Mom

Life goes by quickly doesn't it? I was driving yesterday and came up behind a Sherwin Williams truck...it reminded me of Sharpstown Mall in Houston...there was a Sherwin Williams store just next to the drugstore where my Mom used to pick up prescriptions. In the store window there was an electric sign in the shape of a globe...paint would run down the sides of the globe, changing colors over and over...I would sit in the car and wait for my Mom for what seemed forever, and watch the paint covering the Sherwin Williams globe. I'd love it if I could go back for a moment to that time, and my Mom would come out from the drugstore...young and beautiful as she was during my childhood.

My Mom is tall, 5'11", and when we went shopping in the department store, I always knew I could find her by looking above the clothing racks. I'm tall too...5'11", but I don't think I've ever carried the height with the kind of beauty and grace that my Mom did. We moved several times while I was growing up, and everywhere we lived, people would always say the same thing about my Mom..."She is regal." And she is.

Mom has Parkinson's, and the process of the disease has become worse than I ever imagined it would be. I was sitting with her yesterday, and I kept thinking, "this isn't how it was supposed to end..." I think of other people while I'm sitting with her....friends, acquaintances...with cancer, or Alzheimer's, or whatever the disease might be...and in my heart I know that our family is no more or less deserving of a painful disease than anyone else. It is heartbreaking to see someone decline, and the feeling of powerlessness is suffocating at times. Still, I keep reminding myself that the thing to do is to be present, and to offer touch as much as I possibly can.

Mom loves red birds...cardinals are her very favorite...