My mother, my friend

Mom...a word that means many things and stirs all kinds of emotions.  For me, they are good emotions, but I know others may have issues with their mothers and not get the warm fuzzies like I do.  For those, I am truly sorry.

  My mom has always been there for me and the death of my husband was no exception. Although she is over 80 and doesn't like to go far from home anymore, she agreed to make the trip from upstate New York to Tennessee to be there for me during the first two weeks of my widowhood.  It took carefully laid plans to make it happen because she refused to fly! My niece drove her into Virginia where my oldest son and a friend of mine picked her up and brought her to Nashville.  It was a two day ordeal, but she made it safely.

 Mom is a widow herself.  My step-father passed away in 1989, so she has lots of experience at this.  She was incredibly helpful at remembering things I needed to do....like ordering flowers for the funeral! This hadn't even entered my mind and it was almost too late when she thought of it.  So, a quick trip to the local florist and that was taken care of - whew!  She went with me to the social security office where we waited endless hours in a stuffy, ugly waiting area populated by all kinds of interesting people. As we sat there I remembered that I had gone with my mom to her social security office when my step-father had died.  Funny how it all comes back around.

Mom and I like to put jigsaw puzzles together, so we hauled out the puzzles and laid one out to work on.  This was incredible therapy.  While we focused on the puzzle we talked about our marriages, the deaths of our husbands, family matters, and life in general. The healing was starting.  When I got tired of the puzzle I would write some thank you notes, asking her advice about what to say.  She offered to help write them, but I felt it was my responsibility.

  She made sure I ate at regular intervals and we did a little shopping.  One trip was to the mall to get her ears re-pierced because she had let the holes grow together many years before.  While we were there I decided to have my ears re-done too because my holes were crooked. It was a wonderful shared experience that was completely spontaneous.

Both of my sons live with me, so they also got to spend some quality time with their grandmother, but her main focus was on me.  She was quite subtle about it, but as I look back I can see that she was never far from me and always looking for something that needed to be handled.  Even if we were just sitting in the same room reading books, her presence was an incredible comfort.

So, here's my piece of advice for today.....make sure you have a friend or family member who can be there for you, remind you of things that need to be done, and go to appointments with you.  They will remember things that you will forget, and they will prop you up when you want to fall down.

Thanks for taking this journey with me.  More to come......