Love Them While You Have Them

I do my best thinking when I'm doing yard work.  I'm sweaty, dirty and smell like a pig, but I can't get my friend off my mind.

My friend's mother has Alzheimer's.  This friend, though her father is still living, is the main caretaker of her mother.  She and I have talked about this a lot lately as I've been helping my elderly in-laws through an illness myself.  This disease has robbed her mother of lots of things  - the ability to really take care of herself, the ability to cook for her husband, the ability to sew like she once did, the ability to drive and most of all the ability to love on her daughter the way she once did.

This friend is going through a lot right now in her own family.  She is about to become an empty nester and is having to deal with all the emotions that come with this new chapter in her life.  Believe me, this chapter might be hardest one of all for mothers who have given their lives to raising their children. 

She said that she usually doesn't invite her mother over for dinner anymore as it is just too hard, but this particular night she just needed her mother.  She said that when she got there that she just laid her head on her Mama and poured her heart out to her.  Sadly, her Mama didn't understand what was going on, but she did tell her, "It will be alright." 

No matter how old we get, we still need our Mamas/Grandmamas.  I remember so well after my grandmother had her stroke, she was sitting on the couch and I went and laid down on the couch and put my head in Grandma's lap.  I didn't care that I was in my forties, for a brief moment I was ten again.  I remember thinking that I may not ever get that chance again.  And I didn't.  I can almost still feel that soft lap that had held my head so many times, but especially that last one.

I guess the lesson we can learn from this is just to love them while we have them.

Check out http://www.alz.org/.  This website has lots of information on the disease.