Sad and Happy

Lily of the Valley

I love Lily of the Valley with it's bell-shaped fragrant flowers. Sometimes when walking through our neighbourhood on a mild spring evening, the sweet scent of this little flower comes out to greet me from a neighbour's yard. We've transplanted some plants into our yard. I'm looking forward to being able to place some flowers in a dainty bouquet in our house so we can enjoy their exquisite fragrance indoors as well as outside.

Over the past few years I have been giving Mom cologne, talcum powder and lotion with the Eveyln and Crabtree version of Lily of the Valley. It truly has the delicate scent of the flower for which it is named. I love nothing more than smelling that lovely aroma on my mother when she is dressed and ready for her day at the Long Term Care Facility in which she resides and where I work the night shift. As the disablitating disease known as PSP continues to cause her body to deteriorate, sadness overtakes me. But having her covered with the beautiful scent of spring makes me happy and reminds me of a day coming when she will be restored once again with a healthy, whole body in the Home where springtime will never end.

September 10, 1921 Darjeeling, India

September 10 is my mother's 86th birthday. A little more than 86 years ago, her mother, Ruth Brechbill Heise, who was living with her husband doing missionary work in the hot plains of Bihar, India, was nearing the end of her first pregnancy. She boarded a train, and travelled up through the beautiful wooded Himalayan mountains past tea gardens, tea factories and forests, through terrain which was treacherous by times, until she reached a place of more comfortable climate -the town of Darjeeling. There she found her way to a rest home called Gloven, where she would wait until the time of the birth. There on September 10, 1921, Naomi Ruth entered the world. I can only imagine the dark brown eyes, the wisps of black hair, and the little turned up nose that greeted her mother upon her arrival.

Little Naomi Ruth, her younger brother Clarence and their parents sailed home to North America, when she was 5 years old, on a ship, which on one occasion, got weighted down dangerously to one side, when the passengers moved over to look up to see what was then a new phenomenon, an airplane, flying overhead.

They went to her mother's home in Indiana for a time. After that they moved to the Toronto area in Ontario, and then moved to the Niagara area where they spent most of their lives. Mom became a Registered Nurse, a career which she loved and excelled in, and worked as a nurse until her retirement at age 65. Before her nurses' training, she had already met the man she fell in love with, who she married and with whom she raised the four children they had together. After 59 years of marriage he still brings a smile to her face and causes her heart to skip a beat, when she hears his voice and his footsteps on the threshold of her room in the Long Term Facility where she is presently a resident. The ravages of a condition known as Progressive Supranuclear Palsy have now taken their toll, causing her to be wheelchair bound, and to have difficulty with her speech and with swallowing.

Mom, you've come a long way in your 86 years. I just want to give you the recognition you are deserving of at this time and tell you that I love you.