It is that inability to do things for herself that forces Mum to call me to do for her such tasks as serving food and operating her smartphone. With all my siblings having left the nest, I have assumed the role of being her caretaker, a job I sometimes loathe having, especially when I am busy doing something in my room.
I will never forget the evening in 2018 when Mum asked me to escort her as she went on a tour to our farm. Everything went smoothly as she inspected the farm that evening. But then while we were going back to the house, she lost her balance as she attempted to cross a wooden bar on the fence. And wa! I was taken aback to see how easily her ankle bones crumpled as she fell on the ground. She had such brittle bones.
After that fall, Mum was unable to walk again that evening. I had to call our farmhand to assist me carry her back to the house. And once she was in the house, lying flat on a sofa, she complained of feeling too much pain on her broken ankle. I phoned Dad, requesting him to buy pain-killers for her. Needless to say, we took her to hospital the following day.
Although Mum's ankle did eventually heal, her health didn't improve. She would at times have severe mood swings and then complain of feeling hot. As a result of that rise in her body temperature, she would ask me to open the door and windows for her so as to let in a gust of fresh air.
Mum's hot flushes didn't concern me. It is her mood swings that bothered me. Believe me, she would at times erupt in anger like a volcano. In her anger, she would throw things around the house. She broke a few china cups during some of those violent episodes of hers, a behavior that made me dislike her. And being the prayerful Christian that I am, I would ask God in prayer to take away Mum's anger and calm her troubled breast.
Sometime last year, I began to view Mum in a positive light when I learnt from an article in a newspaper that the brittle bones, hot flushes and mood swings I had observed in Mum are characteristic of women when they reach menopause. The article made me realize that Mum's mood swings were as a result of the chemical changes taking place in her body.
Interestingly, after I began to understand the cause of Mum's behavior, her mood swings lessened. For the past six months or so, she has grown more calm, peaceful and supportive. And one trait I have come to admire in her is generosity. She can be overly generous with her money. Whenever she hears one of her friends has lost a loved one, she asks me to send them the money in her M-Pesa account.
But Mum can also be selfish, as all of us sometimes are. Recently, she instructed me to tell our farmhand that there is no soap in the house when he asks me for one. Mum thinks the farmhand should be buying his own bar of soap with the salary he receives, as all other farmhands before him had been doing.
As a Christian, I have come to abhor lying. So when Mum instructed me to tell our farmhand there is no soap in the house, I was torn between telling the farmhand the truth, thus disappointing Mum or obeying Mum's instructions, thus disappointing the farmhand. In the end, I chose to disappoint the farmhand because I value my mother so much.
Yes, I value my mother so much that I carry a picture of her in my wallet. Sometimes when I peer through the window and see her luxuriating in the sun, I feel an immense sense of gratitude that she is still with us. And then I remember the following poem by Frank McCourt:
Love her as in childhood,My dear reader, I beseech you to also honor your mother if she's still alive. Show her the respect she deserves. And perhaps most important, make her proud of you by leading a life of integrity and excellence. That's all I am saying.
Through feeble, old and gray.
For you'll never miss a mother's love,
Till she's buried beneath the clay.
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RECOMMENDATION: If you've enjoyed the above story on a mother to be honored, you might also enjoy another one on "Appreciating Mothers" which I wrote some time back. Just click on that link in blue to dive straight into the story.
