She was fairly alone in Seattle by then. Her longtime partner had been suffering from dementia for several years. Her eight grown children had mostly left the state, and were scattered across the country and world. She had become disconnected and more reclusive in her cozy apartment amidst the bustling activities of the U district. She moved slowly, and seemed excruciatingly fragile.
I'm on the slippery slope, she said more than once during my visit. The last stage of my life. It's strange to think there will no longer be "a ME."
As I looked around her cozy apartment, filled with books and music and artwork, good food, and creative thought, I felt hopeful that she had surrounded herself with some of the best physical comforts life could offer at what seemed to be a last phase of life in this physical realm. Because in some ways, a lot of ways, it felt like she was preparing to move on.
I left the states that winter full of gratitude to have had the time with her, but acutely aware that her physical fragility was a harbinger of losing her beyond the veil. It was a bittersweet departure, to be certain.
But life is full of surprises with its serpentine twists and turns, ever folding back and forth upon itself. Repeating in some sense, but never exactly imitating what has happened before. Never one to stop moving, my mother kept on eating life's elephant one bite at a time.
Early in autumn this year, my eldest brother and his wife coordinated my mother's move from rainy Seattle to Boise, Idaho to be closer to them but also to save her from life's final years spent navigating an often rainy and gray city with never-ending road construction, horrible traffic congestion, and a human population that seems to grow exponentially every year.
She has sunshine now, a lot of it. But more importantly, she has hope. She has become lighter these months in Boise, which is a relief in no small way because I wasn't ready to receive a call I couldn't come back from.
When I speak to her from Denmark, she sounds content in a way I haven't heard before. She seems relaxed and decidedly not finished with this world and her time in it. She is reading voraciously and watching loads of movies on her new 50 inch television that she never wanted or felt like she needed but was thrilled to receive as a Christmas present from all of her kids. She is making plans for the spring when she can have an herb garden on her patio. Small things, but they matter.
2019 has been an exhausting year; a deep-down in the bones exhaustion filled with countless challenges, lessons, and changes that were wholly stressful even when for the better. But as we look toward 2020, I consider my mom's situation, and I am struck by the number of fresh starts life gives us: a seemingly endless array if we really pay attention.
Just when we think there is no renewal left, something unexpected happens and a we find another opportunity, another path, another dream, another happiness, another chance to begin again.
