She sits by the window with the TV on seeing nothing.
The cancer that took her breast twenty years ago has come for the rest of her. My mother, now in her ninetieth year, resembles a dying leaf hanging tentatively from a very feeble tree. Seeing her only once or twice a year, this visit has been more sobering than the last. She is unsteady on her feet needing assistance for just a trip to the bathroom. (Incontinence is a fact of life these days.) Her memory...a memory. I sense that she doesn't really know who I am; Linda, my wife, maybe. Like the hostess of a large cocktail party, she seems to know that I have been invited but she searches for a name.
My brother, Linda and I take mom to a scheduled doctor appointment. The sawbones offers nothing more than "Her oncologist can give her something to keep her comfortable." Thanks doc! We got her dressed and in the car for this? What's the point? Don't get me started on the medical profession.
If living a long life is nothing more than "keeping comfortable" and watching TV in your pajamas I may consider giving up exercise and returning to my seat at the end of the bar. Society needs to re-think our approach to old age.
As I pull the car around to pick her up at the front door of the doctor's clinic, my mother asks my wife who is "the old man" messing with our car? It is the first laugh of a long day for this old man.
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