Ommmmmmmmm
Yesterday after visiting mom, I came home and sat on the front porch with our Croatian family and our neighbor. We just sat there enjoying the night and trading stories, a New Orleans tradition. My neighbor regaled us with nursing home stories – her parents escaping with one of the elderly who still has keys to her car and an errant karaoke machine they were trying to get jump started at the lawn mower repair shop. It’s these stories of old age that I want to dwell on because lately getting old has looked more like a sausage factory than fun.
Mom is fully on the vent again, which means she’s more comfortable but also means we’ve got miles to go before we sleep. I went by her house to get her bills and water her plants and came across her will where she has given my sister 35 items to my 12. It gave me pause but almost in a weird sort of way. My mother gave me a sense of myself that has been my greatest inheritance. I spent most of my life in reaction to her and my sister, trying desperately not to look or act like either one. But in a collection of photographs I found just yesterday, a jumble of the last 50 years, sometimes we were hard to tell apart.
In her will she asks us to put aside our grievances and love each other because she loves us both, well maybe she loves my sister three times better if you count the things. Maybe you can only love what you understand, really. It’s hard to say.
I’ve been the dutiful daughter all my life, and my biggest lesson has been to learn that oft times, that doesn’t matter.