Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: SEA CHANGE or TREE CHANGE (07/13/17)
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TITLE: Twilight Meanderings | Previous Challenge Entry
By Marlene Bonney
07/19/17 -
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As in most times, I cannot resist his dimpled smile and his adorable face looking up at me so expectantly. I let him go out to the pond before breakfast, his older brother already fishing at its bank.
“Please, Ma, don’t make things difficult,” as I raise my watery eyes up along his 60-yr. old 6’ frame to his whiskered face, forcing me to respond.
I’m ninety years old—NINETY—and he was a toddler yesterday. The sun’s rays glare through the window across Jim’s balding head like skate blades across a frozen river, his sideburns and remaining white hairs replacing the dark curls I had loved to tussle—NOT yesterday, I firmly admonish my wishful thoughts—almost a CENTURY ago! When did I get so short? When did the children grow up taller than their mother?
Growing old is not for sissies, I tell myself, a mimicked daily mantra of mine for the past couple of decades. I plunk my shriveling body into the threadbare recliner, rubbing my hand back and forth along its worn arms, a prairie woman scrubbing clothes across a washboard. Jim crouches down beside me, folding his lanky body in front of me, much like I used to do beside him as a toddler.
“Ma, you know it is for the best. I’m only trying to protect you.”
“I know, honey, I know,” steadying a hand to reach out and pat his own.
I do not want things to change, but this overwhelming responsibility to maintain my home has become more than I can handle. It seems like the simplest tasks tire me more each day. Oh, I know I’m not alone. I’ve watched friends placed in care homes, living caricatures of their former selves, their independence stolen from them a little bit at a time like a shrinking lollipop under a child’s tongue. One-by-one, their lights snuffed out, the lucky ones pass on into eternity.
God has not seen fit to take me home yet. I would love to die peacefully in my sleep in this house, so familiar that I can walk around in the dark without mishap. But the upkeep of the garden, the yard, the needed repairs around here has become an impossibility, even with the children’s help. They have their own households to manage, along with health and financial concerns and ever expanding grandchildren around and I cannot continue to depend on their sacrifices of time and distance to accommodate me.
“Ma?”
“Yes, son, I hear you. I will go to Faith Haven. I have a couple of friends, there, after all,” I muse, wanting to make him feel better, “and, as you have said, I won’t have to prepare my meals or do dishes or clean anymore.”
I wistfully go around my home after Jim leaves. Poor guy, he actually offered to take early retirement to move me into his home across town where he and his sweet wife, Jenny, could take care of me. I have watched some of my elderly friends move into their children’s homes and many times, it just does not work out. Children need their own space, independent of aging parents. I will not do that to my children. If only Owen had not died, I think for the hundredth time. It just isn’t fair. . .
“Yes, Jimmy, LIFE isn’t fair,” I respond to his wailing about being forced to go to summer camp that first time, “it’s only for a week and we know it will be good for you.”
I give in to another flashback triggered in my dementia-maimed mind and live in the past for awhile, when things seemed so simple and when I was in control. In reality and in my saner moments, I realize God was ultimately in charge, guiding me and strengthening me through the years. Just as He will be with me now in a different time and place. It will certainly be simpler and there will be relief from responsibility; however, I will be a child again, with multiple parents having control over my actions!
I sit in a rocker, my hands rubbing back and forth on its slippery arms like skates on a frozen pond. Jim is here on his weekly visit and I live in the past where I am comfortable, patting his hand as he stoops beside me.
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You took a unique take on the topic and have a powerful message. I enjoyed it from beginning to end.
Each one had their own story, and each one told their own memories, but each one totally connected by their "independent days of yesteryear" --- poignant, well done and right on with thoughts of an aging individual.
Well done,
Blessings~