Visiting Mother~

I flew up to CT on Thursday, May 17th to surprise my sister for her 50th birthday. It was indeed a surprise and quite fun. We had a lovely dinner and the next morning sat out on the porch sipping our coffee and Kibitzing. Most delightful was my 18 year old niece, home after her freshman year at Vassar, talking with us "adults" and holding her own. What a remarkably gifted, self-assured, and loving young woman. I was also able to visit my mother at Seabury. I only get to see her twice a year and this trip I was able to visit three times. Each time was scheduled around dinner or lunch so I could feed her. In the past, I have found these visits a wee bit tortuous. Either my father makes me cry, or the other residents who are trapped in their bodies and minds, or my own sweet mother. I vacillate between the horror of the scene I find myself in and a feeling of complete and utter tenderness as I raise a spoon of soup to my mother's lips. I watch myself dis-connect and become the "witness". In this state, I can hold it all. I allow myself to smell the odors, to take in the ugly and beautiful, to touch my mother's hand, caress her face, and hear her belch without flinching. Oh, how embarrassed she would have been before she lost her mind to Alzheimer's. Now, she laughs. I lean in and listen to her words. Trying ever so hard to understand what she is saying -- to make sense of what sounds unintelligible. Every so often she does link words together and I understand. She turns her hazel brown eyes to me and captures my soul. It is in these precious moments that we connect deeply and we are One. "Ahh, there you are mommy." I feel myself catapult back into my body, no longer the witness, fully in my heart and in my sadness. I allow myself to sink into this sadness -- accepting, allowing, surrendering. It is what it is.