Photo of the day, day 3

This little cutie is my 85-year-old mother. I took this right before the holidays when she had a routine MD appointment for a follow-up visit after her last hip surgery.

She’s wearing a Christmas sweatshirt I bought her last year – at her request – and the faux fur hat is from 1969. Yes, she’s had it that long. The blue jacket she bought on the dollar table at a local church bazaar 15 years ago. The woman knows the value of saving a penny and never paying retail if you can avoid it – lessons I learned at her knee.

In the past year she’s had an outbreak of shingles that incapacitated her horribly and left her with nerve damage in her forehead, broke her right hip in a fall at home that resulted in surgery and a 10 week stay in a rehab center, and welcomed her first great-grandchild. She is no longer mobile without the aide of quad-walker or a wheelchair, so she hasn’t been outside the house for anything other than hospitalizations and doctor visits in almost 2 years.

Despite that, she wakes up every day and the first thing she does is say a prayer of thanks to God.

When I was giving her a shower a few weeks ago she said to me, out of nowhere, “I can’t believe I’ve lived this long.”

I mumbled, “Me, either,” to which she shot me the glare she used to when I was an errant child.

85 years old and she can still instill parental fear in her 61 year old daughter. That’s the power of an old-school, Irish-gened mother, kids.

Cherish your parents, peeps, no matter how old you are. You won’t have them forever. Tell them you love them daily and show it whenever and however you can.

~ Peg