The Friday Photo
November 28, 2014
Earlier today my mother-in-law said goodbye to the house she and her family restored in the late 1970s. It is a wonderful house where food has been served to appreciative guests, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have played in the huge hallway, and rosemary still spills out of huge planters in the backyard.
The house is now one obstacle after another since strokes and dementia left her fragile and frail. She is too much for my father-in-law and her bighearted caregivers to manage, so the hard words, “She can’t live at home any more” were said earlier this week.
I imagine it will begin to sink in when the dishes left by visiting sons and their families are unloaded from the dishwasher and he drives to the nursing home to sit with the woman he has known since he was 13 (or 12, he says he fibbed about his age when they met, in hopes of impressing her as an older man).
He’ll find a new routine in the coming days, but there will be fewer dishes to clean up after a meal now. Hopefully with each day it will be easier.
This is happening to so many in my life, both directly and indirectly related. In every case each has outlived most contemporaries and many family their age. Yet it is so very sad. Without modern medicine I am convinced not one would have made it this far. I’m at 70 and realize the day is quickly approaching when I will be ‘at top of the batting order.’ Know I am thinking of you and yours as well as Jo and Frank.