It’s Happening! I’m Becoming My Mom!

I’m becoming my Mom! Not only do I look more like her as I age, but I’m sounding and acting just like her and it’s getting worse. I just had a little cosmetic work done on my teeth. Some old cavities on my front teeth were making my teeth look stained and I was sick and tired of my old silver fillings on the side. My dentist is wonderful and replaced and bonded some stuff and I love my smile again. But whatever he did to the front teeth, my smile looks so much more like my Mom’s now that I think it’s her in my mirror! Which sometimes is great and sometimes scary!!! I have some of her physical ailments now too, which I consider karma. She’s paying me back because I had to try (and the operative word here is try) to keep her away from chocolate in the last years of her life because it did not agree with her tummy at all. We would have knocked down, drag out fights about it. Unimpressed, she would sneak it whenever she could. I think she had stashes of it I’ll never find. I won’t go into how this effected my life but let’s just say we were all happier when she avoided chocolate! Guess who recently had to get off chocolate? Yup. As for the dark sunglasses she wore all the time (glare really bothered her) I have since found out I have a hereditary eye disorder that makes glare really uncomfortable. Hey, has anyone seen my sunglasses? As for her personality and character traits let’s just say my sister and I laugh and scream at each other all the time now, “you’re just like Mommie!”

We never really got along until I became her Caregiver.

The irony is that my Mom and I didn’t really see eye to eye for most of our lives. It was only when I began taking care of her in the years before she passed that an extraordinary healing took place. It’s wasn’t all a bed of roses during that time, but an extraordinary gift was presented to me while I was her caregiver. We healed a relationship that needed it badly and I walked away from that experience with peace and serenity and a great sense of appreciation for her and the person I ended up being when we were together. I got to know her all over again and was able to step back seeing her as my Mom to seeing her as the woman she was. Something magical happened because as I think of her now all the pain and frustration we knew together is gone and the memories left in their place are special, positive and loving. So now when I see her face in my mirror or hear her tones in my voice I feel proud and honored that I’m just like her. I’m glad I’m becoming my Mom. She was one special lady.