Pixaby Image by Sabine van Erp. Please visit her image source HERE
I have missed a few days of posting because my mother needed my help. This is family and when family calls (normally) it is a time to listen and see how you can assist them. This was one of the reasons we moved back to Tulsa in 2017. Our parents are in their late 70's to mid 80's and it was time for us to be home to help them. There is something about seeing them during their most vulnerable moments that your heart breaks and the past few days my mother needed me very much. Not just physically, but emotionally; I think more the latter than anything.
My mother at 12 years old, on top, with her brother and sister (image by my grandmother).
My mother is the oldest of my grandparents' three children. She loved to read, still does, and my grandmother would talk about finding her sitting high up in the cherry trees reading books for hours while spitting out cherry seeds. Mom helped to care for the animals on their farm in rural Arkansas while they helped care for her great-grandparents. Her great-grandparents lived across the field and she would spend time cooking and cleaning because that was what you did for your family. At that time there were no home health aides or paid sitters. The family took care of the elders of their family.
My mother at 18, on top right, with her parents, sister, and brother (image by Olan Mills).
As my mother got older she stepped away from her Arkansas home and went to school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There she lived apart from her parents and siblings but went home when she could. Mom was living the life of the young men and women today. She was learning how to be independent and the thoughts of taking care of her parents never occurred to her. This is how life works. Her parents were taking care of their elderly parents at that point
My parents on their wedding day, August 29, 1964 (image by my grandmother).
Eventually my parents met and were married in August 1964. They were living in the same town as my grandparents and great-grandparents in Arkansas. This enabled them to help my grandmother as she assisted in her elderly parents' and in-laws' lives. But the bulk of the responsibility was on my grandmother because it was still a time when you cared for your elders as they began to age and need the help.
Four generations of the Fennell Family. Mom is third from the left (image taken by my father).
In 1969 my parents moved to Tulsa and they were busy taking care of me and living their day-to-day life. This meant they were busy working, playing, and making sure I had every opportunity to become the woman I am today. This meant they eventually became grandparents and would someday care for their elderly family, but something had changed here at this point.
Because my parents had moved from their family home in Arkansas they were no longer just down the road from their parents. Instead, Mom took a direct role in helping me care for my children and my children's children. My mother's brother had taken responsibility in caring for their mother because Grandma wanted to stay at home and be surrounded by family. She had no desire to move to Tulsa and my mother felt she was needed by her own children and grandchildren.
My mother, on the left, Grand George the Third, and Grandma (image taken by @andikins).
This past five years my mother has seen her parents, sister, and husband buried. Mom has always been very strong, at least given the outward appearance that she was managing it all well. She has never been one to show her emotions much, but the past few days as we traveled to Arkansas to sit with my aunt while Mom's brother had a serious surgery I began to see her in a different light. She was feeling time stealing her life away person by person and she was needing to talk about it. Her fear was that she would be "alone," no longer having a physical connection to her ancestors. Mom told me she was feeling a mixture of sadness and anger because her life was being eaten away by time and there was nothing she could do about. She felt helpless.
Pixaby Image by Stephen Case. Please visit her image source HERE
It was at that moment I realized she was feeling what all of her grandparents and parents had eventually felt; a feeling I would someday have to come face to face with. How do you help someone walk through that time of sorrow? How do you watch them suffer knowing they are the last person in their immediate family? Simple, you be there for them. You listen, you be willing to hold their hand and care for them as they did for you when you a small, new thing.
The latest image of my mother and myself in the Spring of 2018 (image taken by myself).
Our lives are short and it passes quickly. What makes it worth being here is our experiences. I am seeing my mother in me and I feel her wisdom at this point in life as she felt her mother's wisdom, as she felt her mother's wisdom... True, time steals life minute by minute, but it is just that LIFE. So take the time and remember to tell your elders you care. They need to hear this.
