"Less We Forget..."

Mother's Day in our home has always been a generational celebration. My wife Judi, daughter Megan and Judi's mom have for years always gathered in our home for an afternoon of good food, warm fellowship and posing for keepsake photographs. The tradition continued yesterday, but perhaps for the last time.

Judi's mom's health has continued to deteriorate precipitously since we reluctantly embraced the hard decision to place her in a nursing home in October of last year. We witness a steady decline weekly in her ability to perform even the simplest physical or mental task, being all but unable to stand on her feet or to remember the context of a subject that she inquired about just a few minutes previous. Reluctantly, we have come to the additional sad but necessary decision that bringing Judi's mom here to our home for any future occasion is too much of a hardship on everyone involved. We reached that conclusion, not for self-serving reasons, but with a realization that the benefits for mom in continuing to do so no longer outweigh the physical and mental strain of putting her through what has now become for her a debilitating and exhausting ordeal.

My Mom, who lives in Winston-Salem, N.C., is also suffering from physical maladies that have rendered her all but unable to take care of herself. Yet she refuses to entertain the thought of moving our of her home into a nursing facility or, perish the thought, having a caretaker move in with her. "That would drive me crazy," she adamantly declares whenever I'm foolish enough to again broach that subject after she laments how difficult and painful it is for her to move about the house. I'll give her her due...the wheels may be falling off of the carriage, but as far as her mental dexterity is concerned, she is still fully in command of the controls. At 81 years of age, if she can continue to keep her life between the ditches, she'll keep driving forward.

Evaluating the physical and mental conditions of our two mothers, I must face the fact that there will not be too many more Mother's Day that we will share. It is a fact of life that life has its ultimate conclusions, and one day life will conclude for these two gallant women. That will be indeed a sad and melancholy day, but the memories of how these two women performed unselfishly and lovingly their duties as Mothers will live on. Today and every day we celebrate these lives and readily express how much we love and are indebted to them for who we are today...a living testimony to all that is good in them is part of all that is good and worthy in us.

"A Mother's love is the fuel that when administered liberally and unconditionally from birth launches a new life toward the horizon of adulthood equipped to conquer the unthinkable and accomplish the impossible." - J.A.L.