The Lonley Road

She works full time and has cared for her husband, father, father-in-law, and mother-in-law as they went through the dying process at home, in their own beds. She is currently the primary care giver for her 91 year old mother. All the while working full-time , putting a son through college, being an active grandmother and managing a 40-acre piece of property. Her only sibling, a brother, offers no help with Mom.

She does it herself. She does it alone. She does it day in and day out.

How to Change Your Mother’s Diaper

She’s been gone from me for six weeks now. I miss her smile, her sense of humor, her dirty jokes! In the whirlwind that moved at glacial speed I finally grew up. I did the thing that I dreaded most–I changed my mother’s diaper. This was huge. This was more momentous than graduating from kindergarten. This was a life passage of the first order. The trials, smiles, tears and thousand little deaths that we experience when our parents become our charges will be approached here with honesty, tenderness, respect and a good dose of humor.