Author: Carolina Grit

“You must call the company and tell them to cancel my phone. You can’t hear on it anyway.”

“Do you have your hearing aids in?”

“No! They should make the phone with hearing aids in it.”

“Well, not everyone would need them. Do you want me to place your call again with your aids so you can hear them?”

“No, I don’t. I heard enough of all that whining.”

“Mom, you are good at that too. You all could play a game of who can whine the best.”

I love my Mom, but she is a whiner. I think about it often. I walk into her room day and night. Softly, I  touch her so as not to wake her. I worry that she’s not breathing; I fear she’s thirsty, hungry, too hot, or too cold, but I don’t wake her because I know it won’t be long before she is up.

11 pm: I’m sleeping soundly, but I hear her beside my bed. I think; It’s funny that she gets lost in the house during the day but knows what room I am in and on what side of the bed. 

“Barbara, Wake up! They are having a contest on WSOC for who is up at the latest. You need to call them; I might win a new car.”  She has had another dream. 

I look up, and she’s standing there with an Ensure and a little Debbie Cake. “I believe you already won the prize. It’s too late to call. You need to get back in bed.” 

I received word this past weekend that a very dear and old friend of our family passed away. I decided it best not to tell Mom. She has never forgotten her. Pearl is about seven months younger than Mom, and they became instant friends upon meeting over 65 years ago. Pearl had four daughters, and so did Mom, but we had a bonus; we had Gary, whom we all loved. Before we moved to Chesterfield, they were our neighbors, but we were inseparable as these two friends looked out for all of us as their own. I thought Pearl was beautiful, with long silky hair that she wore in a bun or braided. Her skin was like ivory, and she had the biggest smile that never seemed to leave her face. But the thing that I remember most was seeing her read her Bible and what a strong Christian woman she was. Thank you, Pearl, for loving us and all the times you packed us in the car and hauled us to Bible School. You made a positive impact on each of our lives. Your name was perfect; it means “Precious.”  I know God has a special place ready for Pearl in Heaven.

For someone who prays the Good Lord comes on and gets her, Mom sure doesn’t seem to want to go alone. I’m sure she is trying to worry the life out of me so I will have no choice but to go with her.
I know that getting old, which is suppose to be a walk into paradise, has plenty of rocks in the path. Although Mom suffers from arthritis, she will not give up on pushing and pulling her furniture around the room. She is also constantly pulling her clothes in and out of the drawers trying to rearrange them. For some unknown reason, she insist on her underclothes being under the bed in a suitcase or sometimes a bag while the drawers for them remain empty. I am baffled as to why but there is absolutely no chance of reasoning. I try to make her understand that all that motion reeks havoc on the arthritis but Mom is stubborn, always has been and will be until “The Good Lord comes to get her.
Lately, she has been more irritated than usual but I can understand since the rainy days hinder her from her time in the sun. She has always been an outdoors person.
She has been especially ill with me lately. It seems that whatever I do, it is wrong. As I was fixing her meds for the week, she didn’t hesitate to get her plug in, “I hope you’re not putting something in there to kill me.”
I tried to ignore her comment and assured her that I wouldn’t do that. If she could have read my thoughts, she would have probably made one of her desperate SOS calls to my sisters.
Sometimes I feel like a person with multiple personalities. I assume that’s what you call someone who is thinking one thing but something nicer is coming out their mouth. I was awakened at 3:15 this morning by Donny saying she was sitting at the table with the blood pressure machine. As I walked in the kitchen, there she sat eating a raisin cake and drinking ginger ale with the bp machine around her arm. After reassuring her that it was fine, she handed me ‘The Link’ and wanted me to read the obituaries to her. I think she felt much better after I told her their ages, several being in their upper nineties.
“People sure are living longer lives, aren’t they?” Yes, Mom, I thought, but it’s sure not the ‘baby boomers’.
As I was helping her get up to go back to bed, she observed Donny’s iPhone on the table. “You might as well throw that thing away. He never answers it and every time I call it, it says, the mailbox is full. You know blame well, we get the mail out of the box every day. It don’t know nothing!”
It’s 5:00 now, I couldn’t go back to sleep and I am thanking my Good Lord that Debbie is coming to stay with her today. I desperately need a day to myself because my mailbox is full!

Christmas is my most favorite time of the year. It’s not about the gifts, its not about the work involved in getting things ready, its about the family and loved ones gathered together at that most special time. It’s about the sparkle in a child’s eye that Christmas morning when they hurry in to see what Santa brought.

I took Hardy to the hospital in Florence this past week for tests and as we were riding home, I asked him how Christmas was for him growing up. If you know him, you probably know he and Laura, his sister, went to live with relatives at an early age. Their mother had medical issues that prevented her from being able to care for them and their father was in the military. At first they lived with their maternal grandparents and later with their aunt and uncle, whom were Donny’s grandparents.

Hardy’s Christmas’ were usually fruit, candy, a pair of pants, shirt and maybe shoes. They never received toys except once, he got a bb gun and Laura, a doll with a stroller. He remembered most that Laura, two years older, was so happy as she pushed her stroller all over the place. Choking back tears, I concluded how tough it must have been on two small children, estranged from their parents growing up with older people who believed that necessities were all that mattered. I know people did the best they could back then, just like my parents. We never received expensive things but mom and dad always made sure that Santa Claus came. Mom was really great about trying to make things as special as she could, making popcorn and hot chocolate for us. I remember she cooked it in a pot on the stove, using Carnation milk which made it so creamy and delicious. We always left some out for Santa, along with cake and he ate it too. She decorated with pine cones, greenery and red berries from outside and the tree was covered with silver icicles and tinsel. We never had white lights, it was the big ones with all the colors. My most favorite Christmas’ were in Thomasville. Bonnie and I would lie on our bed upstairs and look at the sky to see if we saw Santa and his sled. I don’t know what it was that made the magic in the sky but there were many times that we were sure we saw him. Early the next morning, we bounded down the stairs and went straight to our box. Mine and Melinda’s were identical, but my things were blue and hers, pink. Bonnie was a little older, so her things would be different, Gary, being the only boy and Debbie as the youngest were easy to spot.

Mom decorates in a tacky, old fashioned way, but I just let it be. I make a pretty arrangement only to find that she has added her own addition. It never matches but she loves it and that is all that matters to me. Now the “old house” is my own creations, and I love it. I prepare the house for our family gatherings and when she walks in, she is in awe. She loves the pretty lights and themes, When someone comments about how pretty it looks, she will tell them, “You should see what I did, it is just beautiful!” It really is Mom, because you did it and I thank God that he has given you another year with us, so you can let your little light shine.