AMWW#85: A DAY FOR OUR BEST
AbeMunder
by Abe Munder, the Wheeled Wonder
(AbeM...@aol.com)
I know someone who sends her mother flowers every year on her birthday. Not on
her mother's birthday, HER birthday. She does it as a basic gesture of
gratitude for bringing her into the world. Apart from making it difficult on
the rest of us human offspring, isn't that the coolest gesture? Some people
are thoughtful to their core, what we wish for in our leaders, religious or
political.
It's apropos that this person is, you guessed it, herself a mother. Mothers
are that way. Thoughtfulness is their stock-in-trade.
I didn't realize the seriousness of an MS diagnosis until I told my mother. I
knew it was bad--in fact, I erroneously thought it was fatal--but mostly I went
around not thinking about it at all, and especially not telling anyone.
Especially not my mother! But she cornered me somehow, and since she can read
through my lies (another distinctly maternal talent), I was caught.
She took my hand in hers; she knew something bad was coming. I hemmed and
hawwed and then came out with it, in one of my "no big deal" voices. She
didn't buy my nonchalance. Tears poured from her eyes.
She said, "I wish I could take it on me, so you wouldn't be sick." Desolation
in her voice. I heard her heart really breaking. Not just from any guilt of
perhaps passing something to her child (a typical but inaccurate parental
reflex), but because she saw pain and struggle on my horizon, and all she
wanted at that moment was that she be the one to suffer it.
My mom doesn't freak out too often. As I squeezed her hand, I was getting a
clue.
One image to meditate on for Mother's Day, far removed from Hallmark Cards, is
Michelangelo's Pieta. Not its technical brilliance, although it's hard to see
past the way a master sculptor transformed marble into soft cotton and supple
skin. Look at its entirety. Wasted and deceased, Christ curls across His
mother's lap. In her billowing robes, Mary holds His emaciated form like a
great angel. She looks down at him not with the anguished grimace we would
suspect, but with love and peace. After all His agonies, He is home again.
It's difficult for me to even conjure that vision and write of it. That's what
a mother is, the best part of our nature. Celebrate her.
-- MICHELANGELO'S PIETA --
http://www.abcgallery.com/M/michelangelo/michelangelo6.html
-- PRESCRIPTION DRUG INFORMATION & MEDICARE --
Due to the number of requests, I'm leaving up the April 27 column about
Medicare prescription drug cards and CRAB drugs, available at my website
(http://members.aol.com/abemunder). The column includes links to private
prescription drug cards and MS pharmaceuticals companies.
Find this week's column at the Angry Gimp: http://www.angrygimp.com
To join my mailing list, please write abem...@aol.com
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357
Angel
Abe,
Once again, you have brought tears to my eyes. I love your column and
when I am in ASMS I look for it. I know the look in my mothers eyes
and my fathers eyes every day when they see me in pain. It is agony to
watch them suffer heartbreak and pain because I have this damn
disease. Sometimes their worry and greif is worse than my symptoms.
Your column has once again made me think. I thank you for that, Abe.
You are truly a wonderful man. Thanks so much.
Angel