Rant #3,131: Mama

This coming Sunday is Mother’s Day, and to some, this is the holiest day of the year.

It is the day that we celebrate mothers, those women who gave birth to us and gave birth to our children.

This year, my family is going to have a very subdued celebration.

My wife continues to mend after her recent fall, and my mother’s dementia is really starting to get the best of her in uncertain ways.

We will celebrate the day—my son and I bought cards and gifts for the two of them—but it is going to be very subdued, and I hope it will be as fun as it can be under the circumstances.

My wife and mom deserve a day to celebrate themselves and their accomplishments, and no matter what their physical condition is, they will get what they deserve this weekend.

Here is what I wrote, in edited form, about the holiday in Rant #2,141, dated May 11, 2018:

“Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!

Yes, I am wishing all of you ladies a happy Mother's Day two days early because I generally do not write blog posts on Sundays, and that is when what some call "the holiest day of the year" occurs.

Without our moms, we would not be here. Yes, the same could be said of fathers, too, but we have our day next month, so let's focus on moms right now.

They are our first best friends, because we grow inside of them.

When the time comes after nine months, they are the ones that bear us.

And when the time comes, they are basically the ones who nurture us.

Dads are there, too, but our relationship with our fathers is similar, but different.

Often the first words we say as babies is "mama," and there is a clear, distinct reason for that.

I don't know if my first word was "mama," but I respect my mother with all my heart.

And the same could be said for my wife, the mother of my son, who is a mother through and through.

Yes, mothers are the best people in the world, and on Sunday, we celebrate their greatness, but we really should be celebrating 365 days a year, because mothers are that good.

And on Mother's Day, I often think about my grandmothers. Even though mine have both been deceased since the 1990s, they live on in my heart. They were two great people, and I will never forget them.”

Little did I realize five years ago that the two mothers my family are celebrating would be not themselves at this point in time, but things are looking up for both of them.

My mother—who does not eat regularly even when watched over, and doesn’t seem to understand, at this point, what she is doing to herself by not eating—actually gained two ponds when she went to the doctor this week, certainly due to my prodding her to eat.

She now weighs all of 100 pounds, but still down a dozen pounds from a year-and-a-half ago.

It isn’t easy—it often feels like I am the parent and she is four years old when trying to get her to eat—but whatever I am doing seems to be working, to an extent, and until the next time she goes to the doctor and they find she has lost weight, which I know is coming.

My wife goes to the doctor in an early Monday appointment, where she will be checked out to see where she is after the bad fall she took last week.

I have no doubt that she is going to be given a relatively clean bill of health, with limitations, of course; you can’t fall on your head like she did and expect to walk out of the doctor’s office scot-free.

But I believe the doctor will tell her that yes, she is healing, and yes, she can do many things she wasn’t allowed to do before, but with limitations.

She seems to be physically better, and appears to be more annoyed at the inactivity than anything else.

The other day, I asked her flat-out what she wanted for Mother’s Day, and she told me, “I want to be better and be myself.”

I told her that that would be her Mother’s Day gift from God, but if she continues to adhere to the program, she will get there in due time.

So all you moms, have a great Mother’s Day!

Due to my wife’s early doctor’s appointment on Monday, I will have to skip that day’s Rant, hopefully with good news all around.

Please keep my wife in your thoughts this weekend, and have a great weekend, a great Mother’s Day, and I will speak to you again on Tuesday.