The Journey Is the Destination: Journey Well
- Susan
- Oct 27, 2022
- 2 min read
Today was one of those days that just magically becomes special. Kinda like when the rare dessert you order appears with both whipped cream AND a cherry on top! But the menu picture didn’t show it that way!
About a month ago we prepared to say goodbye to my mom who entered a deep sleep from which there seemed no rousing her. After two days she returned. This wasn’t the first time she had “checked out” like this, but it was the longest stretch by far. Traveling and illness interfered with the following several weeks and I stayed glued to my phone lest the time should arrive even as I continued living my life—a little guilty that I wasn’t the daughter keeping a constant bedside vigil and a little annoyed that God was letting this slow goodbye continue.Sometimes we just don’t like or understand His plan.
This afternoon we wheeled Mom out into the general population before dinner to hear some old classics being sung by a new friend of mine and her piano accompanist who mom once upon a time would have recognized. Years ago mom would have swayed and sang to the musIc—her sheet music from decades ago I might ironically add, which had been borrowed for just this event. All the while mom sort of gazed around in a random but predictably disconnected way until the activity director came over to snap this picture. You see, smiles have been non-existent for months when we have been there visiting. More frowns and blank stares lately seem to be the norm.
When I whispered to mom to smile, I wasn’t sure if she had or not. Honestly, sometimes it’s hard for even me to smile because a lot of the pictures we have snapped over the past several months I have looked at later and wished to not remember my mom this way.
When I received this picture later this evening it was such a gift. The mom I began losing years ago was there—fleeting and brief, but a tiny spark and remnant of the woman who seemed already to have left me behind in this life was still there.
I’ve said it before—Alzheimer’s has stolen her mobility. It has robbed her of her speech and every last bit of independence and normalcy. But tonight I got a simple reminder even as I often find myself just waiting for her funeral.
The journey is the destination. It might not feel or look anything like the road we would have willingly mapped out for ourself or for our loved ones, but it is ours to sojourn nonetheless. And some days simply exist to remind us that the little things we once took for granted have now become the biggest things on this path to where we are going. Journey well my friends. Journey well.
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