Geriatric Snippets

I hate being an old cow--bad eyes, bad feet, a bobbling head, and a ton of pills to take every day. Moooooo!

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I remember the first time I realized my parents were old. They had driven up to visit relatives in Ohio, where my mother had to be hospitalized for the liver cancer that eventually killed her. Brother and Older Son drove their car back to Texas while Mom and Dad flew home. When their plane disembarked, two old people with what looked like baggage tags hung around their necks tottered toward me. In shock, I realized they were my parents.

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Daughter checks me over for obvious signs of aging every time we meet. She wants to be sure I keep my hair from going gray, that my make-up is up-to-date, that I'm not doing anything or wearing anything that reminds her of Grandma. Daughter is in constant rebellion against me, but I am her mother, the cornerstone of her universe, and she doesn't want her universe to go off-kilter.

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I think when someone makes his offspring promise never to put him a nursing home, he is really making them promise he will never get old, incontinent, or senile.

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The first thing I do each time I enter Dad's room is check to see that he's still breathing. He doesn't see, doesn't hear, doesn't know who I am. But still I visit twice a week. Once the daughter, now the mother.

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Every time I visit my father, I think "This is my future." Somehow it seems a better way could be found to leave this world than old age and death.