Mothers

"Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist´s Mother" (1871)
by James McKneill Whistler

In the early evening on Sunday, as I was getting ready to visit with my mother at the hospital, I got a phone call from my father.

He told me he had just had the strangest conversation with mother. She had claimed that my brother in-law had visited her that day with his granddaughter and during the visit said the most awful things to her in front of the girl. When my father started questioning her about if this really could be true since she had always had a good relationship with my brother in-law, she got very angry with him and hung up the phone in his ear saying "Well you can believe it or not, but I know what happened!"

My mother and I have some similar traits. We are both usually quite even tempered but sometimes blow up. To be completely honest, neither of us are the most patient of people, although of course everyone tells us we are just that - repeatedly.

When I arrived at the hospital ward she was still upset, but now because after thinking about it she had realized that it had been a very vivid and realistic nightmare. So together we called my father on the phone and settled things to his great relief. For some reason, she also felt the need to call my sister and brother in-law and tell them about her terrible dream and tell them she was sorry she had actually thought it had really happened.

Somehow this incident told me - more than any doctors could - that my mother was getting better, even if she is still weak and tired her passion is back. She is of course still on her antibiotics but can now be without the additional oxygen most of the time.

We have started planning for her return home and the help and support she and father may need the first four weeks  and in the long run - to cope with living at home. Hopefully this will all sort itself out during the days to come. She is longing for her own comfortable bed.