Just call me
the Sock Whisperer.
The last few
weeks have seen me ensconced in my mother's old Independent Living (IL)
apartment in a senior living center, while my mother lies in a bed down the
hall in the skilled nursing wing. She is dying.
We didn't know
she was so close to the end when I first came up to Indiana. In fact, I came up
to help my elder brother move Mom into Assisted Living (AL). Her IL apartment
had become just too much to handle.
We managed
to move what she would need and were beginning to sort out the rest, when her
health took a nose dive. In the space of three weeks, she has gone from IL to
AL to 2 different hospitals and now to a bed that she has neither the strength
nor the desire to leave.
But let's
get back to the socks. While here in this facility (where I am the youngest in
my hall by a good 20 years or more), I use the in-house laundry room. Each time, upon fetching my dry laundry, I
have found an extra sock.
These are
not my socks. They are random socks seeking asylum among my clothes for reasons
unknown to me, making me wonder if somehow a hobo sign has been etched into my
basket, letting fugitive socks know that I have unwittingly been enlisted in
the Underground Railroad of Sockdom.
I am reminded
of a skit by Carol Burnett in which she stumbles through a dryer seeking a lost
sock and finds herself in The Land of Lost Stuff. The great Burnett goes on to
find her lost hopes and dreams, her childhood, and assorted other things before
- eventually - being reunited with her sock.
I, on the
other hand, have started out by finding.
I've been
finding once again the peace of sitting vigil with a dying parent, grateful for
the chance to say thank you, you matter, and I love you.
I have been
finding incredible role models for living life fully. There's nothing like a 97-year-old
who struts her stuff with panache and no fewer than 3 necklaces, offering
honest compassion with a twinkling smile. I want to be like her when I grow up.
I have been
finding that the bond with my siblings really is made of velvet steel. My other brother and our sister have come, and
the four of us spent last week sorting through the stuff of our collective
memory. You may have to pull us in from
multiple continents, countries and states, but when we're together it seems we
were never fully apart.
I have been
finding facets of my mother that I never knew. There are bits of her tucked
away in her baby book, in her high school yearbook, and in the mementos she chose
to preserve.
Soon I will
lose my mother from this life. There will be no cosmic dryer for me to crawl
through á la Burnett to find her. I will lose the chance to ever ask her about
the unsmiling people in old sepia who inhabit her picture frames. I will lose the opportunity to listen as music
pours from her fingers to the piano keys and out. Very soon, the door will shut, and she
will be on the other side, and I will lose my mom.
But I have
been finding again that there is always strength for the Very Soon.
And if you
ever want to stop by, I may have found your sock, as well.
