Angelus News | April 21, 2023 | Vol. 8 No

INTERSECTIONS
GREG ERLANDSON
A mother’s journey to Easter
SHUTTERSTOCK
For the first time in several years,
my mom called me by name.
We were turning her in her bed,
which is a group effort, when she
looked up at me and called me “Greg.”
My mom is bed-ridden now, yet
still lives at home at age 99. This is a
kind of a miracle in itself, and is only
possible because of my generous and
loving siblings, a saintly sister-in-law
and a couple of dedicated caregivers.
Yet the dementia that comes with age’s
frailty has taken its toll. The arc of her
human journey has bent back almost
to where it began.
The children who she once fed now
feed her. The children who she once
changed, now change her. The children
who she once helped take their
first steps now carefully lift her up from
the bed, standing her on wobbly legs
as they position her in a wheelchair.
She who gave so much is now giving
us a final opportunity to give back, to
answer love with love.
The fragility and helplessness of the
young child is now hers to endure,
with skin worn almost translucent by
the passage of years.
The woman strong enough to learn
how to play 18 holes of golf in her 50s
now seems to be all painful sinews and
joints, flesh barely covering the bones
of her hands that once gripped those
clubs with such determination.
And despite all this, she has good days
as well as bad ones, lighting up when a
familiar face enters the room. She still
smiles. She blows kisses. She says she
loves each of us madly.
When some unpleasantness is being
inflicted on her, one of the children
who she taught to pray will look her
in the eyes and start reciting the Our
Father or the Hail Mary.
Mom mouths the same words, words
so deeply embedded in her they are
unforgettable. Or she would repeatedly
pray, “Lord, thank you for my blessings
and graces.”
It seems an injustice that after so
many decades of love and service, she
must endure her Good Friday now,
sometimes with loud cries and tears,
sometimes with prayers and supplications,
as the author of the Letter to the
Hebrews puts it.
My mom is a living memento mori, a
reminder of the path we all will travel,
perhaps not for 99 years, but travel
nonetheless we will.
“I say to you, when you were younger,
you used to dress yourself and go
28 • ANGELUS • April 21, 2023