It's okay to sit down, so long as it's in a Lazy-Boy

My mother, who decided to move away from me and live up in the woods like a crazy person with my father, recently ruptured a disc in her lower back. This highly energetic, borderline spastic, eccentric hippy of a woman has been immobilized by her aging body.

On disability she now whittles away the hours crocheting and knitting, in a Lazy Boy chair picked out especially for her. The tale of the chair is something else entirely, but it took nearly three weeks to buy and have delivered. These people live so far off the beaten path that delivery to their area is only twice a month.

Her chair is a beautiful mom shade of pink-fuscia, and apparently she loves it. It is the only space, besides her bed, where she can spend extended amounts of time.

We've signed her up for Netflix and recommended some tv shows, and although the delivery of the precious silver discs that relieve her endless boredom and misery is considered slow, I think she likes the system nonetheless.

In a few weeks here I am going to visit my parents in their tiny house, probably full of dishes, dog hair, and dust. Pappy's recent knee replacement went very well, but I think he's still crippling along while mom is a prisoner of the Lazy-Boy.

It's unimaginable for me to actually go up there while my mother is so confined and immobile. That with her searing pain and numbness is literally almost too much for me to see.

My most vivid memories of my mom involve her energy and ability to run around for hours, just like her mother before her and so on. I can't imagine seeing her so immobilized and the thought is nearly inconveivable. She's always has more vivacity and zest for life of anyone I've ever known.

Here though is where her amazing fortitude shines as she's managing to keep an upbeat spirit as much as she can and still, amazingly, doing things around the house she shouldn't, like feeding Bonnie their great pyrenees dog who weighs almost as much as I do. Every three days she tackles the various dishes, garbage and torn apart heads of lettuce that Pappy tosses carelessly in the kitchen sink.

I know she's very much looking forward to my visit, but honestly I'm afraid to see her so frail and in pain. I don't want to acknowledge the idea that my parents are mortal, aging, and ultimately breaking down cell by cell every day.

It's so funny to get to an age where you think you worry about your parents more than they do you. Awkward, uncomfortable, and yet so full of love it hurts.

Hang in there moomsie. I love you and will do everthing in my power to make you laugh and have fun even if you are confined to that chair for 8 months like the doctor said.