Patience...have you seen mine?
"Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow - that is patience." Anonymous, but could have been my dad.
OMG!! Being home this past week was truly eye opening for me. I consider myself to be a patient woman. Understanding of others. Compassionate, empathetic. Kinda went out the window being home with Mom.
Mom moves slower (or is it me who moves faster) than she used to, asks a gazzillion questions - often they were about when I'm leaving to head back to my home, and my upcoming move (stressful for me and i wanted to hurt her after awhile). Also, when she gets a bug about something, it has to be done right then. Like the other morning and her watch battery. The battery in her watch died and she only remembered it when we were out. Not when we were home and I could remove the battery and then go look for one.
She was incredibly insistent - we had to go to RiteAid, which of course they don't replace watch batteries, then Target and finally Sears, where a clerk was able to replace her battery. Took us over an hour, because she wanted to do a little shopping in between, then would forget why we were out running around. You primary caregivers, you are saints.
Don't get me wrong, we had a great time together. And I really didn't lose my compassion, empathy or understanding. But patience...
I'm single, live alone. Have for awhile now. I didn't realize I had a morning ritual, but I do. Get up, morning meditation, yoga, maybe a run, coffee and journaling, little bit of breakfast, and these past few months walk into work. I wake up around 5:30/6am and don't really deal with people until 8:30/9am.
This past week, if mom heard me moving around, she was awake, out of bed. Talking to me. Right away. She would go downstairs and fix me breakfast and talk, or ask questions. And she was on serious repeat mode. A couple of mornings I went to yoga, a couple of days it was evening yoga. And I visited friends and of course Voyageur. If I was gone for more than an hour, Mom was calling me, wondering where I was, when I was coming home. So we could go out to her favorite craft store.
I spent the majority of my time with her, squeaking out those last holiday times that will become precious memories as this disease slowly whittles away her brain. And that's where I lose patience, not so much with the repetitive questions, or not being able to find something that I had literally just put down because Mom picked it up and put it in a totally illogical place, or her insistent need to do whatever it is in that moment that her brain doesn't want to forget....but with this disease that confuses a beautiful, wonderful woman.
This disease that slowly, so slowly, takes pieces of her away. And as maddening and sad and seriously sucky as it is, we find humor, love and a deeper understanding of each other.
The other night as we were making cookies and we couldn't find ingredients because Mom had stashed them in a variety of interesting places around the kitchen, I started laughing - really giggling. Here the three of us were, doing what we do best together....cooking, talking and loving.
It didn't matter whether we found any of the ingredients or used the cookie shooter. It didn't matter that the Crisco was seriously expired or whatever Crisco does to go bad and the cookies smelled and tasted horrible. We were together. Mom ecstatic when she found the flour, sugar, baking powder. Voyageur making faces at the cookie shooter and at me. I wanted the moments to last a lifetime. My patience returned. And my admiration and awe of Voyageur and Mom skyrocketed.
Back at ya sis.