No, sadly, not the musical movement. Rather, the approach we now take to caring for my MIL. All our routines are slipping away, the carefully practiced choreography which has defined our lives for years no longer relevant.
I’ve been saying for a while that we were coming to a close of this chapter of my MIL’s life. I’ve been wrong before in my predictions that it would come on this day or that, before or after a particular holiday or birthday. And so I may well be wrong again when I say that we are now on the last few pages of the book.
There is something to this of that bittersweet moment, that sense of coming to conclusions you know are there, the resolution of conversations and plot lines that you get at the end of a cherished book. She no longer needs to wait for the usual markers of the day – when to get up, when to eat, when to nap. She got up this morning, and the rest of the day has followed as best we can to her wants and desires. Lunch an hour early, and including her favorite soup even though she just had it yesterday. (Campbell’s Tomato, if you want to know.) Supper about a half hour early. Bed more than an hour early. Because that is what she wanted.
Her worries we have answered as best we can, telling her that tomorrow we will see if we can help her find “the people she came here with.”
Unless she finds them on her own in her sleep.
I’ll keep you posted.
Jim Downey
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