I’m typing this blog from my mom’s hospital room in South Jersey at Virtua Hospital. First time I ever composed a blog or did any work from a laptop in a hospital. It is Deja vu all over again for me. I was in the same hospital in I believe the exact same hospital room one year ago. I looked back at my blog posts where I documented the experience in “It’s NOT Easy Getting Old!” I just didn’t write the blog from her hospital room.
A year has passed, and we are here for the same reason… “She has become unstable with difficulties walking…” This time she tipped us off by having some hallucinations brought on by a urinary tract infection. I found her asleep on a couch she never is on in her sitting area outside her bedroom, in the mother-in-law suite we built over a decade ago to house her when my father passed. When I asked why she was there, she told me in a groggy state of mind that “she didn’t have a bedroom to sleep in.” When I helped her up to escort her to her bedroom, literally steps away, to show her bed to her, she remarked that “someone had been sleeping in her bed.“. Well, obviously she had a bedroom, and no one had been sleeping in her bed. She is now 88 years old and in the midst of the sad decline of her mental and physical state. We are here because she had fallen getting out of bed a half dozen times in two days. We’d find her wedged between the wall and her bed on the floor without the ability to get herself up. She is in constant back and knee pain from a few severe care accidents in earlier days. She has started to be incontinent and resists getting bathed. We can’t trust her with her medications and need to oversee her consumption of them. She’ll tell little white lies concerning her bathing or taking of her medication. She has become childlike in the need for oversight and care. It is the circle of life. She took care of me growing up. Me and mostly my wife (God Bless her) take care of her now. It is definitely not easy and has become much harder in the last year. We do the best we can, with care and love. My mom has apologized for the burden she now feels guilty that she has placed upon us. I joke that she is just getting me back for all the troubles I put her through while I was growing up. I wasn’t a saint.
We go from cradle to grave as we live our lives. The care giver becomes the caretaker. The child becomes the adult, and the adult the child. It is the Circle of Life. As I sit here typing in this hospital room on a spectacularly clear September day, I’m the child who has become the adult. I am now the care giver to the one who took care of me growing up. I’m a witness to this circle that is life. It also makes me realize and appreciate that life is short – Live it – NOW! It is the reason I continue to pursue firsts to experience. How about you?