Mom at 90

Parish Diary

Peter Daly

April 13, 2010

Fr. Peter Daly talks about his mother turning 90 years old this month for Mother’s Day)

            My mother turns 90 this month.

            If you talk to her, she says that she is the same today as she was when she was 50. However, she has noticed that all of her eight children have certainly gotten old.

            I drove up to see her in Baltimore at Easter.

            She was tired from going to the Easter Vigil the night before.

            I asked her, “How are you Mom.” 

            She told me that she had broken the frames of her glasses and her hearing aids weren’t working.   “Well,” she said sarcastically, “I can’t hear and can’t see. But apart from that I’m alright.”

            It was nothing serious. A spot of super glue fixed the glasses. It turned out the hearing aid batteries were in backwards.

            Mom still lives in her own apartment but it can hardly be said she “lives on her own.”  When you are 90, you have staff. Her permanent staff are her 8 children. She says the reason for having 8 children is so that you never have to go into a nursing home.

            She lives on the 11^th floor of a high rise. My brother Kevin lives one floor below. He takes care of her medicines and bills. Together with my sister Maureen who lives a few blocks away, they drive Mom to church, the doctor, the hairdresser and everywhere else. They get the “caregiver award.”

            Beside the children, Mom has two paid care givers; one in the morning and one in the evening.

            The morning visitor is generously paid for by the state under Medicaid. It is a program intended to keep people out of nursing homes, which would cost the state much more. The evening visitor mom pays out of her own savings. Each visitor stays about an hour. They change the bed and help her bathe. The morning worker gets her up and makes breakfast. The evening worker gets her to bed.

            She also has Meals on Wheels. They bring a hot lunch and a cold dinner five days per week. Even in the terrible snow storms this winter they came faithfully. Currently the meals are delivered by a nice young man in his 20s. Every day mom tells him he is nice looking boy.    

            Mom is definitely low income. She lives on social security, a tiny pension, and her savings. Every month savings diminish a little. But hey, that’s what they are for. 

            Every six weeks or so, Mom comes to say with me for a week. It gives her a break in “the country house” as she calls the rectory.  She does not want to live out in the country. “Too boring,” she says. She also goes to visit my sisters Brenda, Rena, Deirdre, and Brigid at their houses. The peripatetic Mrs. Daly.

            Every day Mom receives telephone calls from her children in Diaspora from New York to Illinois to Florida. No matter how old you are, you call your mother.

            Every day she prays. She was never a traditional Catholic exactly. She was always a thinker and questioner. She keeps her own prayer ritual from her days as a third order Dominican.  She reads the scriptures with a critical mind and a poetic heart.

            At 90 Mom has peace. She lives in the present. She forgives (and forgets) the past. She hopes for the future and heaven. She enjoys the little things, like chocolate milk shakes. But she values the big things:  life, family, faith and love.

            Happy Birthday Mom. You go girl!