What Happened to Mom?

Mom clutched the sides of the walker with hands mapped in wrinkles. With sagging shoulders and a bent body, she shuffled across the soft carpet. As I witnessed the aging that had occurred since the last time I'd seen my mother nine months earlier, a lump rose to my throat, and I blinked rapidly to stem the threatening tears.

Is this old woman the same one whose eyes sparkled when she was happy during my growing-up years? Can this be the same person with the hearty laugh that infected others? I've always thought that ailing and aging take a toll on the human body and psyche, and here was living proof. No 40-year study was needed to convince me. I lay awake a long time that night wondering if my mother's lifestyle had hastened the aging process.

Today we're urged to exercise. Mom never learned to drive, so she walked to the store several times a week, and carried home heavy sacks of groceries, then carted them up three flights of stairs. We children were enlisted as helpers, too. Long walks with a brown paper bag in our arms were the norm in our family. Mom carried baskets of laundry down those three flights of stairs twice a week and brought the clean clothes back up again. Today, athletes rate stair climbing high on the list of endurance and fitness exercises. They don expensive fitness clothing to do basically the same thing my mother did week in and week out. Adding weights gives even more benefits, or so say the health magazine articles. Bags of groceries and heavy laundry baskets surely qualify as added weight, so mom was ahead of her time in that respect.

But once her nest was empty, her forced exercise program changed considerably. She moved to a house with no stairs with a retired husband who drove her to the grocery store. She spent more time sitting in a chair reading a book or watching television. After my father passed away, mom's exercise program was almost nonexistent. After a lengthy hospital stay a few years ago, Home Health Care sent a therapist to mom's house to teach her a series of exercises to help her gain back the strength she'd lost. Mom enjoyed working with the therapist, but when the program ended, so did her exercises. No amount of cajoling or pleading on my part convinced her she needed to do the exercises forever.

In her diet, mom rated a big fat zero. She was raised by a mother who believed heavy cream and real butter created the best food. Added to that, she fried the vast majority of every meal. Meat with gravy, potatoes and pasta, and desserts of all kinds graced our table. A cardiologist would cringe if assessing the meals she fed us on a regular basis. Years ago I realized that some dietary changes were in order for my husband and me, and I urged my mother to do the same. She would listen politely, nod her head in agreement, and keep right on putting the same kind of meal on the table as she'd been doing all her life.

As I tossed and turned that night, I faced another question. It's only 21 years down the road before I am my mother's age. Witnessing the aging of my mother set off alarm bells in my head. When I am 85, will I, too, be shuffling across a room with a walker, as my daughter fights back tears as she sees how much I have declined? If continual exercise and a proper diet are keys to keeping fit, I won't have to worry, since I've worked hard at doing both for many years, and I intend to continue.

Meanwhile, I'll give my mother a lot of love and support, and I'll hope for an occasional twinkle in her eye.

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