I still don't know..

if I should be blabbing all about the inner machinations of my mind or not, but whatever.

I mark time by significant events in my life. Remember back at the end of November/beginning of December, I wrote about how I had been gone from Restaurant for a whole year? Well, I'm remembering another year anniversary today.

On March 14, 2007, the person my mom was disappeared forever. That was the day she had her radical cystectomy (where doctors do a complete hysterectomy and bladder removal) that radically changed her life. I blogged about that here.

It is my hypothesis that the stress to her body along with the anesthesia caused her further mental decline. It's not the doctors' faults. It just is the nature of the beast. After the surgery, we had so been hoping that she would come out of the fog, but it hasn't happened, and by this point, I highly doubt that it will. She hasn't seen her house in more than 7 months because she's been living in a nursing home for that long.

That's one of the parts that really get me. My mom worked for her WHOLE life, from the time she was a kid and did farm chores, to working at the post office when I was a little kid, to being the secretary for a guy who eventually laid her off because the price of steel skyrocketed. And then, she worked at a factory because she didn't feel like she should retire yet. So, the house that she WORKED to pay for is now sitting all devoid of life and stuff. It's clean (for the most part) and is just sitting there all "unlived in." It's weird to go there and see the place like that. But, that's the way it is.

On the positive side, she lives in a REALLY nice home. She doesn't like it, but it's the best place she could be in right now. It doesn't smell, the workers are actually nice, and it has a very "homey" feel, except for the fact that they all have roommates. Plus, it's a "religious" facility, (although it's non-Lutheran, but that's okay) and so they offer services and chapel and what not. Also, Pastor goes to see her sometimes, despite the fact that it's farther away than the rest of the homes he goes to. I don't know if she attends religious services or not because when we were there around Christmas, she wasn't interested in going to the Christmas Eve service. This surprised me because they were doing a lot of singing, and my mom LOVED to sing. People loved to hear her sing. And it's kind of sad that she doesn't do that anymore. But, I have a plan to maybe get her to sing sometime this week when I go visit.

It's at times when I remember what has happened that I am even more grateful that Jesus Christ has promised to be with me, even until the end of the age. I'm not much one for what I've coined, "Sunshine and flowers theology," because sometimes, the stuff that happens in life sucks. If I were to say that it didn't, I would be negating much of what life is all about. Life involves change and loss and gain and joy. Life engages our emotions, our thoughts, and our spirits. And if I were to say that everything is always peachy keen, I would be lying to myself, those around me, and I believe, even to God. God can handle my emotions (even though I'm not a very emotional person. Really, I'm not). And I think it cheapens faith and what God has done for us in Christ when we say that we "just need more faith" in order to endure this or that or whatever. So, I don't have sunshine and flowers theology. I think I have a realistic theology. Sometimes life sucks. But Jesus is with me in that suckiness. And therein lies my hope.