This story is dedicated to Julie and Melissa

The last three words my mom always said to me just before I wheeled her out of her little apartment in the assisted living wing where she lived was, “hide my legs.”

And one last time, I’d double-check to make sure that the pale pink and green striped lap-blanket was covering her legs completely.
Only the tips of her shoes could be seen, that was our deal.

My mom was overweight but her legs were huge and way out of proportion to the rest of her body.
She had a medical condition called Lymphedema of her lower limbs.
I’ve heard it called elephantiasis and if you’ve ever seen it, you know why.

Why she had it was a guess.
Maybe a congenital problem with the valves in her legs that let fluid in but very difficult for it to flow back out?
We never talked about it so I didn’t really know.

She was embarrassed and ashamed of the way her legs looked.
She always wore pants but almost every day would comment how she’d love to be able to wear a dress.

She loved looking through catalogs and circling the dresses she wished she could wear…..dreamin’, I guess.

They weren’t always grotesque legs.
When she was young, she was tiny…..even compared to today’s ridiculous standards of body sizes.

I found a picture of her after she wasn’t here anymore.
It was a picture of my mom in a bathing suit, sitting on a diving board extended over a lake somewhere and on the back in my aunt’s handwriting it said, “See Loretta, your legs weren’t always big.”

It kinda broke my heart to think she hung on to that picture folded and in a pocket of her wallet for what?…..seventy years?
Sad.

There’s a TV show late at night about horribly obese people, 600 pounds and even more.
Most of them suffer with hideous looking Lymphedema.
I must admit, they’re all in way worse shape than my mom was, but that didn’t make it any easier on my mom.

I wondered if there was anything that could be done for my mom’s legs.

I gave it some thought, talked to my mom about it and then obtained an order from her physician for compression hose.

The nurses and aids hated putting those hose on her.
They struggled every day while getting them on her legs but over a short period of time, we noticed the swelling seemed to be lessening.

After a few months, it became very noticeable that her legs were getting smaller.

Some mornings when I’d walk into her room, she could barely hold her excitement wanting me to look at her legs.
She’d throw back her covers and with a huge smile on her face she’d say, “look at my legs, look at my legs.”
I was so happy for her and felt like we were getting somewhere.

After her physician saw the improvement, he ordered pneumatic compression therapy for her legs.
We thought it would be a good thing but she cried when she told me how much it hurt.
We discontinued that therapy, but there was a special kind of leg massage that encouraged fluid drainage and the nurses did that on her legs every day.

She wore the compression hose, received the therapeutic leg massages and lied on her back with her legs elevated for an hour, twice a day.
She did that every day just to help release the trapped fluid in her legs.
And it worked, her legs decreased in size enough for her family and care givers to notice.
She saw it too and was thrilled.
Carrying 10 or 15 pounds extra on each leg was not only difficult but it was also very painful.

It was a regular thing for two of my daughters, Julie and Melissa to come with me and take my mom out for lunch and shopping.

My mom had lots of faults (and gee…..so did I!) and over the years we had some real bad times, (probably enough to fill a book!) but as a Grandma…..there was no one better.
NO ONE!
I could probably write another book of what a fun grandma she was to my girls.
They adored her and it was obvious how much she loved and enjoyed them.
She saw my girls a LOT while they were growing up and each one of them made special memories with her.
They had a lot of fun with their grandma and always enjoyed when we took her shopping.

But, there was difficulty involved on shopping day; getting the wheelchair in and out of the trunk, getting my mom in and out of the car, pushing her in the wheel-chair and maneuvering through skinny aisles and tight spots.

And quick trips to the bathroom…..oh those quick trips to the bathroom…..they were the worse.

One summer shopping day after lunch, we told my mom it was time to shop for a dress.
She looked at me with a kind of fear in her eyes.
I knew what she was thinking.
I promised that her legs had improved so much that they now looked like millions of other legs.
She trusted I was telling the truth…..and I was.
Oh, they were still big but nothing anyone would stare or make a strange face at.
She thought about it for just a few seconds, then smiled big and clapped her hands with excitement like a little child.
Who would think wearing a dress would bring such happiness?

The four of us voted and decided a long dress should be her first dress purchase.

I pushed my mom and we went one way and my girls each went in different directions; all of us looking for the perfect first dress.

Helping my mom try on dresses was another tough one.
She could only stand with the help of Julie supporting her on one side and Melissa on the other while I worked the dresses over her head.
We were thankful for the large handicap dressing rooms.

It was a good day the day my mom bought her first dress.
It was fun to see her SO excited about something.

It was a simple black and white striped dress with an elastic waist.
We also bought a pretty little shrimp colored short-sleeved sweater to go along with it and when we wheeled past the jewelry, she wanted to stop and found a new pendant and matching earrings.

Shoes were another problem.
Her feet were like loaves of homemade bread.
It was SO hard to find shoes for her.
But, if you don’t give up…..you can’t fail, right?

Took me a long time.

I shopped shoe stores and researched on the computer and received and returned what felt like a hundred different types of shoes until we eventually found two styles that we could get my mom’s feet into and felt as comfortable as shoes were ever gonna be for her.

They were mostly for her to feel complete as she wasn’t gonna really walk.
But, how could she wear a dress and no shoes?

Even into her nineties, my mom was still a girl.
She had beautiful thick white hair and a standing weekly hair appointment to have it done. She was very fussy about her hair.
She knew how to apply her make-up perfectly and never used a mirror.
I had to laugh and marvel every time I watched her and visualized what a clown I’d look like if I tried to do that.

On manicure day, she sat between Julie and Melissa.
She loved being sandwiched between those two.
The three of them would sit and make joke after joke and non-stop laugh.
They even made the manicurists laugh and well….. I didn’t think they had a clue what they were laughing at other than just the three of them.
Melissa kept my mom’s nails looking lovely and polished in the hippest shades-of-the-day from one appointment to the next.

She wore her dress one night when friends took her out to dinner.
I helped her get ready.
I knew she felt like a queen that night…..she looked beautiful and she was wearing a dress!

My mom got excited over such little things anymore that watching her would put that lump in my throat and almost make me cry.

Time passed.

She’d been living in California for 6 years actively involved with her peers, always busy.
But, she began to slow-down as she approached 90.
She had major surgery and never really recovered back to where she was before the surgery.
Eventually she had to be moved to a Skilled Nursing Facility and began receiving Hospice care.

When my husband retired, we moved to San Diego and a week after we arrived, we had my mom flown down with a nurse accompanying her.
She was going to live with us. (My mom…..not the nurse.)

I wanted to take care of her.

When we had told her that we were moving and she was coming with us, she came back to life for a while.
She was SO excited.

The Hospice nurses in Sacramento had contacted the ones in San Diego and everything was coordinated, ready and waiting for her when she arrived.

Her bedroom was painted a soft lavender, her favorite color and she could look out her window from her bed and see beautiful flowers growing in every color.

Her Hospice physician arrived early her first evening.
He was adorable, and WOW was he young!
The very first question he asked my mom was how was she feeling.
She took a deep breath, tears streamed down her cheek and she said, “I made it, I’m with my girls.”
(another throat lump.)

It was a great house, a rental.
It sat high up on a hill, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Across the entire back of the house was a glassed-in room looking smack out at the water.
We put my desk out there and made a comfortable spot for my mom’s recliner, and we both sat out there together each day, all day.
She loved watching the birds fly by.
We were up as high as the tree tops so were almost eye level with the birds.
And we marveled from our front-row seats every night as the sun dipped into the Pacific.

She loved all the meals I made.
She had always liked my cooking, probably because it was just like hers.
We had a bowl of ice cream every single night and there was always candy near-by.

One day she called my name and motioned for me to come closer to her.
In a very slow, weak voice she told me she was afraid but I made her feel safe.
And then she looked at me and smiled and said, “I’m happy.”
In my entire life, I’d never heard my mom say she was happy.
She was happy! My mom was HAPPY!!
I couldn’t swallow the lump that time and the tears fell.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration, there were 14 of us sharing the day.
My mom sat at the table, we toasted her and she glowed.

On Christmas, she lied still in her bed, too weak to open her gifts or sit out on the glass porch with us.
She took only tastes of dinner, all her favorites.
She didn’t want her chocolate cake.
My mom NEVER turned down chocolate cake.

And then it was January.

She hadn’t eaten or taken in any fluids for over a week but the bag emptying her bladder continued to fill.
At first it puzzled me, where was all that fluid coming from, I was emptying the bag once, sometimes twice in a day.
Then it dawned on me…..her legs.

She began slipping in and out of consciousness.

The Hospice nurses or aides came every day.
They helped me bathe her and keep her in the pretty nightgowns that she loved wearing.
We kept her hair brushed and looking nice and her rings stayed on her fingers and bracelets stayed on her arms and the diamond angel that I gave her for one Mother’s Day, never left her neck.

We talked to her, kissed and hugged her.
Her coloring kept getting more and more pale.
I kept cold cloths on her forehead, she seemed so hot.
I wanted her to go/I didn’t want her to go.
I was ready/I wasn’t ready.
It wasn’t about me/but it was.
I was losing my mom.
I was afraid to sleep. I sat at her bedside and I’d fall asleep holding her hand.
What was it gonna be without my mom?
Who would be my best ever cheer leader….always on my side of everything?

My mom died on January 15th.
She just gave three big sighs and left.
My girls and I were with her.
We held her hands, made a circle and said a rosary together.

There she lay, my mom.
Her legs were so small…..emptied of the pounds of fluid she hauled around with her for so many years.
I wanted to shake her, wake her, yell to her…..”MOM! Look at your legs…..look at your legs!”

That simple, slip-over black and white dress and shrimp colored sweater hang in my closet. I see them every day when I slide the closet door open.
Sometimes it makes me happy and sometimes it makes me so sad and lonely for her.

One day I’ll wear that dress and sweater and remember that day her face lit up when with Julie on one side and Melissa on the other, we slipped it over her head and there she was….in a dress, radiant and looking beautiful.

Her wish come true.