Give Up But Don’t Give In

I stopped in the library to grab a book to read in my favorite cafe. I took myself to the cafe to celebrate the completion of the final arrangements for my mother’s transition from her current assisted living situation to a skilled nursing facility. I chose Diana Gabaldon’s most recent book in the “Outlander” series. I chose it to honor my mother. My mother and I have always had a complicated relationship. To say she was egocentric would be putting it mildly. I like to say that my mother came with a side order of Joan Crawford. But there were moments and places where we could connect. Most of those are gone now. Her dementia has stolen them and yet made her kinder and much more loving. She still loves art. She was a very successful interior designer. She was also a painter. When I show her cards and crafts I’ve made she loves them all. She gets as excited as a five-year old. These days she also has a five-year old’s discernment when it comes to art. I’ve had to give up having meaningful conversations or even sentences about art with her. The “Outlander” series was another point of contact for us. She had to give up reading because she started to forget the storyline by the time she got to the end of a paragraph. She used to easily carry all the plot lines in her head. I’ve had to give up discussing books with her that we’ve both enjoyed. She’s had to give up so much more. Ironically her dementia helps her to not give in. She doesn’t give in to despair. She doesn’t resent. She doesn’t mourn what she used to have because her whole world is now simply whatever is in front of her at any given moment. I learned a lot from my mother’s negative examples and a little from those sweet positive moments. Right now she’s teaching me more than ever before. I got teary while I read at lunch. But I didn’t give in to despair. I didn’t resent how things are. I didn’t mourn how they used to be. Instead, I let myself fall into my novel and be with the characters exactly the way I do when I FaceTime with my mother.