Time with mom is precious

Sometimes I forget how long everything takes. I get so used to hurrying here, there, and everywhere that I don’t allow enough time for what is important.
I was reminded to slow down the other day when I took my mom to the doctor for a routine checkup. She moves more deliberately than I do. It is like walking with a toddler. One is forced to take small steps and to stop often.
I feel so blessed that I have the time it takes to match her pace. Sometimes she is the same cheerful, confident mother I remember. Other times, she is as wobbly as a child just learning to walk. I hold her hands and walk backwards slowly until she plops into the wheelchair. Sometimes she senses my impatience and tells me that she is tired and will stay behind while I go to the store for her. We both know it is a charade, but off I go like an obedient child, glad to be able to dash down the aisles at warp speed.
She says she gets tired easily but when I look around, I find she has done more in the last few months than in the last few years. I credit that to the home health aide. That woman has been a God-send. She does a little housework, but more importantly, she gives my mom someone to talk to.
I try to remember how lonely she gets. Personally, I don’t get lonely. I am perfectly happy to be by myself. She is not. She likes company.
We are dissimilar in other ways. She lives for television. I wish it had never been invented. She watches a news story and sees it as an indication that the world is a scary place filled with terrible people. I watch the same news story and see an anomaly, something out of the ordinary. I firmly believe that most people are good, all evidence to the contrary.
And yet, we are more alike than not. When her own mother needed care, she was there. She gave up her house to move her family back home. She moved faster in those days. She had to. She was caring for a husband and two teenaged boys as well as a bed-ridden mother. Now it is her turn to need help.
Thankfully, she is not bedridden. She gets up slowly and carefully but moves under her own power. She gets tired easily and naps often. She eats what she wants, with little thought about proper nutrition. As far as I am concerned, she has lived long enough to disregard the advice of a nutritionist.
She insists I check out her flowers, which are beautiful, as always. She searches through a stack of papers and pulls out a leaflet that was printed decades ago. She offers it to me and I take it. I take whatever she gives me, whether I want it or not.
Spending time with her is precious, and sometimes frustrating. I feel guilty when I want nothing more than to escape her dawdling. There are millions of chores demanding to be done at home. There is always something else that screams, “I am more important than sitting here listening to the same stories she has told a hundred times.”
It takes every bit of will power I have to silence the inner voices. Holding my mother’s hands and listening to her talk is a privilege. Walking backwards slowly reminds me of a time long ago when it was she who was steady and I who was the shaky toddler.
So many of my friends have lost their mothers. I realize how precious time is and am determined not to waste a minute if it. I force myself to slow down and listen to the voice of  my mother while I still can.[[In-content Ad]]