I Want My Mama

The town where you live is so different now than the town I grew up in. Yes, there are still many of the familiar faces I saw from day to day, but these days when I go to the grocery store I'm more likely to encounter strangers.

I am the stranger here. But I'm trying to fit in after all these years. Because you need me with you now.

You're closing in on your 85th birthday. Your health isn't as good as it should be. Your mobility is compromised. Your hearing is shot. I'm never sure if you're hearing what I'm saying or simply responding to what you're guessing I've said. Hearing aids be damned, you don't hear well. It's all about comprehension, and I don't believe you're getting all the details.

I want my mama back.

Please don't get me wrong. I love being here with you, and I will take care of you no matter what. I love our talks, and I love sharing laughs over whatever we're blessed to find that gives us the giggles.

But I want my mama back.

I want you to go out to the golf course and hit a few balls and cuss a blue streak over whatever it is that gets you going out there. The ball, the club, the swing--whatever.

I want you to make your delicious biscuits and gravy. I will never get them right. Close, but no cigar. But you can't cook, if you can't stir. It hurts my heart to see you struggle to hold on to a spoon, even to eat. Thank God for injections that gave you back enough agility to feed yourself. I know how much that means to you, whether you say it out loud or not.

I want you to walk across a room without pain in your feet, ankles or back. I want you to get up from a chair without a struggle.

I want my mama back.

Yes, you're still my mama, the wonderful woman who birthed and raised me and my four siblings. You're still funny and vibrant and kind and sweet and smart.

But you're in pain, and it hurts me. It hurts to see your struggles and hear your moans and it hurts to wipe away your tears. I pray each day that doctors will be competent enough to find a way to alleviate the pain and make your final days peaceful and restful and happy.

So, my wish for you is, I want my mama back. The mama who could do her own housework and cooking, the mama who could walk around in the redwood forest and marvel at the height of the trees, the mama who could out-cuss the priest on the links. (Yes, that priest could swear with the sailors, bless his heart!)

I don't say these things to you. I know you already feel helpless in the face of aging less gracefully than we'd all have hoped. I know you don't like the fact that you need me here, even though you love me and enjoy my company.

Loving me and enjoying my companionship isn't the same as needing me, and we both know it. But, while you do say it from time to time, I never will. I'm a person who needs to be needed. I don't resent it in any way. But I never thought it would be you who would need me.

I'm the one who needs you. My children need me. Their children need them. That's supposedly the order of things.

Except, it really isn't how things work, is it?

Things come full circle. The one who met the needs of others at some point will have needs themselves.

It makes me fear the day that it might be me in need.

And I want my mama back.

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