Socks

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.