Wise Counsel at Unexpected Times
As I was moving my widowed mother from a retirement community in Alabama to a nursing home near me in New Jersey, there was a particularly awkward moment on our flight when, somewhere over Philadelphia, she had to use the bathroom.
My mother, then 78, had dementia and balance problems and couldn’t walk without help. Arm in arm, we inched up the aisle, lurching with the turbulence. Somehow, I steered her into the tiny stall and onto the toilet seat, then squeezed myself inside so as to close the door and give her some privacy. Suffice it to say that it’s a lot easier to change a baby’s diaper than a mother’s Depends in an airplane bathroom.
A flight attendant caught my eye as we returned to our seats and gave me a knowing, sympathetic smile. On the ground in Newark, as I settled my mother into a wheelchair for the ride down the jetway into an uncharted stage of her life (and mine), that flight attendant touched my shoulder and said one sentence that I remember to this day: “Just don’t hurry.”
Just don't hurry
Still, I was often the first target for her frustration, and one night my mother lashed out at me in front of her brother and his wife, who were visiting from New Mexico. I don’t remember what triggered this, but I do recall my Aunt Sherry saying softly from behind me, “Be a duck.”
Be a duck