Updating My "Daughter" Software

My mom is trying my patience these days and I think I know the problem. 

I'm using old information. 

I'm still stuck in Sally 1.0 when my mom has moved on to Sally 2.0.  Actually, she's probably in Sally 5.0 mode, but I'm the youngest,--impetuous and spoiled--so you can excuse at least some of my unwillingness to accept this latest update of hers. 

Oh, I have seen the signs of this latest--the last--chapter of my mom's life, and I have fought them stubbornly.  While I tell myself that I "get" it, that I can help her navigate these waters, the truth is something much muddier than that. 

Turns out I am too impatient for a life that has spread itself over 85 years.  I connect the dots and see what I think is the best route and I grow impatient when my mom takes her sweet time, stretching out the days as she makes her peace with them.  I want to box up her memories, to weed and thin them, so that they all can fit into her new home, but I don't want to wait while she inspects and remembers each one.

This, I know, is my problem, not hers. 

How on earth could I expect my mom to go quietly into this next chapter?  What could I say that could make her new home sound like anything but a bridge between being and not being?  Sure, it's got all the candy--the good food, the swimming pool, the elevator RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO THEIR PLACE! 

I am asking her to give up great heaps of her being.  And, like Veruca Salt, I want it to happen now. 

Instead, I should look to my mom as a model, dawdling through these days with her, beside her.  I should take her hand and sit with her, while she thumbs the seashell her father gave her, nudging the stories from it. 

Now, more than ever, I need to be the Buddhist daughter, the one who exists right here, right now, with no thought of the future.  I need to walk this journey with her, appreciating it for what it is--this  moment in which we happen to be together. 

I can be a better daughter and today is as good a day as any to find my own 2.0.