Since my mom got sick three years ago and has required all my attention, I’ve felt unable to set other priorities. It’s strange how a life can change completely from an instant to another. I used to have a great variety of interests and activities. Now, she occupies my mind and my time. These days I’m worried because she is suffering and her mood is low. I’m doing everything in my power to give her a better quality of life. She loves to see me happy and smiling, so I have to hide my emotions and don’t show my worry in front of her. She likes to see me well dressed, so I try to take care of my appearance. She likes to receive new things, so I buy on-line things for me and for her always in her mailing address, so she can see the packages and enjoy when we open them (she can’t open them because is paralytic). Above all, she loves to know I’m around. I’m not too talkative, but she doesn’t mind. All she cares is to know I’m there. She says likes being with me because I’m quiet and that gives her peace. She gives me peace too. And she knows how to show me her love, with thousands of little things, like when she caress delicately my hair with the only hand she can move while I’m kneeling to put on her slippers.
So I have no longer a top ten list. Not for now. My top list is only of one.
Thank you for sharing your situation with us and your mom with us.
A handful of years ago everything was going wrong for me. Precisely because everything was upside down I was able to spend the last few months of father’s life with him. I didn’t tell him what was happening. That would have been harder on him. No. He was my Top 1 list for a few months.
We loved watching TV and hanging out and was a hardcore vegetarian. One night, just before I left, he grabbed my arm and pulled me close.
“I want some sausage for breakfast. Think we could do that soon?”
“Hell, yeah!”
The next morning I snuck into the house and started making him breakfast.
It is important to not have Top Tens. I was lucky to have that time.
A few months later he passed.
It was all about the quality of life. His life. Not mine.
Thank you for your personal reflection.
Thank you for sharing your story with me. I see we have a lot in common.