My moth­er just turned 100, So instead of rumi­nat­ing on the fatu­ous and the feck­less who are ruin­ing the world, this week’s post  is an unabashed­ly pride­ful reflec­tion on mak­ing it bet­ter by what she would call “just get­ting on with it.”

The stan­dard trope for that is  “a life well lived”, but that would be ignor­ing the fine print of her story.

In a string-bound fam­i­ly pho­to album, I came across the pic­ture on the left. Known as a “snap”, it was tak­en with a clunky cam­era called a Box Brownie.
Writ­ten on the back, in my mother’s quirky, back-slop­ing script is: “Allen aged 2  and Dad  out­side our mon­stros­i­ty chick­en coop in Crerar”,
It was where we lived, as my Mom describes it, “to hell and gone” beside the trans Cana­da rail­way line in  north­ern Ontario, where my Dad was a tele­graph oper­a­tor, a skill he acquired as a 17 year-old Cana­di­an air force vol­un­teer in World War II.
Six months after the pho­to was tak­en, we’d moved up in the world, to “a shack” in an equal­ly remote whis­tle stop called La For­est. There was no road to it, no phone line, no elec­tric­i­ty. The ameni­ties were a pump for water, a wood stove for heat­ing and cook­ing and an out­door privy.
In the depths of snow-filled win­ter, the tem­per­a­ture some­times dipped below minus 40, the point where the Fahren­heit and Cel­sius scales meet.
A few years ago, I asked my moth­er if she was ner­vous about hav­ing a small child in a place like that.
 “I was ter­ri­fied.,” she said. “But when you don’t have a choice, you just  hope and pray for the best and get on with it.”
Fif­teen years lat­er, through dili­gent get­ting on with it the “old-fash­ioned” way,  scrimp­ing and sav­ing while my Dad learned account­ing through cor­re­spon­dence cours­es, we were liv­ing in a home of our own in a mid­dle class  sub­urb of Montreal.
And while it may seem quaint today, in what was back then the ful­fill­ment of an aspi­ra­tional dream, he went to work in a suit and tie, and his first ever brand new car was in the driveway.
He died from a heart attack four years lat­er, aged 42, leav­ing my moth­er a wid­ow at 41, with a 21-year old (me) in uni­ver­si­ty, a 16 year-old  in high school, and no “nest egg” wor­thy of the name.
A month lat­er she got a job and worked until retire­ment age.
When my broth­er Len and I told her a few years lat­er we wouldn’t be upset if she remar­ried, she replied: “And where, pray tell, would I ever find some­one as good as your father?” (Giv­en that they’d been, as she put it, “sweet­hearts” since they were four, she had rig­or­ous and well-entrenched standards.)
She also firm­ly believes that when she dies, they will hold  hands again in heaven.
Her wait­ing time for that has been filled with look­ing after aging fam­i­ly mem­bers, and trav­el­ling to far-flung parts of the world.
I don’t believe in an after­life, but have come to under­stand, respect and even envy the strength  peo­ple can draw from faith.

            UNFAIR AND INEVITABLE, BUT...

Demen­tia began its cru­el encroach­ment a few years ago,
My Mom can’t remem­ber what, or even if she had lunch five min­utes after being wheeled away from the table. But she recalls details from decades ago, and recog­nis­es her reg­u­lar fam­i­ly visitors.
A fall a few years ago inevitably meant a move to a long term care facil­i­ty, which she some­times mis­takes for her own home.
I think some  of that can be attrib­uted to the staff. I have watched and lis­tened to them deal with my moth­er when they had no idea I was there, and have deep admi­ra­tion and grat­i­tude for what I saw and heard as they per­formed tasks even lov­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers would find, to be del­i­cate, difficult.
Many of the care work­ers are immi­grants from West Africa and the Caribbean.
I asked a per­pet­u­al­ly cheer­ful Ghana­ian named Sun­day, who address­es my moth­er as “Mama Nor­ma”, why that was.
“It is part of our cul­ture to respect and  care for old peo­ple,” he said. “This work is nat­ur­al for us.”
I won­der what those who snarl and sneer about immi­grants would make of that if it was their loved one in the bed or wheelchair?
My Mom sleeps a lot, which the facil­i­ty doc­tor assures us is a  peace­ful wind­ing down, the way we all hope our inevitable lot will be.
Once when I asked if she was asleep, she replied:  “No, I’m thinking.”
When I asked  about what, she  answered: “Things I remember.”
I don’t know what they were, but I am proud of what she deserves them to be, not least because no  mat­ter what life threw at her, she is one of those who make their own and oth­ers lives, and hence the world, a lit­tle bet­ter by just get­ting on with it.

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