"A Friend Remebers Your Song and Sings It Back To You When You Forget"

As we have cleared out my mothers home preparing it for sale I have found her life's paper trail in boxes tucked into her tidy shelves.
Boxes of letters, cards and notes.  Books filled with quotes she has gathered and articles from long extinct publications.
They are a mirror of my mother.
They speak well of her.
Her humor, service, loyalty and her faith.
I have gathered them up and shipped most of them home to be sorted and assembled into a book of comfort for those whose lives have been graced by hers.
But nursing homes are places where it is easy to forget who you are.  The world gets small and is full of rituals that begin to strip you of your sparkle.
So each evening while we visit I take stacks of her paper trail and read them to her.
Her eyes begin to focus.  She sits up straighter in her bed.  We count our blessings while recalling memories.  And because she is Loie -- we laugh hard.
A couple of highlights from last night:
"You don't stop laughing because you grow old -- you grow old because you stop laughing."  Michael Pritchard
"You know you're old when you've lost all your marvels."  Mary Browne
I leave my mother's care on Thursday and it makes me tear up to even type that.
I struggle with feeling I'm abandoning her.  But she is safe and secure and I have others depending on me.
When I wondered what will fill her evenings now I thought -- I'll bundle up little packages of her life (old notes and letters from loved ones) and send her a packet each day to reminisce over each evening (After Wheel of Fortune of course!).
A life well lived deserves to be reviewed and celebrated.