To look at the calendar and realize that the month of January is nearly over is a very sobering realization. You know how it goes. The older we get, the faster time passes by. I feel like I am in a race against the passage of the years that remain for me. So much yet that I wish to do gives credence to the thought of living each day that you receive to the fullest.
I intend so to do.
As I was working at school today, for some reason I thought of my mom and what she was like at the age I am now. I don't know why my mom came into my mind but surely she did. I was scurrying down the hallway between my classroom and the copy machine, counting and recounting what I had run off and pushing the copy button to start the whole process again. All of a sudden, there she was.
It was like, "Hey, where did that thought come from?"
My mom was my age 35 years ago. It's kind of hard for me to imagine her like that. In 1982, she was a newly widowed woman trying to survive on her own after my father passed from cancer. Mom had worked for most of her life and found herself on the brink of needing another job, not only for the financial security it could provide but also for a means to keep herself busy. I remember the day that she asked me to help her get her high school transcript in order that she could enroll at the local community college. She had made the decision to get her home health aide license and to do so meant taking the night classes offered there.
It wasn't as hard to secure a 1938 high school transcript as I had thought it would be. Within a few days it came and she went right down to the college to enroll and get started. It was strange for me as her daughter and an educator as well to see my mom studying at the dining room table to be able to pass the course. Once she let me "quiz" her over the things she would be tested on and she did very well. I was proud of her when she passed the course with an "A" and watched in awe of her as she provided home health services to folks around the county for well over 5 years.
Mom would be 96 if she were still here today and sometimes I wonder what she would be like. I look in the mirror each day and see her staring back at me. I don't how that happens but it does. I used to be bothered by it, not because I didn't want to look like her, but rather because it reminded me that she was no longer here. Now I am kind of used to it and when I want to imagine what I might look like in the years to come, I just look at her pictures and smile.
She is me.
I can't remember my mom saying that she thought time was passing by too quickly but I am sure she must have felt the same way. I wonder in my mind if she experienced the same thoughts that I now do. Did my mom have the feeling that she too was racing towards the end of her life? Did she have things that she wanted to do yet, just like me, before her life was over?
I have to feel like maybe, just maybe she did.
I don't know if my mom accomplished everything she intended to but I figure that she packed a whole lot into the remaining 26 years of her life. Lois Scott didn't waste a moment of the time that was given to her. For sure, one thing would be true.
She would intend for me to do the same.
~and life goes on.~
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