I wish I could take back ...

Do I look a little tired?
Mom holding me up.

Sunday. I would like to go to my regular church once. But chapel it was. Mom seemed perky when I found her upstairs, all dressed and ready to go. But during the service, she seemed to decline and bent over in the chair. I thought she was asleep, but when I leaned close, she turned and looked at me sideways, like, What are you lookin' at? 

I kept her on track with the liturgy, and we sang familiar songs, which she knew -- not, for once, the long, dirge-like, where-is-the-melody hymns they do so often. Sitting there, singing the hymns, surrounded by the old people, I thought: There will be a time, not so long from now, when I'll be old and decrepit and in a wheelchair like she is, and I will feel like I've been through this before.

She wanted a salad in the Bistro, but, upon looking at them, didn't want a salad, so I got her an omelet, which she ate half of, and toast with jam, which she ate half of. Her weight is declining, the dietician has said, and I pushed food on her till she was sick of me.

I wondered, then, if she really was sick. She looked, suddenly, bad. I asked her if she was OK, and she said she wasn't, and she wanted to go lay down, so I brought her up. She said she wanted to go to the bathroom, but then didn't have the energy for it and just wanted to get into bed. It was a fade faster than most of her fades, and I wondered, Are we coming to the end?

She lay half-asleep, and I read her a couple of devotions, then just chatted with her. Her voice is soft, quiet, almost always lately.

"Do you think about your parents sometimes, Mom?"

"I do. Yes."

"What do you think?"

"I think they were very dedicated. Did the best they could. Took care of their kids good."

She talked about babysitting her brothers, which was "boring," she said, because she couldn't do the things she wanted to do.

I asked, "What did your family do, when you were a child, for fun?'

"We'd go sliding."

"Outside? In the snow?"

"Yeah. In the winter, we'd go Sunday afternoon and go down the hills. My dad liked to have fun with the family like that."

"What did you do in the summer?"

"In the summer we'd go in the boat. Up north, in the boat, we'd go to town."

She said, of her father, "he was the leader in the fun."

*

The picture she painted (see last post), the things she thinks about and says -- they're simple, but deep, even consequential. Behind a soft voice, inside a mind that drifts, she's all in there somewhere. Life -- her life -- is profound, meaningful and humbling, and I wish I could take back some of the things I've said.