And here we are

I have so many thoughts.  Thoughts about life.  The meaning of life.  The value of life.    Wondering what I would do in various circumstances.   It's easy to say "I would do..." whatever I think/ judge a person "should" do.   

It is so easy to be right about what someone should do and what they have done and what they should have done.  But who and what is right? 

I remember when Nick's Grandma Burke was in her final days.  We went to visit her in the nursing home.   Courtney was three years old- old enough to know who Grandma Burke was.   Before we went into see her, Nick's mom went into the room to check it out.  Grandma was not at her best you could say.  According to Nick's mom, Grandma Burke looked disheveled and not great.  Mary (Nick's mom) said that we were not going to visit that day.  As she told me later, Mary did not want Courtney's last memories of her great grandmother to be memories of a scary woman who might just look like a witch to a little child.   I am glad we didn't see her like that.   Mary said that was a memory she had of her own grandmother and felt that it was an unfortunate way to remember a loved one.

When I was in collage at George Mason, I befriended a young woman named Morningstar.  We used to walk each other to our  cars in the evenings after class- or walk to one car and drive to the other.  Morningstar was around 36 and the mother of 3.  

One evening as we were walking to our cars, she told me that she was glad that her children were old enough to remember her.  Her own mother died when she was very young, and Morningstar didn't really remember her.  I had never thought about that before.    I had thought about how my children would be cared for if I died, but never considered how they would remember me.

Now I have a friend who is fighting with all she has to be well.  To regain as much strength as she can. Maybe even to make a full recovery.  She has young children (and older ones too).  She wants to live, to raise them.   To see them grow up.

A mother's love is stronger that just about anything else in the world.