My mother doesn’t like to be written about because she is very private about her life, but, as I’m not so private, I would like, here, to salute her for the following:
When my mother was just in her 40s, Dad died of a heart attack. Not long after that, she developed breast cancer and had to have a mastectomy and chemotherapy. Then, about ten years ago, she began to lose her hearing. Two years ago, she fell and broke her hip and then, just as her hip had healed, she fell off her bicycle and broke her pelvis and wrist. And now she has macular degeneration and has to have six-weekly injections into her good eye to prevent it from getting worse (I took her today for one of these).
Despite all of these situations, my mother is an absolute inspiration to all of us and is as active now, at 79, as she was when Dad died and before. She will do anything for anyone and her volunteer work is beyond belief. She has more energy and compassion and generosity than I will ever have!
After the car accident, six months ago, my mother and my brothers’ families had to deal emotionally with repercussions, injuries and enormous anxiety and yet she always remained calm and in control and absolutely supportive of all of us. My own pain of regret had nowhere to go except to my mother and she helped me to figure out how to keep going. (AND she visited Anthony on all of the days I couldn’t when I had the rotten pompholyx condition).
This kind of mother is rare – the kind of mother you would dream of having – and it doesn’t seem fair that she would now be afflicted with macular degeneration, but she is. A fact. Life. Age. Hardship.
And what is Mother doing tonight? She is probably going to ignore the pain in her injected eye and work on the scrapbook she will give Ming when he turns 21 next January She has done this for each of the grandchildren preceding Ming and she has done it for my brothers and me when we each turned 50.
She is funny, clever, artistic and an absolute legend. And she is NOT old!
She is always NEW!
My/our mother xxx
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