Miracles DO happen

When I moved home in late summer, I really didn't have any idea of what was ahead.  I knew my mom was in a bad way.  I knew she couldn't use her hands, or walk, or eat without help and she rarely talked.  I knew that my dad needed me.  I knew that I had come home for a reason but I wasn't sure what the end result would be.  I didn't feel lost or without a purpose or anything like that, I simply wasn't sure what lay ahead on my path.

I can remember vividly the first time I saw mom.  Although I was aware of all that had slipped away from her I was not prepared for what I saw when my dad pulled back the curtain and said "Mother, look who's here".

I remember my knees buckled and my breath stopped.  I remember being overwhelmed with a great sadness because what lay in the bed before me was a sickly, old woman who was dieing and it was not my mother.  I cried a lot in those first few days.

I then accepted the fact that dementia was killing my mother and that I had been directed home to be there for her and with her during her final days or weeks or months.  None of us thought that mom would even make it to x-mas and we began planning accordingly.   I wrote an outline for the obituary.  I dug through her stuff and found her address book.  Dad and I decided that when the time came that a service at the Sacred Heart in Canmore would be best.

Those first weeks were very hard.  I spent as much time as I could with mom and took her to everything that we could go to.  I helped her to eat and would read to her and walk around the facility to look at the fish and the birds and even just to sit in the quiet of the chapel sometimes.  Mom didn't talk much then but you could see in her eyes when she was angered or bitter and when she was sad or scared.

Slowly but surely, as the medications got out of her system, things came back.  I really didn't notice it until near the end of November when she I wasn't feeding her ice cream quick enough and I watched as she grabbed a near by spoon and attempted to get a spoonful herself.  I went the next day to the Occupational therapist and asked that he start working with mom as she was trying to use her hands again.  He did.

Gradually, more and more of mom came back.  She talked, she got demanding, she remembered, she smiled and our death watch ended.  We still didn't know what to expect and we let mom guide us and when she set goals, well my dad and I would help her in anyway to achieve those goals.  One of those goals was to walk again.   We had discussed it with the therapists who said "It is possible but unlikely".  It wasn't that mom couldn't, it was the simple fact that her muscles had atrophied and perhaps she simply would not have the strength to accomplish such a feat.  I am so overwhelmingly happy to say, that this afternoon I witnessed a miracle.  My mother walked  for the first time in almost a year. 

Sometimes miracles do happen and sometimes to make a miracle, you have to help it along.