Travels with my mother XVII: Living in the moment

This is the seventeenth in my series called Travels with my Mother. If you’ve not read the first in the series, you might wish to have a look at that one as it gives the context behind these posts.

As some Covid-19 restrictions began to ease at Mum’s nursing home, the family once again had the opportunity to take her out in her wheelchair to enjoy a (socially distanced and outdoor) cup of coffee. Several of us did so in the space of a couple of weeks, but when I asked Mum about these excursions, she had pretty much forgotten about them.

At first I found this disappointing. I was so excited to be able to venture out with Mum after a seven month hiatus in which her contact with the outside world was through her window. It came as a blow to realise that for her, those excursions were momentary pleasures, forgotten soon after they occurred. And, if I am honest, it seemed a poor return on the effort involved – a round trip drive of nearly two hours and the walk to and from the coffee place – for about fifteen minutes of actually drinking coffee together.

When I thought more about it, I realised that for Mum, the pleasure she takes from these times is now is in the actual experience of them: getting out in her wheelchair to see an expanded array of sights, feeling the sun and breeze on her skin, and having coffee with a loved one somewhere outside her room.

The fact that she forgets it so soon after is probably irrelevant. So is the fact that she can no longer ‘look forward to’ something in the way she once would have done. She is truly and profoundly living in the moment, taking her small pleasures right then and there. Not before, not after. Just in the ‘now’.

It’s a lesson for me. To let go of my own needs and assumptions and allow Mum to lead the way. To value the fifteen, or five, or however many minutes are enjoyable for her and to allow that to be enough motivation for the effort I put in.

Truly, dementia is an exercise in living in the moment like no other.

Image by Daniel Kux at pexels

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