Leaving Mama

 Tonight, I left my mama in a nursing home/ rehabilitation center

to rehab from her broken and dislocated ankle.

She will be there at least 6-8 weeks

and maybe much longer,

maybe forever,

if her motivation level doesn’t spur her on to rehab and improve.

Other than living through my Rob’s death and all that was and is involved in that,

leaving Mama was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

I do not feel guilty.

I know I’ve done everything within my power (and Rob’s power when he was alive)

for the last 12 years to keep both of my parents out of a nursing home.

What I feel is pain.

I know it’s for the best.

I know she needs the rehab.

I know I cannot lift her to rehab her at home like I did my dad

plus Rob was alive then so I also had help.

If I had the money, I would pay to rehab her at home.

But I don’t and neither do they.

So I know it’s what needs to be done.

But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier.

Knowing that didn’t make that walk out of her room any less awful.

Knowing that didn’t make telling her goodbye any less painful.

She was so very brave today during the move from the hospital

and tonight when I left her in her room.

Neither one of us slept but 1 ½ hours last night

so she said she was going to try to go to sleep.

She only cried when they were moving her

and it really hurt her broken ankle.

I put up her Mother’s Day and get well cards and the flowers she had.

They brightened the room some.

And she was peaceful when I left around 8 p.m.

But I only made it as far as the first nurses’ station before the tears fell.

And I barely made it out of the building before the really ugly cry started.

It’s a 45 minute drive from where my mama is now to my house.

Not since Rob was dying and I took 5 minutes to ball up into a fetal position and sob

 have I cried like I did tonight. 

The pain of leaving my mama and the missing of her being at home was awful.

Even though I knew this was coming eventually and I thought I was ready,

I am not ready.

But that is not stopping it from happening.

Ready or not, I still had to turn around and leave my mama there.

I cried so hard that I knew I could not go home and let my dad see me like that.

I knew it would alarm him if I was so upset.

So, trying to think of a private place I could go to try and calm down,

I immediately thought of Rob’s gravesite.

I’ve never felt such an urgency to get to a graveyard.

Maybe only other widows and widowers will get this

but I really felt like,

in that moment of time,

that there was no where else I even belonged

other than at my dead husband’s grave.

No one else but Rob knew what all I had gone through with my parents.

He was the one with me through all of that history that now reverberates into no one.

I’ve not felt this in a very, very, very long time

but it was almost like being at his grave was the only thing that felt right.

So I stopped there to try and calm down so I could arrive home

and tell Daddy, without tears in my eyes, that Mama is okay and will be fine, etc., etc., etc.,

but it didn’t work quite that way.

As I sat on “my side” of the gravestone, I just ended up sobbing some more.

And I didn’t try to stop it.

The wind was blowing and the trees were rustling.

It was peaceful in that graveyard.

And lying on my back on the only thing that is “ours” anymore,

 “our” gravestone,

I had the best view of the beautiful blue sky.

I stayed until dark.

It was soothing.

And I was able to stop the tears;

throw on some more make-up;

come home;

and soldier on.

Doing what needs to be done.

For my dad.

For my children.

For me.

But I cannot shake the look in my mom’s eyes as I walked out of her room.

It wasn’t that her eyes showed sadness.

It was that they showed bravery.

She told me she didn't want me to be sad.

She was being brave for me.

She was being my mama.

And that made it all the more sad.