When my mother was in her early nineties and a resident at St. Teresa’s during the last couple years of her life, before she passed away in 2013, I was fortunate enough to be able to visit every day. She was always a very kind, nurturing, and “available” mother to the four of us children when we were growing up. Even with her successful teaching career, she still showed us by her many loving actions that we four children were always her number one priority. She was simply the best mother in the world and I enjoyed our daily visits as much as she did. During those visits we often played cards, mostly cribbage, a game we both enjoyed. But then one day I brought in a set of dominoes and she loved them. Often preferring them over our card games. The dominoes were much thicker than cards and easier for her stiff, arthritic fingers to hold. And it is an easy game, not requiring a lot of thinking which therefore allows for lots of talking. It’s just a matter of matching dots all the while creating intricate domino designs on the table. Throughout our games we talked about everything; life, love, loss, old age, death, all the subjects I would never think of broaching before but at that time, seemed so important to discuss. It was a special time for me, getting to know and understand my mother at this stage in her life. One day I asked her why she liked playing dominoes, convinced she’d give me an answer similar to mine about our meaningful talks, about dominoes being, as I teasingly said, the “gateway” to a person’s soul. Surely something “deep.” Instead, she just smiled wistfully and said, “It reminds me of my childhood. This is one of the games I used to play with my mother.” Sometimes the answer is simpler than you think.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 16:20:27 +0000
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