A Remembrance…

Winter Comes: Reflections on Winter Years of Life

My sister, Connie Lynn Bolinger, died May 22, 2011, and I have been going through many things she wrote about caring for our mother during the years 1986 until Mother’s death in 2008. I think that many will identify with Connie’s emotions at remembering the good and bad times with our mother, watching her slip slowly away into another world that Connie and I were able only infrequently to enter. Remembering the old house, I was touched by the recollection of Mom standing in the doorway on winter mornings even when my brother David and I were in high school until we turned the corner waving to her. Something my sister wrote I found in one of the boxes of her papers, and those images came back to me.

                                                              Mom in 1980    

                                                                Winter Comes

Mother would always stand at the opened door of our house in Indiana, and watch me as I walked to school. Rounding the corner, I would turn and wave to her. Smiling, she would wave back, blow a kiss, and signal me to keep my coat buttoned. When I was seven years old, it was reassuring to know she would always be there. Years earlier Mom had defied all medical odds against her when, at the age of 32, she had the largest neurofibroma in Mayo Clinic history removed. Surgery left her with paralysis and a convulsive disorder. She was diagnosed as terminal, was given about 18 months to live, and told she would never walk again. Fierce independence, fueled by an unparalleled determination, motivated her to dismiss the surgeon’s pessimistic prognosis. She bellowed that she had three children to raise, and dying  just was not in her scheduled plans.

With grueling therapy, and otherworldly strength given by God, Mother was able to walk again. Despite severely reduced usage of her right side, she never missed a day cleaning house and preparing meals. She was grateful to be alive, and never ceased thanking God for the provision of His strength in that season of her life. When Dad died in 1986, I knew Mom could not live alone. She came to live with me in Nashville, and thus began my journey of caring for and ministering to her. In 1994, Mother was diagnosed with Chronic Dementia, but it did not rear its ugly head until 1997, when she began to exhibit paranoia and skewed judgment. She would place favorite knick-knacks and family photos in hefty bags and hide them under her bed, behind her dresser – any place that would throw off imagined “intruders” whom she believed were absconding with her treasures. As Mother’s symptoms worsened, I realized her needs were beyond what I could provide. The winter of my Mother’s life has come, and as of this year, she resides in a nursing facility.

I visit her each evening, engaging her in conversation, and making her feel that what she says still has meaning. Too many times I have witnessed the elderly being invalidated. People can debate all they want over “personhood theories” and quality of life issues. But, when my mother relives a memory, replete with bright-eyed animation, I remember that she is still there under all her medications – under the tangled mess of invasive brain tentacles, and medical terminologies. Mother still sees me as being seven years old. And every night from her bed she watches me as I leave her room. Each time I round the corner, I turn and wave to her, and she still smiles, saying “You button your coat – it’s a cold Winter.” It is difficult to see her so frail now, for I will always think of Mother as strong and determined in the summer of her life, and carry in my heart tender memories of rounding corners with smiles, waves, and blowing kisses.

God bless you, Mom.

Love,
Connie

November, 2007

About John

About John John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes. Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018 View all posts by John →
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