A Lot of Us Go Out as We Came In – What a Horrible Cruel Joke

A good friend and I keep having the same conversation. It is all about how we come into the world helpless, and dependent on others, then as we grow and age we become completely self-sufficient, only to continue to age and, unless we are really lucky, start to become helpless and dependent on all others all over again until we die. It is a horrible cruel joke on all living things.

The first few lines of this horrible cruel joke have already been said in my mother’s life. She is showing signs of dementia, along with signs of possible strokes. She can no longer walk without a cane or a walker. She has trouble finding certain words in her sentences, and has made some very serious errors in judgment, such as giving out her banking information to strangers over the phone.

I find this stage of life to be particularly cruel when it comes to my mother. My mother has had a rough life. She grew up during the depression era, she lost her first child at age of 7 due to severe complications from cerebral palsy, cared for her mother in our home for 8 years during the 70’s, nursed my father through 2 major illnesses, and then, after several years of just beginning to enjoy their lives, she cared for him for 10 years in their home while he succumbed to Alzheimer's. After my father’s death, she was just coming into her own as a widow when she dropped everything to come to TX and care for my children for a year while my husband received cancer treatments at M.D. Anderson in Houston. She finally moved to TX in 2001 with the hope of being able to help me with my husband and children, and that we would be able to go out and enjoy being a family. Unfortunately, there has been very little time for us to do all we planned to do because of the demands upon our lives by my husband’s illness and my children’s schedules. My mother not only became completely self-sufficient in her life, but she helped many others hold their lives together.

Despite all the troubles she has had, my mother has had one great passion in her life, sewing. Through sewing she was able to keep herself and her children fashionable on a limited budget, and decorate the homes my father built for her to the envy of her friends. My mother loved to watch sewing shows and read sewing books. When my mother was at the sewing machine, she was a great artist. Now she can no longer sew. Oh, she can hand stitch a few things here and there, but operating the sewing machine is past her, as is laying out the pattern and putting it all together. It just breaks her heart. She recently had her sewing machine repaired because she said that was the problem, but we both knew it wasn’t the machine. She can no longer remember how to thread the machine, let alone select the stitches. I remember thinking when I realized she could no longer sew that her joke was a particularly cruel one.

Mom will be 85 years old next week. Having watched my father’s decline, and my husband’s slow, yet brilliant, death, I don’t know whether to hope for a quick punch line in life’s joke on my mother, or a joke that carries a few more laughs. However my mother’s joke turns out, I will do my best to make sure she enjoys it as much as possible.