My parents would have been married for 47 years this past
Christmas Eve, but my mother died 17 years ago. I think about all the times
we went to see my mother and the times that she was home. I think about
how her eyes lit up seeing my father walk into the room; even when she
couldn't talk anymore, her eyes did it for her. I think about how she would
reach her arms to him for a hug, and she was moving so much from chorea,
and it was an effort for her to make that concentrated movement to get
where she wanted. She did the same thing for me and my brother. She couldn't
talk and tell us what was going on, but her eyes told us what we needed
to know.
I think about the letters she wrote us while she still could, the birthday cards she sent me. I think about how he went out and bought my mom her bras and panties without ever complaining about how embarrassed he was, marked her things and took them to her at the hospital for so many years. I think about how he would go get her anytime she could come home for a visit.
I think about how the people at the nursing home my mother died at told me about my fathers visit on the night she died. They had called him to tell him how sick she was, moving so violently that they had padded the bed railings so she would not hurt herself. He came in and told her good bye and left crying. He told them that he could not stay to watch her die.
My father still wears his wedding ring, I could probably
place a bet and win that he has never taken it off ever for any reason.
I know that people have stopped and asked us if our father ever got remarried.....
said that he should have a long time ago.......but I know that he loved
my mother. I think about the changes that someone with HD goes through,
and how it feels like they don't care anymore, but I also know that when
my mother saw my father she proved us all wrong.
djwh
january 2001
their picture was taken approximately in the year 1976
