Checking Out

Mom decided to check out for the day. She does that sometimes although it’s never gone to the extent she did yesterday. We weren’t sure if she was coming back this time. But she did. After spending most of yesterday trying to coax her to open her eyes and to take a few sips of water from a straw, this morning she was as good as new, like some resurrection or something. It is totally weird.

She had a whole day where she didn’t open her eyes at all from the time they got her up to the time we put her to bed for the night. I couldn’t get her to open her mouth to eat or to drink a cup of coffee and she would only occasionally and just barely respond to my voice with mumbles that I couldn’t decipher. I left the home after she was put to bed and asked to be called if there were any changes during the night. There were no calls. I got up in the morning and went back to the home to find her sitting at the breakfast table woofing down a muffin and a toast and drinking a cup of coffee.

“Hi Mom”, I said. She looked up at me and said, “This muffin is all crumbling, pull up a chair.” “How are you feeling?” I asked. “Good”, she responded. “Did you go on strike yesterday?” “Yes”, she said. And that was that. A new woman was sitting in that chair. She finished her breakfast and I took her to her room, washed her face, put some lipstick on her, hooked her table tray to her wheel chair and gave her a magazine which she was leafing through as I said goodbye and walked away shaking my head.

As I drove home I thought about the many times when I was exhausted when I was raising my four children, held a job and came home and worked on the farm and wished I could have gone on strike for a day, or two or three. Or the times when we looked after Mom in our home and we were totally burned out and I was traveling an hour to school every day and trying to study and I was so tired that there were days where I thought checking out for 24 hours would have been wonderful and just what I needed.

And as I drove home today, I thought to myself. Good for her! Good for her for after 86 years of being here and of always “doing” what was expected of her or what she thought was the “right thing” to do and what would be “expected” of her, she can finally take it upon herself to check herself out for a day and in a way saying. “I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do and today what I choose to do is to sleep all day.” Thank you for that. In many ways you have been and continue to be one of my greatest teachers in showing me how to look after myself and in teaching me to do now what you could never do for yourself when you were going through life.