My earliest memory of my Mom is her sitting at the kitchen table polishing her nails. Mom was always primping and preening. She was very stylish, she wore mini dresses and blonde wigs. She spent hours on her appearance and Pops was proud to have such a beautiful woman on his arm. They had, what appeared to be a fairy tale marriage. Mom was Pop's princess and he adored her. They were married for 74 years before Pops passed away. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be with someone for your entire life and then have them gone. I think perhaps this is one of the reasons God chose to give Mom this disease, so she wouldn't spend the last years of her life mourning the only man she ever loved.
I was fortunate enough to have spent a lot of time with both of my parents. After Frank and I got married his job allowed us to travel many places on conferences. Whenever we would tell my folks about where we were going they would want to tag along and Frank was gracious enough to allow this. My parents must have enjoyed these trips because for the next 15 yrs. every time we would go on vacation my Pops would say "We want to go". We had a lot of laughs, a lot of fun and we are left with many great memories.
This is a photo of Frank and I with Mom and Pops on a Glacier in Alaska in 2005.
We had taken a cruise and this was one of the day trips...a helicopter ride to the glaciers.
It was on this trip that we first noticed that Mom was becoming forgetful. Pops let her go to the bathroom by herself and she ended up being brought back to us by an employee who found her wandering around lost.
More and more often now Mom doesn't remember Pops. She believes all of us are her siblings and that her Mom and Dad are still alive. Just the other day as we were watching tv she looked at me and said "You better take me home now, Mom is going to be worried about me." I just assured her that her Mom knew where she was and that she would be sleeping here that night. She asked where she would be sleeping and I replied "upstairs in your room". She asked if I would be sleeping up there also and I indicated my room and told her I would be sleeping in there. She said "Isn't that Frank's room?" I said it was and she asked if I was sleeping with Frank. I responded I was and she says....."Well, what does his wife think about that????
You have to laugh or you would spend your whole day crying.
Today I am sending Mom and Nancy for massages. I try to get Mom a massage every couple of months. She doesn't remember it as soon as she gets home but she really enjoys it while she is having it and we just live in the moment.....maybe another reason God allowed her to have this disease...to teach me to live in the moment.
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