Today

I cheer the fall of the instigator and orchestrator of September 11th. I mourn the past few weeks as we recognize the 12th anniversary of the Columbine disaster and watch fellow Americans lose their homes to tornadoes and storms. I struggle to understand the chasm that is growing in the country between the left and right, when the majority of us falls somewhere closer to the middle. And yes, I worry that the Hopis, Aztecs, Mayans, Chinese philosophers and Nostradamus have some insight into the winter solstice next December…

But in the grand scheme of life, I focus on today, on a mother who fights to remember what she had for breakfast, the smartest person I know struggling to get her to brain to cooperate. I strive to inspire her to fight…to beat the disease we can’t see, that robs her of so much of her freedom.

The world is full of turmoil, from losing a house to a fire to so many who struggle to recover from an economic downfall. But nothing any of us can lose, short of a life, can compare to knowing you’re losing your mind. What we use as a cliché looms real for so many. And it looms on the horizon for so many entering middle age. If you could, would you choose cancer over Alzheimer’s? Even death first? Many would…

The idea of losing who we are can’t compare to anything else…I want to crawl into my mom’s brain and jumpstart it, to fill in the blank spaces that are growing like ink stains on a paper towel. And deep down, selfishly, I fear the day she looks at me and has that brief instant of not-knowing….and the brief moments giving way to more.

So yes, I’m thrilled we’ve destroyed the monster who shattered our lives nearly a decade ago. But today, I will cheer when I walk in to visit my mom and marvel at her smile, at the moment when I know she loves me…and remembers me.

Sometimes today is enough.