Time to put on my infinity hat

Mom started keeping a journal in 2005, when she was seventy-six years old. I scanned it into a pdf file last night. Each entry was just a few lines long, mostly centering on the weather and her garden. Defrosted freezer received equal weight with July is half over already! She noted some major moments in her life and in the lives of her four children, mainly the passing of people and pets, but most of her journal chronicles the weather. Few entries offer insight into her mind, which makes this one notable: In 2006, she wrote, Some days fly by—others crawl. Sometimes I wonder why I'm still here—What am I supposed to do with myself? She answered her own question: to be useful. 

She led a supremely useful life, in my opinion. She kept lifelong friendships with high school chums, nursing school classmates, neighbors, fellow librarians . . .  As an bubbly extrovert, she spread love and hugs to just about anyone she met. Dementia stole her outgoing talkative nature and turned her into a confused, cautious, reticent old woman. Her journal is filled with exclamation points almost right up to the last entries. In 2015, she wrote Growing older. No car. Carol does financial and food. The next entry was in 2016: Just maintaining! In January 2017, her final journal entry: Cold, very cold. 

A few months later, she admitted she couldn't live alone anymore. We moved her into the retirement home. She had her computer but stopped using it. She had her TV but forgot how to work the remote. She forgot how to use the bathroom. She forgot how to think. 

I postponed scanning her journal because I didn't want to feel sad. Last night, I scanned it without reading it. Instead, I listened to the news and let my hands go through the routine motions of flipping pages and pressing buttons. Before I sent the pdf file to my siblings, I finally took time to read through her entries. 

I hear her voice in her Farmers' Almanac style entries. She sounds like the mother I used to know before dementia took her mind away. I wish she'd written more, left more of a legacy. She lived a life of loved experiences instead of documenting her thoughts in writing like I do. She preferred to keep her introspective moments hidden. 

I wonder if she knew when she was writing these pages that I would be the one to go through her journal. 

Probably not. She stopped writing as her life started unraveling. By the time I was visiting her daily at the retirement home, sitting with her on her stinky couch, finding M.A.S.H. reruns on TV, and helping her navigate the meal menus, she had become anchored in the present. If she had introspective moments, she did not share them. After Covid-19 barred me from entering the building, I taped photos of her family on her window so she wouldn't forget us. When she moved to the care home, the caregiver pinned those strips of family photos on her wall in her little bedroom. She loved looking at pictures of her children interspersed with beloved characters from M.A.S.H.

I'm taking those photo strips with me to Arizona so I don't forget where I came from.