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Had I Hit Life’s Pause Button?
At 68, just as life seemed to close in around me, it began opening in ways I hadn’t imagined
“I’m calling about your mother,” the woman who came in every day to check on her said. “I’m not sure, but . . . she thinks the girls from Sex and the City are dropping by to visit.”
My 98-year-old mother had seemed a bit confused, the woman said. I drove to Seattle, caught the next flight to Long Beach, rented a car and went straight to her retirement complex in Seal Beach. By the time I arrived, she’d been admitted to the medical centre with a possible stroke. Tests ruled that out; the diagnosis was severe dehydration.
She’d told me many times in her later years that she wanted to remain in her home and never, never to go to a nursing home. The memory of an old friend of hers, admitted to a place next to the retirement complex, haunted her. A stroke had left the woman unable to speak. With tears in her eyes, my mum used to imitate the sounds the woman made, a clear cry for help.
I knew I would do everything I could to ensure that my mother remained in the home she’d lived in for thirty years. While her Sex and the City visit wasn’t the stroke I’d feared, it was clear she needed more than just the daily caretaker. I decided to…
