A joyful heart is good medicine...
Proverbs 17.22
My mother lived with the pain of rheumatoid arthritis for most of her adult life. Her legacy to me in that was that she did so with much grace and humor. With a chuckle that made light of the challenges she faced, she'd often remind me that growing older ain't for sissies.
By the time I cared for her in our home, her memory had faded and her disabilities were many, but her ability to laugh at herself and others remained.
Despite my decades earlier career in professional nursing, the hands-on care of someone with mother's complex needs was a new experience. Unaware that she needed adaptive clothing with closures in the back, I remember trying to dress her in a blouse she'd worn for years before her drastic decline in health. Slipping her right arm through the shirt sleeve was a breeze, but even with my daughter's help, repeated efforts and short of breaking her arm, there was no way to slide her left arm through the other. We'd both laugh at our predicament.
Mother's laughter and cheerful disposition were the gift of good medicine for us both.
Over the years, Mothers Day celebrations were often one with my mother's birthday, and were she not in Heaven this Mother's Day weekend, we'd be celebrating her 96th birthday today.
I miss my mother and her hugs terribly. Though I know I must wait for Heaven to hug her back and tell her how much I love her still, I fell asleep last night asking Jesus that if it's possible He'd do so for me.
~ Van Komatsu
{Photo: my paternal grandmother Lucille White, my beautiful mother Mary Eleanor with me, my dad with my baby brother Mike, my maternal grandmother Mary Gardner, Easter, 1952}
