This past week was one of the saddest of my entire life. I felt so bad for my Mom as she watched her most valued lifetime possessions walk out of her door. She then moved from a patio home to a small apartment in assisted living. Unmitigated pain. Moving from a patio home to assisted living meant flunking at life, at least that’s how my Mom felt about it. Failure at age 88. Her dementia has gotten to be too much and so comes the final punishment for living so long.

There was nothing we could say to ease her pain. It was just so sad.

At one point she said to me, “You will never understand how this feels.” And she’s right. Each person’s pain is their own. Only she remembers when she got each piece of furniture and how much it meant to her and my father. Their home was like a museum of their world travels and their many friendships gained along the way. That is now gone as her memories fade.

Sometimes I wonder, why we live if it all ends in death? That is when it strikes me that we are no different than any other animal or plant. We do not choose to be born or choose our death, it just is. The cycle of life and death continues for all living beings.

All I can come up with is to do my best to love my life every day, come rain or shine…