The Half-way and the Almost
My mother loved Ayn Rand. I can't say for sure if she still does, considering her memory is leaving her. Does she remember how much she talked about that author? Her books? Can she remember the details of the books and her philosophy? What does she remember, if any of them? Or would she pass over her Ayn Rand books without a second thought? I don't know.
I do know that for all the reverence my mother gave to that author and her works, a piece of irony exists. For I stumbled across this quote the other day:
What would happen if Mom read that quote now? If she did, would she, even for a minute, admit that it applied to her? It didn't take me but a millisecond to understand that those words describe Mom to a T. My mother has always lived at that stage: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between. Before her memory began to deteriorate, did she recognize that fact? Her house was always almost painted. Her filing just-about done. Was she half-way to getting her degree when she quit? Could be. Oddly enough, she's lived a life that would have been deemed unacceptable by the one person she really respected.
Please don't think that I'm casting judgment. I have my own sins and inadequacies to bear, some that I recognize, probably far more that I don't. However, I'd like to think that I also possess the fortitude to change, to live large, to be bold, to be who I am, to try live life in a different place than that described in the photo above.
And my mom, sadly, never found the strength to do so. Her inability--where it comes from, why it persists--is her story, not mine. And with a diagnosis like Alzheimer's, that story will forever be lost, somewhere in a mix of the just-about, the in-between, the half-way, and the almost.
I do know that for all the reverence my mother gave to that author and her works, a piece of irony exists. For I stumbled across this quote the other day:
What would happen if Mom read that quote now? If she did, would she, even for a minute, admit that it applied to her? It didn't take me but a millisecond to understand that those words describe Mom to a T. My mother has always lived at that stage: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between. Before her memory began to deteriorate, did she recognize that fact? Her house was always almost painted. Her filing just-about done. Was she half-way to getting her degree when she quit? Could be. Oddly enough, she's lived a life that would have been deemed unacceptable by the one person she really respected.
Please don't think that I'm casting judgment. I have my own sins and inadequacies to bear, some that I recognize, probably far more that I don't. However, I'd like to think that I also possess the fortitude to change, to live large, to be bold, to be who I am, to try live life in a different place than that described in the photo above.
And my mom, sadly, never found the strength to do so. Her inability--where it comes from, why it persists--is her story, not mine. And with a diagnosis like Alzheimer's, that story will forever be lost, somewhere in a mix of the just-about, the in-between, the half-way, and the almost.
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