A strange sort of Mother's Day

By Josh Salm/Staff Writer
When you live 1,400 miles away from home, celebrating Mother’s Day amounts to sending flowers and making phone calls home.
This past Sunday was no different. While my wife was out with her friends having a “girls-only” brunch on Mother’s Day, I spent the morning with a cup of coffee and a cell phone, calling my mother and grandmother back home.
What should have been a morning full of smiles was replaced with a bittersweet feeling. My mother, Grandmother Green and myself could not talk really about how they were doing on the one day a year we devote to the maternal aspect of our families. Instead, we talked about how my grandfather was doing.
It was only a week ago when Grandpa moved into hospice care. He’s been suffering from cancer for quite some time, and it’s gotten to the point where he needs a little more help than any of us in the family can give him.
He’s cool with the move so far, which was a surprise to all of us. He’s been calling his new digs “my bachelor pad,” and in classic Grandpa form he’s been giving the nurses at this hospice center a little bit of grief. I wouldn’t have expected otherwise.
But while this day was supposed to be about the women in our lives that mean so much, the three of us couldn’t think of anything else but Grandpa. Friday was a good day for him; Saturday not so much. Sunday he slept for the better part of the day I was told.
We’re all beginning to cope with the idea that the cancer is starting to take hold again, even with the recent round of radiation and treatment he received. The inevitability of what’s going on is taking its toll on everyone in the family.
Grandma seems to be doing all right. On Sunday when I talked to her she said she was going to the store to pick up two roses — one for her and one for Grandpa. Apparently I missed the fact it was her wedding anniversary that day as well. But you could hear in her voice that this is a trying time for her. She was tired.
So was Mom. Besides being there for Grandma right now, she’s in the middle of completing her bachelor’s degree online and she’s stuck in a humanities class right now that even I am looking at as if it was written in Greek. It’s the last thing she wants to look at after a long day in town and at the hospice center, but there are assignments due each week.
Somehow I don’t think the sunflowers my sister and I sent home were enough to show how much we care for her right now, but it put a smile on her face and that’s what matters.
At a time like this, if we were able to give Mom a brief moment of happiness for Mother’s Day, then maybe we did all right.