by Karin Breuer

Created on: March 17, 2009   Last Updated: March 18, 2009

The day before her 80th birthday, my mother became a widow. She and dad had been married 58 years; the grief over her husband's death aged my mother tremendously. As the only child who lived close to her, the care of my mother fell on my shoulders. The next twelve years were a wonderful journey for the two of us; one which taught me among other things, the lessons of personal dignity.

In the first year after mom was widowed I learned that adult children, much like little children, don't cope well with their parents' pain. We want to fix things; make them better. But how do you fix a hole in someone's life especially while you are trying to also deal with the hole left in your own life? You can't; not without help. And so I turned to her grandchildren, my nieces and nephews and my own children for help. They visited regularly and listened to the stories of the past, connecting their lives with the lives of their grandparents and giving my mother a new purpose to life.

She began to consult her grandchildren about her affairs and gave them responsibilities according to their vocation. She attended to their concerns when she decided to sell the condominium she and dad had purchased twenty years earlier for their retirement. She weighed their comments along with mine and those of her other children and then made her decision. She sold and moved to a new apartment that was within walking distance of stores and park and a river along whose banks she would walk for miles.

But then she started to fall and I was concerned that one day she would fall along the river walk and not be able to get home. I encouraged her to get a life line which would give her the freedom to walk and me the peace that she would be safe. And so it was that one day she did fall but in her confusion forgot about the life line and crawled to where she heard voices. An ambulance was called and I met her at the hospital. She was bruised but not hurt. Still, the confusion at the time of the incident weighed heavily on my mind.

That summer my mom and I took a six week trip to her homeland Latvia. It was like erasing years from her. Through a friend she had secured an apartment for us to live in Riga and had received names of people with whom we could connect. My mom was always very social and immediately wrote to make arrangements to meet them. She walked, she spoke, she entertained, she arranged outings for us and she showed me her and my dad's world of their youth. Her energy level equaled my own.

Still,

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