A Mother's Pain and A Child's Breaking Heart

Sometimes a mother's pain hurts the child as much as the mother. In this case, the child is me. Granted I turned 48 on Sunday so I am technically not a child. My mother was in pain yesterday and I could do nothing to stop it. She turned 83 on Monday (being her only daughter, she described me as her best birthday gift). She is in a nursing home and rehabilitation center due to a fall about three weeks ago. She has suffered from dementia for about 10 years, with the last two years being a hard decline. When I went to the center to see her yesterday, they said she was being moved, at that moment to a room by a window, something my brother requested, to stimulate her. Good idea. I was pleased with my timing of making sure her things were moved, including the flowers I bought days earlier. I thought I could reassure her during the trip down the long hall. I did my best, but when the move occurred, the nurses need to also clean her due to a bowel movement. They gently advised me to step out, which I did. My stomach is very weak when it comes to smells. While they cleaned her, my mother moaned quite a bit. Most of the time, she barely speaks, but her moans were frequent and loud. I almost went in to ask the problem. However, I knew the three nurses, whose job I could never do, were doing it correctly. While I stood outside her room, a patient wheeled up to me and talked to me about the shoes she just bought with her son on Sunday. She went on about how a men's shoes fit her better, how helpful the saleslady was and continued on about how she ended up there, due to a fall. She did not seem to even hear the pain my mother was experiencing. It was a moment of shear patience and agony. At first I wanted to brush her off, caring only for my mother. Then I reminded myself that a way to rid yourself of sorrow is to show kindness to others. This woman clearly needed someone to talk to - even if it was just about wide shoes. And perhaps listening to her made my mother's moans a little more bearable. I know if my mother knew I showed kindness to this woman, she would think that she raised a kind daughter. Something we all, as parents, truly want to do.

After the nurses were done, one talked to me, touched my arm and said she would get some pain medicine for my mother. I could tell the cleaning wiped my mother out. So I said I was leaving and said "I love you" in her native Polish. Her response "That's nice."