look out york

“I want my children to have all the things I couldn't afford. Then I want to move in with them.”

- Phyllis Diller

This was never my mom’s plan. Although I am sure she wanted us to do well, she never wanted to move in with us. This was one of the things we discussed, in detail, when it seemed she might move.

She had made the decision to spend a couple of days in a hotel in York, before going into assisted living, to ease into her new living arrangements. She called this ‘transition’ time which is code for “I want to smoke!” My mom has smoked on and off for most of her life. It’s been on for the past 15 – 20 years…a lot. Her assisted living facility doesn’t allow smoking. So she wanted a couple of days to end her affair. Well…she picked the right hotel. Or, maybe I should say I picked the right hotel. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a hotel that allows smoking anymore? Pretty hard. But I found one. When I took her to drop her off, I felt bad. Think of a bad hotel…then multiply the ‘gross’ factor by about 100. This was the kind of hotel where you wouldn’t even want to sit on the bed without one of those nifty paper toilet seat covers. I wondered if people in the lobby thought, “Why would someone leave her mother here?”.

The next morning I went to pick her up for breakfast. She got in the car and said, “Guess what I found in my room?” The answers that went through my mind were varied and scary. But every one of them was wrong. She found a packaged condom…in with the TV guide….yep – this was the right hotel for an affair. I told her that I was sure the proprietors of this hotel were not use to people taking a room for several days – several hours was probably more the norm.

The morning of the third day, I went to pick her up for her move into assisted living. I walked into her room and her suitcase was on the bed. She rifled through it and collected numerous packs of cigarettes. She put them in a plastic bag along with her lighter and handed it to me. After well over a decade, she just handed them over. I don’t think I appreciated how tough that was until doctor after doctor has told her how amazed they are that she was able to stop smoking, cold turkey.
She gave up her home and she gave up her addiction to nicotine, all within five days. I think, in some ways, I was only just beginning to see her incredible hidden strength….strength that she doesn’t even know she has…but my prayer is that she is beginning to.

Grace and peace,
Deb