Appetite for Destruction

On Tuesday morning, I stopped by NHC place for a quick visit with my mom before work.  When I walked into her apartment, she was sitting in her wheelchair with the bound version of year 1 of this blog in her lap, tearing it apart page by page.  I was crestfallen.

More than 8 years ago, on J.P.'s first birthday, I painstakingly printed out all of the entries from the blog, including photographs, for the first 1 1/2 years of its existence, then made copies and had them bound.  I gave one of the bound versions of year 1 to my mom.  She was tickled to death to receive it and delighted in showing it to her friends.  She often thumbed through it and commented to me about particular entries and photographs.  Truly, it was one of her prized possessions.

When we first moved her into Maristone last November, my mom spent a lot of time coloring in coloring books with colored pencils.  It was interesting, because she was quite good at it and seemed to take a lot of pride in completing pages in coloring books Tracy, Alice or I picked up for her.  She especially liked a couple I had found for her, one that featured Nashville landmarks and one that featured Franklin landmarks.  It was a little bit sad for us, at times, to see her concentrating so intently on an activity that children 70 years younger than her enjoy.  Still, it gave her something to do, which was good.  She called it her "work."

By February or March of this year, she had stopped coloring as much.  Instead, she began to her pages out of the coloring books.  Often, she tore the pages into smaller pieces.  It was tough for us to see her destroy some of the beautiful work she had done.  I wish I had saved a few of the pages she colored, but I didn't.

I hid the bound version of the blog in her apartment at Maristone the first time I noticed she had torn a couple of pages out of it.  I mistakenly thought my sister, Tracy, had taken it with her to her house last week when we moved my mom to NHC Place.  That wasn't the case, however, which brings us back to Tuesday morning and my mother destroying one of her most prized possessions.  I carefully took it out of her hands, distracted her, then put it away.  I wanted to cry, for her and for me.

Instead, I gave her a cookie I had picked up the morning for the Bongo Java bakery, took her for a walk, then drove to work.