Unexplained

Today I went to the funeral of my childhood's best friend's father. When I was 2, our families were the best of friends. The night my sister was born, my parents dropped me off at their house and placed me in the bed with my best friend. She was beside herself when she awoke to find me there. Today my mind took a walk down memory lane as I saw her and heard stories about her father. All of a sudden I was back in their den, umbrella up, blanket out and seashells spread as we imagined we were at the beach. Next, I was pushing that Beta tape into the VCR so we could watch Anne of Green Gables for the first the fifth time. Then there was Kindergarten graduation where we both wore matching green dresses to play flowers in Mary, Mary Quite Contrary's garden with our faces poked through the middle of Styrofoam flower-petal cut-outs. So many memories flooded through me. 

Then I listened to the pastor and the speakers talk about this man I only knew as a child. On either side of the chapel were the 2 lives of this man. The life I knew him in as a pastor and my best friend's father. The man of my childhood. The other life happened after his divorce from my best friend's mom; after a brain tumor; after so many things. On one side sat his original wife, kids, his sibling. On the other side, his current wife and her children. Two lives. One person.

It makes me wonder how many lives I will have.

Already there is my original life...birth through high school. There there was my college and single life. Currently I'm in my marriage and children life. Goals are different. Priorities are different. Everything is different. 

My mother is in the midst of her retired life. After nearly 30 years in the school system, she finally is getting to enjoy life and family.

Last Friday, my motherr went to the ER with total body pain. By Saturday when I saw her, she was lying on a stretcher having just returned from a CT scan and an MRI. All pain meds had worn off and she was frozen. Her body hurt so badly that she could not move a muscle. As my mother screamed out in pain from just breathing, I leaned over and kissed her forehead. What in the world is happening?

Over this past week I've watched my very active mother; the woman who can keep up with my twin 4 year olds with no problem, reduced to an invalid. She might as well have been paralyzed as she had to ask for someone to scratch her nose. Each day there have been tests and doctors and more tests and more doctors. We are on day 9. She has improved but minimally. Still there are no answers. It took a week for my mother to smile again. Mostly because it hurt too bad. Each day my dad spends days with her and I spend nights. I am waning at this point. I've cried most of the day. I'm exhausted but I have a family and obligations...like funerals. My mother is waning as well. It seems that for every good day, she has a bad day making her odds of improvement merely 50/50 by this, day 9. 

I owe my mother so many days of care. We all owe her so many days.

For as hard as it is for her to be the patient. It is proving just as hard to be the caretakers. 

I'm hoping that this isn't the start of another life. A harder life. She has barely been able to live the retirement one long enough to enjoy it. In the meantime all we can do is pray for answers and feel helpless in the hands of doctors we don't know.