You are viewing a read-only archive of the Blogs.Harvard network. Learn more.

Archive for April, 2012

A luckly lady

Yes, I am.

The last couple of weeks have been trying, to say the least. The most upsetting is that my wonderful mother-in-law fell down the stairs and fractured a vertebrae in her neck. She is 81 years old and has Parkinson’s disease. Sadly, the disease is beginning to win the battle and this injury is not helping matters at all.

She spent some time at a great hospital in Boston before being transferred to a “5-star” rehab in the ‘burbs. Unfortunately, this meant she would not be home for the Easter holiday. Long story short, the plan was that (most of) her family would go to the rehab, where they reserved a room late in the day, and they would bring Chinese food.

It bothered my husband beyond words that his mother would be having Chinese food for dinner on Easter Sunday. Our plans did not have us joining in those “festivities” and he said to me a couple days before, “Let’s cook Mom an Easter dinner! You don’t even have to do anything, I’ll do all the work!”

So, Easter morning came, and the husband got up and put a ham in the oven. He proceeded to ask me if I wanted him to make the potatoes. Naturally, I said “No, I think I can handle that for you!” We brought the “dinner” to the rehab so that she could have it for lunch. When she heard she was getting a home-cooked meal, her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. She ate more off that plate than she’s eaten in one sitting in awhile.

As I stood at the kitchen sink peeling those potatoes, my eyes began to well up. They say that you can judge how a man will treat you buy how he treats his mother and I stood there saying to myself, “I am a lucky lady!”

Yes, I am.

Published in:Uncategorized |on April 10th, 2012 |1 Comment »