Life Goes On

Himself and I stole away last evening to a fun pre-Thanksgiving celebration with my nephew and his friends and family.  This morning we're off to a road race at which there is a possibility of my singing the Irish National Anthem (in English) unless my Irish friends tell me it's Gaelic or nothing.  I don't want to offend, after all.  Tonight we'll cook dinner for his parents and help his mother get into bed.  Tomorrow is a job interview and a wake, and Tuesday is a funeral for the father of a dear friend.  Wednesday the boys come home, Thursday the house (hopefully picked up by then....I've given up on clean) will be the scene of the Thanksgiving stuff-fest.  Friday I'm singing at the memorial service of a friend's husband.  Saturday I am being paid to do a "gig" at a church one town over, and then the caroling season begins in dead earnest.  And woven through all that chaos I will find time to sit by my mother's side and watch her slip away.

It's hard to make plans for the future when you're holding your breath.  "When will it happen?" is a constant thought at the back of my mind.  I'm not sure how to go on with my life with such a momentous Sword of Damocles hanging overhead.  So it's one day at a time.  Yesterday morning I found her bed empty and made up.  My heart stopped.  But there she was, sitting up in her wheel chair and fully dressed, in the common room, with the other characters in her novel.  The afternoon visit was not so cheering.  She was back in bed and almost impossible to understand, except when she told me she loved me.  That I can still decipher.  Or maybe it was my heart and not my ears that heard it.