Although I’ll be posting my regular blog on Monday, I wanted to honor my Mother with this Mother’s Day post. 

You are never too old to learn from your Mother. Watching my Mom face change has taught me about humility, humanity, and what it is to have things happen to you completely beyond your control.

A few years after my Dad’s passing, my Mother was diagnosed with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, a progressive degenerative neurologic disease.  For the last five years she has slowly endured the loss of her physical coordination and strength in a slow and yet unpredictable decline.  She is an independent woman who built her life around being active, traveling, and being in charge.  Her mind still very much wants to do all of these things, but her body is no longer able.  She can no longer eat the foods she wants to eat or live in the split level home she built and cherished for 40 years.   She can’t participate in her aerobics classes or prepare a holiday meal.

My Mother has had to adjust to needing assistance for everything she does.  It is so painful for her to be dependent on others for the simplest of things, having to rely on someone to anticipate her needs or, even more difficult for her, having to ask for their help with a voice that is losing the strength to be heard.  I know she would prefer not to have to, but my Mother is learning to adjust to her situation, swallowing her pride and giving up control in order to live safely.  She has had to let go of the plan she had of being the “woman at the gym in her eighties,” and now just hopes to be a woman who lives to be eighty.  It has not been easy and not without a lot of frustration.  And for me, I wish I could say I’ve been as gracious as I’d like to be or as patient.  It hurts me to see her struggling and to watch helplessly as she faces increasing challenges in taking care of her basic needs and feels like she is losing the woman she used to be.

But I applaud her for getting up each morning with the will to live another day and I am grateful for her ability to laugh at the circumstances I know might also make her cry.  She is brave and she is determined.  She’s a fighter and she is holding on to as much of herself as she can (leopard print wheelchair bag!).  The silver lining of this otherwise cruel disease is being able to offer her a place she can live more comfortably and the reassurance to know she is not alone.  I am also getting to see another side of my mom, one who is vulnerable and lets me comb her hair.  Another gift is being connected to a world of quiet caregivers, children taking care of parents, husbands taking care of wives, and being inspired by their dedication, authenticity, and selflessness.

I know, Mom, that I need to be more compassionate at times and that I need to stop thinking I know what you need.  Please know that I am grateful for the opportunity this new chapter affords for us to be closer.  We are learning to accept each other and grow in the process.  Taking care of you is surely a way I can say thank you for taking care of me, and a way I can step up to be a better person, a daughter that you can still be proud of.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.  No matter the circumstances, you’ll always be my Mother, and you’re never too old to need your Mom.