Mom

Since I haven't talked about her in a while, I thought I'd blather on a little about mom today.  All three of us kids have seen her over the last few days and have come up with almost the same finding:  mom may be on Hospice, but she's not going anywhere anytime soon.  My visit with her Thursday went like this.  She was still lying on her bed since her care giver hadn't gotten her up to her wheel chair yet.  I sat on the bed beside her and filled her in on what's been happening, her great grand kids, etc.  I always save any Hudson, Hadley and Avery stories til the end because they always make her light up and laugh.  (The good news is, if I don't have any new stories, I can always tell her any old ones because she can't remember anything after about 5 seconds anyway.  Believe me, that's helpful when you are doing a monologue.) 

Mom was especially happy and giggly, and we screamed over old stories.  I especially like to try to relate the current time of year, to things we did in the past, around the same time of year.  I figure the memories are lodged in there somewhere, and whether she remembers or not, she always plays right along.  One of my favorites is to talk to her about Koon Kreek, the fishing club she belonged to in East, Texas, where we all used to go.  She used to take her dogs, and we took ours and our kids, and being out in the woods with snorting deer, and dogs straining their leashes, was just the best. When all the grandsons got older, they'd go down and hog hunt, drink beer on the sly, go muddin', and gator hunting.  Those are the stories that make her really laugh.  Mom usually "heard about it" from some of the older, crotchety male members, and she'd just tell them "Soooo...when you were their age, you were perfect, weren't you", and she'd laugh.  You simply did not get between her and her grandsons.  SHE might get royally pissed at them, but you sure better not.  Not if you were smart anyway.

My brother told me when he had lunch with her on Friday that they'd had Mexican food, so he pretended they were at "El Frequence"  (El Fenix).  He told her that they could pretend her ice water was a Margarita, and she played right along.  He said she's always drinks tons of water at lunch so he told her to be careful--she'd already had several margaritas.  He said she loved it. 

While mom's body is all twisted up like a pretzel and her mind darts in and out, she's still able to remember fun times, if you lead her to them.