Where is my mother when I need her?

I sit at my mom’s sewing machine. I wonder how long it has been since she used it. A year? Two years? I’m trying to figure out how to thread it. How to set the stitch length. I can’t believe that I am using her machine to modify a pair of her slacks so that it is easier for the nurses to remove them when they toilet her.

This is one of those moments when the weight of what is happening settles down with a thud. Smashing my life. Actually, not as much my life as her life. What did I think? Or why didn’t I ever think that her life could come to this? I can see her, wheeling herself down the hall of the care home. The sad look on her face when I leave and she doesn’t understand why she can’t come with me. Her, sitting with her head in her hands napping because she has to wait for the scheduled time to have lie down.

I think of her now, while Dad and I spend the evening in the comfort of their familiar home.