ABOUT THANKSGIVING AND HAVING CHOICES IN LIFE

It's very late and the night before Thanksgiving and I've been thinking a lot about my Mom and how much  I miss having her here at my house.  I was also thinking about yesterday evening and how I had a Bologna sandwich.  What's odd is I hate Bologna and I never eat it however, I had a sandwich with Mayo last night.  I bought the Bologna to use for a photograph I wanted to take for a post about how my Mom loved and ate Bologna sandwiches.


My Mom loved Bologna sandwiches and she would go to the corner store and get one for dinner instead of eating the meal at the group home where she lived.  Most of the time my Mom would get sandwiches to eat there since the home would often have boiled chicken and my Mom hated boiled chicken.  It makes me sad to think of how my Mom had to eat the same thing so often and really had no choice but to go to the corner store.  What is of greater sadness and is much more significant and meaningful is about how she had so little choices and options in her life.  It's about how even though she was no longer in the hospital, she still had to live like she was.  When I think of my Mom and having no choices I am reminded of how I have them in my life and how I would feel if I did not.  My Mom had no control over her circumstances.  Research has been done on stress and it found that being in situations were you have no control is what causes the most stress.  This is how my Mom lived from day to day.  So, even though I am sad and lonely for my Mom's companionship, I am happy that she no longer has to tolerate eating boiled chicken.  I am sad that she will miss eating Thanksgiving Turkey and all the other fixings.  I know she would have loved to go to Old Country Buffet and eat as much as she liked and what she liked.   At OCB she had choices and control.  She ate almost everything she could and now I realize it's because she never knew when she was going to be able to eat like that again.  So, I brace myself for tomorrow and all the hoopla around the holidays.  When I eat I will be thankful for all the joy in my life and the fact that I have choices and options in my life. I will be thankful for the simple fact that I have control over most things in my life.  I will think of my Mom and the time I shared with her and I will be thankful.


Cheers,
Loren

ABOUT BEING THANKFUL & OLD COUNTRY BUFFET

Today I am thinking about my Mom and how much she liked Thanksgiving because my Mom, me and my husband Paul would all go to Old Country Buffet to eat and to celebrate.  My Mom loved to eat and she loved ‘Ol Country’ as she called it.  She would go up to the food bars and fill her plate to the edges with fried chicken and beef ribs, which were her favorite thing to eat.  I would watch her as she was walking up to fill her plate and I would see how happy she was.  She could barely contain herself. When Mom was walking back to the table with her full plate I was afraid she might trip or bump into to someone since Mom had trouble walking straight.  Fortunately, she always made it back to the table without spilling a thing. While my Mom was eating she would not say a word.  She was in her glory and enjoying herself so much, that she could barely notice our presence.  But Paul and I didn’t care. We were happy she was enjoying herself and experiencing pleasure, which was something she rarely experienced in her adult life.  After, dinner she would go up for dessert and again her plate was full of cake and especially vanilla soft ice cream.  We would feel so sick after we ate so much and my Mom would say that “we are never going to do that again!”

Sometimes, way back in the day,  I would have trouble going out to eat with my Mom.  I would feel so embarrassed to go in the dining room at Ol Country” and sit in the middle of the room because my Mom would be pretty messy when she ate.  Unfortunately, and tragically when my Mom was in the hospital, she lost all of her teeth.  I don’t know whether it was from lack of good dental treatment or if she had a gum disease..  Anyway, she tried dentures, however they hurt her gums, so she decided not to wear any.  This made it difficult for her to eat and she would sometimes get a mess on her shirt.  Some times because of this, I would feel so embarrassed that people were staring at us when we were eating and my anxiety antennae” went up.  I would want to hide all of us away so no one would be able to see us.  To help with this, we would sit in the back in the corner.  I never knew if my Mom knew that this was the reason that we always sat in the back in a booth.  I’m telling this story because now that I think about it, it really seems so trivial and seems to be so insignificant.  As I mentioned in About This Blog, I struggled with sorrow, fear and embarrassment because my Mom did look so disheveled at times.  I would want to fix her up so neatly so people would not stare at us.  Now that I think about all the times I was more concerned about our appearance than enjoying ourselves, I realize how sad it was for me and my Mom.  In the last years I had been overcoming my sorrow, embarrassment and social anxiety relating to my Mom, and it was feeling so good to just enjoy our selves.  In the end, I did not care what people did or how they stared, so much that I hardly noticed it.  I was so happy to be with my Mom however she was and I was so proud of her.  I was proud of how strong she was and how she had overcome so much in her life that any bad feelings were just fading away.

Now when I realize that my Mom will not be here to enjoy ‘Ol Country” and the beef ribs she loved so much, I feel so sad that it fills my heart with the sorrow that I had been trying to overcome.  I think about how silly it was to care about what other people thought.  What I am learning from this experience is that it doesn’t really matter what other people's opinions are if they are not significant or meaningful in your life.  All of us have struggles and oddities and now when I think of my Mom, I don’t ever think about how she had no teeth or that she was a messy eater.  I think of the joy on her face when she was happy, eating.  I think of the anticipation she had just waiting to get to the resturaunt. I think about Thanksgiving and the meaning of this holiday. It’s about being thankful and grateful for the people you love and those who love you.  It’s about having my Mom who I loved so much and being thankful for the time I had with her.  So, as we approach Thanksgiving I am reminded to be thankful for all of those I love and for the life I have.