December 28, 2010 Another good day with Martha

What an enjoyable day with Mom today!  My new approach to dealing with Mom seems to be working.  I was thinking today about Mom and the way she used to be.  She always moved fast and accomplished whatever she started.  I guess I was still seeing Mom the way she used to be not the way she has become.  So hopefully that will help me deal with her better.  I found also that if I let her get up and just do her "thing" she is more willing to do what I ask of her.  I tell her everything I'm gonna do like, okay now we are gonna take your pajama top off and it is seeming to work.  I was catching myself becoming the way I was when my girls were little.  I was stressing over getting "x" amount of things done in a day, I stressed if there was a mess - I was just wanting things to be perfect.  I guess with all the people from Hospice and such coming and going the perfectionist in me was coming back.  Today I reprimanded myself for worrying so much about what other people thought.  This has got to work for Mom, she is the main focus here.  So onward and upward as my Amie says.  I was preparing dinner tonight and looked over and there sat Mom in the rocking chair surrounded by her "children" sleeping.  She looked so sweet.  I can remember her sitting with my girls in her lap and sitting with her eyes closed just resting.  These are the memories that will soothe me the rest of my life. At dinner tonight, Mom picked up the smallest of her children and was holding it in the crook of her arm, the  same as mothers down through the ages have done, and finished eating her dinner.  The Hospice nurse asked me if Mom had always been so taken with children and I told her of course I can't remember how she was with my sisters and I but, that is exactly how she was with her grandchildren and any other child she came into contact with.  We are so blessed to have such a precious matriarch in our family.  Tonight as we were finishing dinner Mom looked tired and I asked her if she felt tired and she said yes.  Then she said, "If Jesus doesn't come.......then she dropped her as if she were dying.  Don't you really wonder what goes on in the petite gray head?  Onto tomorrow.....................