Watching our parents grow old!

After just coming home from the hospital visiting my mom who is in again for congestive heart condition, other issues and overall just getting older and breaking down. It seems like yesterday that she was scolding me about my room or about my behavior in grade school. always the strict disciplinarian and always the one to hold us all accountable for everything. We could never get away with anything and generally never tried out of respect. Well now her mind is sharper than ever and her sense of humor is better than I remember with her age, but the body is tearing down and we watch the slip on a weekly basis if not daily basis and saddens me to think that just not too long ago we had conversations about her taking trips and going places around the world and to spend her life savings on herself, she raised us kids and did a great job and now should leave this world penniless with travels to places only read about, but she can no longer get around too much , deteriorating knees and feet,heart issues and blood pressure issues all at the same time! yeah I always wanted my mom to enjoy the finer things in her later years but it seems that her body won't allow her to do so and she refuses to spend her life's savings and wants to save it all for the kids. She's been driving the same Toyota corolla for 15 years and has refused a nice upgrade to a more luxurious vehicle , she's old school and well enough is something that is working, so it ain't broken ,she ain't changing shit. You gotta love the old school mentality, if not totally disagree with it you can still see where the older values never die, waste is waste whether you can afford to or not. I respect my mother as much as anybody I've ever known, the values and lessons taught to me at a young age are too numerous to count, but when I go to parent my own, alot of her parenting comes out in my own parenting. Makes me feel proud t finally understand what she was trying to teach me back then, I think that this is why I have tried to teach others and give back all that I was given as a young child growing up. I was given so much love and taught all of the right lessons and how to treat people and how to protect your reputation in a world always trying to belittle you. Yeah I think of these lessons as I venture to and from the corridors of the Hospital and see my Mom with her strong personality and no bull attitude,always asking how everybody else is and putting herself last on the list. Yeah I get sad when I think that we may lose our mother anytime soon, she makes me feel good knowing that she has done most everything a parent wants to do, to raise her kids to be strong self sufficient quality human beings. For this we all thank our mother for this. So as we just celebrated our Mothers' 75th birthday with a surprise birthday party 3 weeks ago, I wrote a letter to my mom trying to clear up some misconceptions that we may have both had, we always butted head with each other and I felt that this letter was closure for both of us, but closure seems too final for me and don't know If I'm able to accept that she could be gone from us really soon if her health issues don't get turned around. So I do at times have a heavy heart but have hopes that if she goes ,she goes the way she lived her life, quietly and worry free. Yes it is sad to watch or parents grow old, suffer from aches and pains and never complained like we did as kids about meaningless crap, but part of living is dying and having to accept this is never easy, but I have to be thankful as do my brother, sisters friends and family who are part of my mothers life that we are fortunate to be able to draw from this wealth of understanding what life is all about.