More Thoughts

My mother was very religious. She wasn't the classic "Irish Catholic", but she believed. Over the years, she wasn't quite so willing to adopt the attitude of "If a priest says so, then that's the way it should be", but more often than not, she'd nod when she heard about something that a priest said. I wouldn't exactly mock her adherence to the EWTN television network, but she knew I didn't think much of it. (I would call it the "All Sermons, All The Time" channel, but not in her presence.) That didn't bother her. She had the classic collection of statues of saints, pictures of popes and bishops, and religious-themed materials scattered around her rooms. They comforted her, I think, which was one of the reasons we wanted to bring her home and put the hospital bed in her living room -- so she could see all that stuff. I even checked her TV to make sure it was set to turn on to the EWTN channel. It was when I was sitting in her chair, doing that, that I glanced over to where her desk had been and had the reaction I mentioned earlier.

I'm not any more religious now than I was yesterday morning, but I do wish I had that sense of comfort and support that religion can give. My wife says that she occasionally gets that feeling. She's not as religious as my mother, but she believes, too. I wish I could. I see that there are times, when your health is failing, that the idea that there is Someone looking out for you, caring about you, that can be very comforting. I don't have that feeling, but there are times when I wish I did.

When she was still able to walk up the stairs from her rooms on the first floor, we would invite her to have dinner with us. After she couldn't make the climb, even with assistance, we'd occasionally pull out a table downstairs and eat there so that she could be with us. She always said good things about the food, and if she couldn't finish what she'd taken, as was sometimes the case, she made sure to tell my wife and I that she really liked it -- she just couldn't eat all of it. "My eyes were bigger than my stomach", she would say. We'd tell her that was okay, and, if she wanted, we'd package it for her to reheat in her microwave. Truth to tell, I think some of it she didn't really like, but - well, this was my mother. She didn't complain. And she appreciated that we made the effort.

Whenever she saw a doctor, she's almost always say that she was 'trying to get well' and, if some treatment had been started, she 'felt 100% better'.

One time, she said to me that she hoped she would be able to 'leave something' to us and our daughter for all we'd done for her. I don't think we actually did all that much -- one of the reasons we liked getting the bigger house was just so we could have her and my father come live with us (in fact, my wife mentioned to her mother, just the other day, that she's lived with her mother-in-law longer than she lived with her mother, and her mother replied "Well, we might be able to do something about that". My feeling is, fine with me), so having them here was just, in a way, doing what we wanted to do. I just couldn't see leaving them in New York, and I'm glad that we didn't have to do that. We had about ten years with my father, and about twenty-two with my mother. At times, that was enough, but most times - like now -- not nearly. Anyway, when she said that about leaving something, I thought it an odd phrase. She never had much money -- her stores roughly tripled when a mostly-unknown cousin in Connecticut died and left her an amount of cash, but it still wasn't a particularly large number -- but the way she said it, you would have thought she was leaving the stocks, bonds, and occasional jeweled tiaras. I thought it was funny, but I also was touched by it. She would have been perfectly right and reasonable to keep that money, but she didn't see it that way -- she wanted to make sure that it was available to be used for us. When I was in high school, I said I wanted to be in the band, but she had to pay a twenty dollar fee for me to be able to do that. I had the usual kid's assumption that of course parents have money. After a few weeks, she came up with it. It wasn't until much later, realizing how little they had, that I figured out how difficult it was for her to do that. Made me feel pretty shabby. I can be a generous person, but I don't think I could touch her.

Last night, sitting by her bed while she was sleeping, I held her hand. She'd actively wanted both of us to hold her hand while she was awake, so I thought that would be a good idea to do it while she was asleep. I doubt she felt it, but, you know? Couldn't hurt. Might help.