Grace

I'm just plain tired today. This week has zapped my energy. I woke up with no reserves left so I'm doing my best to put self care front and center today.

Two of us waited together while our friend got fluid drained from her abdomen yesterday. We cried. Then we cried some more with our friend when she was done. We have no crystal ball but we sense that time is short. It was hard.

I spent the evening with my mother in law last night. She is a bit confused but her long term memory is good. I don't waste energy correcting her in times such as when she introduces me as her sister in law. We visit and have long silences. I am grateful to have cultivated the patience for silence. I don't have to fill empty space.

She has no idea that her time is short. She muses aloud for where she might go live next. She asks my opinion on how to cover her bald head when she goes to church. I don't bother telling her that there will be no more trips to her church where church rules insist that she cover her head. She worries that the flowers on her little cap will be seen as too much by some people. She told me that some of the people she worships with, the ones who think they will be the only ones in heaven, are stupid. I never know what's going to come out of her mouth.

I tiptoed out of her room once she had been asleep for a while. Mercifully she stayed sleeping. Earlier this week, when I was trying to leave while she slept, she woke up and called my name. I went back and she told me to say hello to Dearest One and my children from her. There is a propriety that is lovely in her generation. Manners. My mother on her death bed thanked her sister for coming to visit.

I am (perhaps too much so) a stickler when it comes to my grandchildren learning manners. They have no idea it's because I struggle to remember to use those basic social niceties. I've tended to bark orders and be demanding. That has softened with age and healing, really. But I still have to work at it.

Years ago, when my children were small, my brother in law was staying with us for a while. I came downstairs to the breakfast table and starting barking out something or other to one of my kids. He took a sip of his coffee, put down his cup and said to me, "Good morning to you, too."

Today I am grateful for being given enough days to grow and change. And tonight I will definitely be grateful for my bed.