It Doesn’t Matter Because I Remember Her

I resumed two activities today that I had stopped doing about 6 months to a year ago.
First, this morning I started exercising again at Curves.
For those not familiar with Curves, here is how it works. It is a circuit based program which consists of hydraulic resistance machines.  Women move from one machine to the next with aerobic exercise in between, such as jogging in place.  Because it is a 30 minute workout, the program provides the opportunity for exercise for beginners and for women with tight schedules to get a workout.
The workout routine at Curves was also obviously designed to encourage socialization.  The machines are set up in a circle with the exercisers facing each other as they move around the circuit.  There are usually what I like to call “the topics of the day”.  I am a quiet observer of these conversations and rarely participate.
That’s not to say that I don’t have an opinion, I do, but I keep it to myself.  I can’t honestly say that I don’t enjoy being a fly on the wall, because <giggling to myself here> I do.
So, one of today’s topics was the well being of an elderly parent, specifically those who are now cared for in live-in nursing homes.
Three of the women were presently in the situation of having a parent in a nursing home. A fourth woman, talked about her past experience.
The common thread of the conversation, which all four shared, seemed to be the difficulty of having the sole responsibility of maintaining regular routine visits to the facility where their parents were being cared for.  All of the women had siblings who did not put in the same effort as they did.
Each of the women also talked about the strain this put on their relationships with their brothers and sisters.
One of the women talked about her brother who refused to visit his mother.  He told his sister that he was intentionally distancing himself from their mother because she did not recognize or know him any more.
 She said that she couldn’t understand how her brother could feel the way he did and then she explained how she felt.
“After all,” she said, “it doesn’t matter that Mom doesn’t remember me because I remember her.”
"I know who she is.”
She also said that each time that she visits her mother, she introduces herself and will continue to do that for the rest of the time they have left together.
I found this to be so poignant and at the same time very profound.
While Curves might not provide a very strenuous workout, it does provide me with the news, views and pulse of the neighborhood I live in.   Then I go home and report the news to Ross.
Secondly, I started selling on eBay again today.  One of the neat things that is available now is being able to link up my eBay auctions with my Pinterest boards.
I figure maybe I can turn that stash of stuff I have laying around into funds to buy more yarn to add to my steadily growing knitting stuff stash.  More yarn! More yarn!