Once Time is Gone, You Can’t Get It Back

 The last ten months of my mother’s life, I so often heard that I needed to place my mother in respite care and go on a vacation or put her in a home.  The more I was told to place her, the more I refused.  As for respite care, I knew that the time was coming when I would have plenty of time to have a break from taking care of my mother.  Were there times I got frustrated?  Oh yes, both with myself and with mom, mostly with myself as sometimes I could not switch it up fast enough.  I do have some regrets from when I was taking care of my mother, all of them are about how I could have handled some situations differently.  Having mom go with me all the time really wasn’t new.  It was nothing for either of us to ask the other if they wanted to go wherever wanted to come with whoever was going so when it got to the time that Mom couldn’t be alone.  I generally enjoyed Mom’s company.  We liked a lot of the same things.  It was impossible to get some people to understand that.

I so miss my mom.  It so nice for people to say, you should take a week off and she won’t know the difference.  Really?  It isn’t about trying to make memories for my mother to remember, she couldn’t, however, that didn’t mean that she couldn’t be happy.  It was about the moment.  All day long, it was about mom and moments.  I would tell mom how much I loved her, I would ask her did I tell you how much I love you today, where’s that pretty momma smile, things like that.  I needed for her to know she was so loved.  I took her out to eat, even when I needed to help her eat.  Yes, I got some looks, I am sure I may have gotten comments, I am partially deaf so I really didn’t hear too many.  I didn’t care.  I was focused on my mother.  I read to her.  We listened to the music she loved.  Did I have days where I had bad migraines and where my fibromyalgia was horrible?  Of course, we dealt with it.  Sometimes, when I needed a nap because I was so exhausted or my migraine was horrible, she would watch TV or she would take a nap in her room while I napped.  If it was a super bad day, one where I couldn’t do anything, I was lucky enough to have friends to come and take care of mom while I rest.