I love you, Momma

My mother is a stroke victim, she suffered a massive stroke 4 years ago today, on August 10, 2001. Since that day our lives have changed drastically. Complete right side paralysis has striped her of her independence. Her body is broken...her mind hasn't changed a bit!! She can think, reason and express herself. She no longer talks and can only babble non-sensical terms that are not real words, the professionals have termed it "word salad", we call it "mom talk".

Sunday is always a "mom day". My mother lives in an assisted living facility near us. Three or 4 days/evenings a week my husband and I go visit her. Somedays I go alone, like I did this past Sunday.

On Sunday we always take her dinner, Tai Dynasty-the best Chinese food ever, Los Dos Amigo-the best Mexican food ever, or simply broccoli-cheddar soup from Quizno's. After we had lunch on Sunday (Quizno's, broccoli-cheddar soup and chicken salad) she and I embarked on a project that I have been promising to do for her. Since all of my siblings and their families live a minimum of 4 hrs away her main contact with other family members is pictures. She has a bulletin board by her liftchair that is covered with pictures and no room to add more so I purchased a scrapbook album and dug in my (and her) supplies and we began the process of getting some of those pictures into the scrapbook.

Oh, I wish you could have seen the sparkle in her eyes as we added picture after picture. She has the use of her left hand only (but was righthanded prior to the stroke) so she is unable to do anything like this on her own, but she does have an opinion!!! So I put the tape on the back and she placed the pictures, the stickers and other embellishments. We worked on this for over 2 hours, the longest she has managed to keep her mind on anyone thing in a long time.

My mother is the craftiest person I know, I learned to express myself through various forms of art (sewing, ceramics, jewerly making, etc-) because my mother is an expert. My sister got the green thumb genes, she can grow anything and keep it healthy...I, on the other hand, will receive a healthy plant and kill it in mere hours! As we were working on momma's scrapbook I would sneak a peek at her...her face was lit up, many times I would see a grin on her face...she was so enjoying participating again. Joy to my heart! Watching as she used her left hand and her lips to peel a sticker so that she could place it on the page, doing all she could to create again, the more she did, the more I took a back seat and just watched her work her magic on the pages.

I have tried to engage her in simple activities before, like cutting the thread after finishing the binding on one of the quilts she started but did not get a chance to finish. My sister and I tried to get her to do some ceramic paintings - she wasn't having any part of it!!!

The simplest things in life...we take so much for granted! The lyrics, "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone" ring with such truth. The simplest things in life can be stolen from us in the blink of an eye and life will change forever.

We have lots and lots of pictures yet to put in her new scrapbook, and she left me plenty of supplies (another of her talents...shopping!!!) in which to make her scrapbook beautiful and fun.
Don't take life for granted, don't take the use of 2 hands working as one together, don't take speech for granted- say I love you, say I appreciate you, say thank you, say take care as often as you can.

Momma, I love you, thank you for making me who I am...