in this moment

came across some earlier journaling on mom - this is from 2007

she sits on the bed, in the nursing home, where she is surrounded by people in all stages of some grand and tedious, insignificant and amazing task.

they may be other residents, visitors, or care-givers, all coming to terms with whatever role they have been given, or have chosen, to perform in the last act of the play. those who have figured it out have, in layman's ,terms "lost their freakin' minds".

she sits there amidst the chaos, my mom, and she giggles. like a little girl; swinging her feet, clapping her hands, she giggles from a place somewhere deep inside that tells her is it ok. OK! it's ok to let it out/to be "age-inappropriate". what she is laughing at, who really knows? her room mate has just dropped a bowl of food with a loud clatter and the attendants don't seem to notice and it smells really bad in here. but her giggles are like a benevolent virus and my brother and i catch it (even though we both cover our mouths and try really hard not to inhale). so we spend several minutes in gales of laughing tears.
it is new to experience REAL fun with our mom. she started this way of being a couple of years ago; and no, it is NOT a journey...nor is it a pathway to heaven ...nor has it been a bowl of cherries - it IS a way of being.

in her own words "i just know i am here NOW".

for that i am so grateful. that in this altered state that holds my mom like a web holding spider's prey, suspended, we are laughing. that just for now we can hold hands and swing our feet together, being silly and not giving a bleep what others think. it is, of course, harder for my siblings and me as we still have that inhibitor that passes for a brain, or good manners, or 'correct behavior'.

but mom has no need of that now. she has freed herself of the nagging monkey-mind and is now "free to move about" the universe as she pleases.