As I walked out of NHC Place on my way to pick up JP and drive to Bowling Green for a soccer tournament, I marveled at how much those two words meant to me.
Be careful.
So many, many times, as I left our house to go to school, to work at Walmart, to go out with my friends, to drive to Knoxville for college or law school or to return to my house after a visit, my mom always said the same thing as I walked out the door.
Be careful.
No matter how many times I told her, in later years, that I was 30, 35, 40, etc. years old and she didn't need to tell me to "be careful," she always said it anyway. She would laugh and shake her head and say to me, "You're my son. I'm always going to tell you to be careful. Always."
Sometimes it mildly annoyed me, mostly when I was younger and dumber. As I grew older and began to realize I wasn't actually 10 feet tall and bullet proof - as I began to develop a sense of my own mortality - I found those two words to be endearing. With them came a sameness that was comforting, perhaps with the realization that no matter how much in my life changed, my mother would always love me and always be thinking about me.
Be careful.
Those two words meant that I mattered. They meant that to someone, always, I would be one of the most important people in their lives. Those two words were proof that my mom loved me unconditionally. They meant I could count on her support, above anyone else's, when times were good and in times of turbulence. They meant her love was a constant in my life, ever present.
Yesterday, those two words meant a little something different. They meant my mom is still my mom. This terrible, terrible disease - Alzheimer's - has ravaged her body and mind and continues to steal from her every single day. And yet, for just a moment - a sliver of time - she was instinctively still my mom. Her unconditional love that has supported and sustained me for 52 + years is still there, somewhere, in her mind and in her heart, maybe in her very soul.
She's wheelchair bound and, yesterday, as she dozed off and on while I read her poetry from the latest issue of the New Yorker as we sat together in the library, her love for me was as strong as it always has been and, I think always will be.
Just this morning, a colleague at a breakfast fundraiser I co-chaired and emceed asked about my mom and how she was doing. "You look tired," she said. "My mom's hanging in there," I replied. "And I'm fine."
Am I putting up a bit of a facade for others? Perhaps. I give a lot of myself, emotionally, to my clients, to the boys I coach and to my family and, of course to my mom. But I am fine. I am a survivor and I have to look no further than my mom to find the strength I need to be what are who I need to be every minute of every day.
I take a little more time to myself - like now, having a quite cup of coffee at Honest Coffee Roasters, or like last night when I ran 5 miles in the neighborhood after the boys went to bed. I'm probably a bit more reflective. I'm nearer to tears and my emotions are a little closer to the surface, which is saying a lot because I am nothing if not a sentimentalist. But I am fine and I will continue to be fine, if a little subdued, at times.
My mom's unconditional love sustains me. It fuels me in ways I will never comprehend. And it will continue to do so, I think and hope, long after she is gone in a physical sense, from this earth.
Be careful.
Two words, only two. They mean everything to me.
Thanks, mom.
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