The realization

I love reading the Sunday paper--especially as today when sitting on the porch, enjoying a strong cup of coffee and the lake before me.   I delight in good journalism--interesting stories and news from good writers, and I always look forward to the Variety section what highlights new books. Today I glimpsed an article profiling a book of poems written by a daughter about the death of her mother.  At that moment I knew I needed to write about my mother, too--but my mom isn't dead...yet.  She's dying and I'm supporting her as she does so. So much has happened to  92-year-old mom and me in the past year.  She lives in her own apartment minutes from my home here in southern Minnesota.  Within the past year our relationship has changed, and I'm now more of a constant in her daily life.

November 2014, Mom fell and broke her sacrum.  From hospital to rehab and back to her apartment months later, she now has full "assisted-living" services, and she has me.  I visit her daily in the afternoon--at coffee time between 3:30 and 4, just as the day is ebbing into evening.

My retiring from 39 years of teaching allows me to do this, and with my household reduced to a patient husband, a cat and a dog, I plan my day around my visits to Mom.  I've found these daily visits at times frustrating, fulfilling, fragile.  And profiling my visits with her, sharing my joys and irritations is the goal of this blog. I hope to bring into focus the trials and tribulations, enjoyment and joie de vivre of time spent with a dynamo gal as she journeys through her final days, weeks, months.  We're both in unchartered territory and I anticipate we'll both continue to learn, life-long learners that we are.