Happy New Year

Well, that was a year for us - from seeing Charlie (the spud) baptised, to having a really hot summer, to seeing a 99yr old mother gradually going down hill (although there seems to be no doubt now that we will be with her in February for her 100th), to enjoying a quiet Christmas on our own with the dog and (to paraphrase Dylan Thomas), two cats in their furabouts lying by the fire.

To whomever reads this, we hope your year is good, your fireplace is full of crackling wood, and your families are as happy as ours.

The indominable heart

So here I am, a few days helping to look after mother. She is ok....but at the stage where she really wants to "go" - but the heart just won't stop beating. What a constitution....tonight the brother and sister-in-law have gone out so yrs truly is the primary care-giver. Thanks to a detailed 2-page missive from the sis-in-law, I think I can cope. What is a geophysicist doing as a nurse-maid to a 99yr old??? Answer - it's your mother, idiot! Just do it! Will I be as lucky to be so looked after when my functions start to run down? Anyone out there have advice? Anyway, here we sit in front of the fire, mother enjoying the quiet as everyone else is out. HELLLLLLLLP!!

Life?

On my way to visit with my elderly mother - really elderly....Not too many people reach the age of 99 and there are indications that she will be with us for her 100th on Feb 1st 2008. As I wait for my flight to Victoria, my thoughts are on the fragility of life. How many of us can expect to reach such an age? As I sit here at age 68, waiting to get on the waiting list for a new hip, I wonder which set of genes are forefront in my body - my father's, who died at age 78 with totally closed arteries? Or my mother's, who has the same scottish bloodlines as the late Queen Mother? Hopefully the latter - Dad was on medication for high blood pressure at age 40+, but I do have the same relatively low bp that mother has always had. Interesting the psychology here...mother is very tired, would like to go, but her heart is really too strong to stop. It is the peripherals that are letting her down - eyesight starting to fail, various functions gradually shutting down. So I wonder about how fragile life really is? We can walk into the path of a bus while totally healthy, or we can hang on with everything failing....

Which do you wish for? Having volunteered in a long care facility, and having taken my choir to sing in such places, the last thing I want to be is one of them. But when the time really comes, I suspect that my body and mind are going to fight to stay on. When you read on obit that says "she (he) passed on peacefully with her (his) family around. Does anyone really go peacefully into that good night?