Those Mother-Daughter Lost Things

I used to have dreams of doing things with Mom.  Some were discussed.  Some were going to be surprises I was hoping I could afford later.

Mom and I discussed going to Omaha and wandering around the old marketplace area - can't thing of what it is called now.  We were going to go down for a day.  She would show me haunts and show me around the areas she loved down there.  We would eat authentic Italian food and window shop.  These were the things she loved to do.  We both love little shops and history.

I had hoped to surprise her sometime later with a mother-daughter trip to Ireland.  She always wanted to go.  I had hoped to be able to save up for and afford this.  I looked forward to doing this with my mom.  We both had similar tastes in things to do.

When I last saw my mom, I was leaving her in the nursing home.  I never expected this to happen so fast if she was to get Alzheimer's.  I thought we had time.  Turning to leave that last day I saw my mom, her natural brown hair contrasting the white and gray hair of the other nursing home residents.  She was in a wheelchair, totally absorbed in the activity apron they had tied around her.  She is reduced to basically an infant, with the exception of very few short comprehensible sentences.  She switches quickly from lucid (rare) to oblivious.

Brian's dad died last week.  Despite my grief, I am appreciate the finality of this loss.  It is over.  There is closure.  With Mom, we are grieving her loss piece by piece.  She is mostly gone, but we continue to visit her and yearn for the parts of her we used to know.  I don't know if she is suffering like we are.  It doesn't seem so.  I think we suffer for her and for us.  All of us.  We are grieving her loss and ours.  I'm guessing other family members think the same unthinkable thoughts I do about the speed of her demise at this point.  We don't want to lose Mom, but we mostly have.  There will be no mother-daughter trips.