Aging Sucks!

Aug 08, 14 Aging Sucks!

Posted by in Dear Diary, Family, Featured

Watching my parents age is excruciating.  They are kind and lovely people and I want them to defy aging.  I want to choose a moment in time and freeze them, exactly like they were, at their best – healthy, full of energy, and happy… probably in the early 1990s and keep them exactly like that forever.  I want them to be whole and perfect and not to feel any pain–much the same as I feel about my children. My mother has had Multiple Sclerosis since she was in high school.  She’s fought it bravely her whole life and has been happy and very healthy.  She has used a cane for most of my life and is now using a walker.  When I’m with her, I cannot accept the changes that are happening to her.  I want her to fight harder and to defy the aging that is happening to her.  I don’t know if she can fight hard enough–start physical therapy again, do exercises, build strength, and stay out of the wheelchair for a couple more years.  I know she’s struggling to accept the changes that are happening to her.  It is the proverbial “bad thing” that has been looming over her for my entire life:  The Chair.  Immovability.  It is the thing to fight against and I am watching her give up. I am pushing her to fight, fight, fight.  Maybe what I need to be doing is telling her it’s okay.  Some of the agony is in me not wanting to say the wrong thing and I don’t want to contribute to her giving up. Years ago when I trained to be a hospice volunteer, they taught us to be willing to just talk about death.  So many people in our patients’ lives wanted them to get better and sometimes they needed someone to just be with them to talk about dying and what they were experiencing.  I wonder if this is the same for my mom–that she is facing losing her ability to walk and...

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Ancestors and Applesauce

Feb 12, 14 Ancestors and Applesauce

Posted by in Family

A few months ago, Mel spent the evening making some home-made applesauce with the apples from our tree in the backyard.  He used his grandmother’s recipe.  The apples are tart and small and delicious if you have a lot of time to work with them.  He peeled and chopped about 40 apples and we ate all the applesauce for dinner.  I remember my grandmother having containers and containers of home-made applesauce.  I wonder how my ancestors managed to preserve so much food. For the last couple of years, I have been working to try to put some food away.  I am shocked by the volume of food that is required if I want to eat it during the winter.  I buy what I consider large quantities of things–a bushel of tomatoes, a flat of strawberries, and they disappear as I make jam or sauce.  That is kind of what happened with the apples. I have been judging myself by a tough standard, I realized.  I am the first woman in my family to continue in a career after I married.  The women I admire who were fantastic at putting food away were housewives.  If it were my job to put food away, I imagine I would be a fair bit better at it.  I picture them never really sitting down, but then I think of the handwork my grandmother did–always making something–and I realize she had to sit down for that.  And she watched her soap operas.  I am not sure her life was quite as full as I thought it was.  She had some down time I think. I spend my time in front of a computer.  It is ironic that I work and feel lazy because I can’t do all the tasks women from previous generations...

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