Death of my Mother
/My mother died a little over a week ago. She was in her 90s and frail…had survived some significant health challenges over the last decade; I thought I had internalized that her death could happen at any time, but it surprised me. It happened very quickly.
My thoughts are still jumping all over the place…
I am savoring the last times I saw her a little over a week before her death – taking her and my dad out to lunch at a new restaurant, talking to them while they ate breakfast the next morning. She had gotten her hair cut and styled by the woman that had done it for the over 40 years recently and was looking great. They both seemed happy. Good times!
One of my sisters cut some of the Japanese quince and added it to a bouquet of other flowers a few days before her death; I am so pleased that my sister did that since Mother had always cut some from the bush in recent years…the first flowers of spring.
She was a very organized person and passed that along to all her daughters along with practical knowledge of households. She went back to college when I was a teenager….started her career as a teacher before I graduated from high school. I’ve always thought of her as a near perfect mother figure. When I had my own daughter….I knew what kind of mother I wanted to be.
My mother was in my life for over 70 years….it might be one metric I won’t be able to duplicate with my own daughter (I will be 105 when she is 70).
My mother recognized how introverted I was very early on. When I wanted to stay in the car while she went into the post office or store, she encouraged me to go in with her. She sent me to ‘charm’ school. She volunteered for my Camp Fire Girls group. She encouraged me to apply to Up with People (and travel during my junior year of high school). She introduced me to her female college professors to expand the role models I had. I will never be an extrovert…but I do have a lot of people skills that were developed even before I entered the workforce and began to get ‘management training.’
There are little lessons that I’ve learned from my mother more recently about aging gracefully:
Cut flowers from the yard are wonderful (require developing a yard for flowers). Buying cut flowers is OK (but second best).
Family pictures that are easy to see frequently should share space with art.
Regular exercise is important….using as many different muscles as possible.
Following instructions for physical therapy and medication is important but can be a challenge.
Splurges are OK…in moderation.
One of the things she said as part of her greeting when I arrived for a visit was ‘I am so glad you are here’…and she repeated that each night as she headed back to her bedroom. Maybe that is one of the biggest lessons of all….to appreciate the people around you and let them know that you do.
