life that had nothing whatever to do with the life she lived.
All her plans were quietly discarded and put on the back burner while the front burner was occupied being a dutiful wife, mother, grandmother, and eventually great grandmother.
Mom is eighty-five now and suffers the ravages of time and Parkinson’s disease. Of the seven remaining children, I have become her permanent care giver. This has allowed me to get to know her in ways I never considered or even dreamed possible. In addition to tending to her rapidly diminishing physical capabilities, I have begun learning about my mother not just as a mother but as a woman in her own right.
Mom is not always coherent these days. Parkinson’s Related Dementia (PRD) is taking some of her memories away. When she is alert, we talk about ... things ... Sometimes she talks about my father and their life together, but she often strays off and takes on a distant look as she gazes into the past, remembering her life as a child and a young woman.
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