So I’m sitting in the lounge of “The Memory Unit” of an Atlanta nursing home when the 87-year-old woman in the wheelchair opposite me asks, “Where is your wife?”
“My wife is dead,” I replied. “She died on May 17th, 2004.”
“Oh,” the woman said. “I’m sorry to hear that.” She paused, then added: “These things happen.”
The woman in the wheelchair was my mother-in-law.
She knew that she knew me as soon as I entered the room, commenting several times during our visit on my appearance. Over the course of the next two hours, she asked me whether we are in grade school together. Later, she introduced me to one of the nursing aides as a high-school classmate.
“My wife is dead,” I replied. “She died on May 17th, 2004.”
“Oh,” the woman said. “I’m sorry to hear that.” She paused, then added: “These things happen.”
The woman in the wheelchair was my mother-in-law.
She knew that she knew me as soon as I entered the room, commenting several times during our visit on my appearance. Over the course of the next two hours, she asked me whether we are in grade school together. Later, she introduced me to one of the nursing aides as a high-school classmate.
Mom—over the years, I have called her either “Mom” or “Dorothy,” and will use Mom here—sometimes mistakes her daughter Karyl, who lives nearby, for her sister, which is odd because she never had a sister. She recognized neither of her grandsons the day we visited, and of course had no clue as to the identities of her great-grandchildren. Occasionally, I would bring up some person, place, or event from our past, but none of these brought a flicker of recognition.
Other than this loss of memory and difficulty with her balance, Mom is in reasonably fine shape. Her speech is clear. She follows a conversation and laughed when I told a joke at my expense. Several times, she said, “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” a line my attorney son, father of seven, immediately adopted as his own motto for the New Year.
Now let me tell you a little about the role played by this woman in my affairs and the life of my family.
We sometimes use the expression “an embarrassment of riches.” In Mom’s case, this tag is literally true. Over the quarter century since her husband died, Mom has again and again helped my family and me financially. She paid for my children’s braces, extended loans to my wife when we were struggling in our business, helped pay the tuition for college, and after my wife’s death, was extraordinarily generous in her monetary gifts to me at Christmas and on my birthday. Her most recent gift, arranged through her two surviving daughters, brought me some much-needed breathing space in a tough year.
Until her health began failing, Mom always went to work whenever she visited my home. She cooked meals, washed dishes, swept floors, ran errands, and entertained babies.
After Kris’s death, Mom and I became closer than ever before. Several years ago, I brought her from Milwaukee to Front Royal, Virginia, for a wedding. Her memory was then in the first stages of failure. She slept frequently in the car, short catnaps from which she would waken and issue some random statement like “I am just sorry she has to drive so far to work” or “We always had a good time shopping in that little town.”
To a stranger, these out-of-the-blue remarks would be meaningless, yet I knew exactly what Mom intended by each remark and would respond appropriately.
It was then that I realized just how tightly bound we were by our shared past.
Wanting her mother closer, my sister-in-law moved Mom to Atlanta eighteen months ago, about the same time that I moved to Front Royal, making the distance between us even greater than before. Nonetheless, I am ashamed that I took so long to pay a visit. Mom is in good hands—Karyl and her daughter Rachel see her frequently, and the caregivers from the receptionist to the aides were full of remarkable good cheer—but neither that circumstance nor the miles between us excuses my failure.
If life has taught me one lesson about friendship, love, suffering, and death, it is this: Presence is everything. Words matter, but being there is what counts.
Another New Year’s Resolution needs to make my list.
Other than this loss of memory and difficulty with her balance, Mom is in reasonably fine shape. Her speech is clear. She follows a conversation and laughed when I told a joke at my expense. Several times, she said, “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” a line my attorney son, father of seven, immediately adopted as his own motto for the New Year.
Now let me tell you a little about the role played by this woman in my affairs and the life of my family.
We sometimes use the expression “an embarrassment of riches.” In Mom’s case, this tag is literally true. Over the quarter century since her husband died, Mom has again and again helped my family and me financially. She paid for my children’s braces, extended loans to my wife when we were struggling in our business, helped pay the tuition for college, and after my wife’s death, was extraordinarily generous in her monetary gifts to me at Christmas and on my birthday. Her most recent gift, arranged through her two surviving daughters, brought me some much-needed breathing space in a tough year.
Until her health began failing, Mom always went to work whenever she visited my home. She cooked meals, washed dishes, swept floors, ran errands, and entertained babies.
After Kris’s death, Mom and I became closer than ever before. Several years ago, I brought her from Milwaukee to Front Royal, Virginia, for a wedding. Her memory was then in the first stages of failure. She slept frequently in the car, short catnaps from which she would waken and issue some random statement like “I am just sorry she has to drive so far to work” or “We always had a good time shopping in that little town.”
To a stranger, these out-of-the-blue remarks would be meaningless, yet I knew exactly what Mom intended by each remark and would respond appropriately.
It was then that I realized just how tightly bound we were by our shared past.
Wanting her mother closer, my sister-in-law moved Mom to Atlanta eighteen months ago, about the same time that I moved to Front Royal, making the distance between us even greater than before. Nonetheless, I am ashamed that I took so long to pay a visit. Mom is in good hands—Karyl and her daughter Rachel see her frequently, and the caregivers from the receptionist to the aides were full of remarkable good cheer—but neither that circumstance nor the miles between us excuses my failure.
If life has taught me one lesson about friendship, love, suffering, and death, it is this: Presence is everything. Words matter, but being there is what counts.
Another New Year’s Resolution needs to make my list.
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