I DON'T REMEMBER WHAT IT WAS LIKE- WHEN I COULD REMEMBER

This was the response from my mother when I asked if it bothered her that she couldn't remember anything anymore. The answer was NO, it didn't bother her that she couldn't remember,duh--she can't remember. As my mother is aging, the role reversal is nothing I had prepared for. We got all these books on parenting when we had our kids, but how many of us have been sent a book like:

"PARENTING YOUR PARENT AND LOVING IT" or
"BECOMING YOUR AGING PARENT'S PARENT WITHOUT HAVING A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN" or
"CRACKING THE PARENTING PARENT'S CODE?" or
"THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO SURVIVING YOUR PARENTS GOLDEN YEARS".

This parent-child "flip-flop" was gradual at first but accelerated over the last year or so. I am becoming my mother flips into I AM my mother's mother. . . so to speak. This role for myself and my siblings is challenging and stressful. It is a role I would relinquish at a drop of a hat. I caught myself telling her to do something today and finished with, "at least that's what my mother use to tell me!". This role is an emotional grinder. With every new issue that develops,I find myself thrown into the grief process: bargaining, anger, sadness, and struggling to accept. Grieving the mother that faded away after several strokes because I remember what it was like when she use to remember.
I was struck, though, today that it all bothers me, more than it bothers her. Her stroke has left her just in the present. What is important is just what is going on NOW. The future is not important. What is wrong with that? A lesson for all of us to be more present in the moment. I took her out to lunch and she savored every single bite and practically licked her plate. She said it was a "dream come true". Go figure! Did she mean the eggplant Parmesan or me or getting away from the Emerald palace?

In "My Stroke of Insight", Jill Bolte Taylor,a brain scientist, has written about her experience with her stroke which helps me understand this brain process a little better. The cells in her brain became nonfunctional, she shifted into the consciousness of the present moment. She had no memories of her past and no perception of the future, but was instead in a "right here, right now, the present moment is all there is" awareness. "I got to sit in the space of silence gurus meditate toward for years."

So I am still learning lessons from my mother. . .

“Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).”
-– James Baraz--