Happy 77 Birthday to Mom

 A few weeks ago, I was thinking what would be a good birthday gift for my mother. She has short term memory loss, has lived an amazing life and is in a one bedroom apartment and doesn't need "things" as she has no where to put them.

The feeling I got was to get my sisters that live within a days drive and to go through her clothes and closet and help her weed out the old clothes, wash and mend anything she wanted to keep, and to purchase some new clothes for her. She doesn't get herself new things often and wears what we get her. I usually get her new things for trips we are taking but not "just because." so I thought it would be a good gift we could all participate in providing.

I scheduled with my sisters to find a time we could all leave our children and get to her house, spend the time needed and get home without our families missing us too much.

This past weekend, my mother turned 77. On the way to her house to celebrate, I felt like I should invite my brother who lives near my mom to help. We arrived at my mom's high rise assisted living complex and had no idea how long our project would take but were eager to get going.

My brother came and was amazing. He literally "detailed" her bathroom and garbage cans while he was there. You can see he had his cleaning apron with its bottles of cleaners and tools attached in the pictures above.

You can also see the piles behind him of stuff we were getting rid of as we cleaned.

My older and younger sister that were able to come help and did countless hours of laundry. We washed EVERY item in her house that could be washed. I was the one who got my mom to try things on and sort. I pulled EVERYTHING out of her drawers and closet and we sorted things that were out of date, stained, or didn't fit anymore, and put them in the "get rid of pile."

EVERYTHING else went into the wash. There were lots of piles of hand wash items that we all took turns hand washing and then between us all we probably did 15 loads of laundry washing all the bedding, quilts, afghans, and clothes.

The laundry room of her highrise building looked like a dry cleaners with three of the laundry racks, shown here, full of clothes hanging to dry. We even washed the "dry clean only" suits and clothes and they all came out beautiful.

There were one or two items we couldn't get clean or I was too tired to sew that we ended up discarding but for the most part, she went to bed with clean everything on after I helped her shower and then everything in her closet was freshly laundered as well as everything in her drawers.

She hasn't been in the best of health the past few months and her memory is getting even worse as she asked me twice last night about my grandchildren and asked me the same question over over about my sister but the poor thing was retaining so much water that I gave her a "water pill" and she was up all night using her sparkling clean bathroom. I normally wouldn't have given it to her so late in the evening but she said she is up all night anyway. 

My sisters and I were there all evening, night and morning leaving her house about ten a.m. I knew it was going to be bad as we couldn't do it earlier because my one sister couldn't go before that night and if I left earlier, she didn't have a ride to my mothers across the state. So, we pulled an all nighter.

I made and took her up a tin full of homemade muffins as well as the new clothes for her birthday. I bought the cute hat and glasses and put candles in the muffins and we all sang "Happy Birthday" to her. I forgot my camera in the car so my sisters have the pictures of us singing and my mom blowing out the candles but I got pictures of us leaving looking like "bag ladies" carrying out all the stuff she allowed us to remove from her home. I love it when she gets rid of stuff because when she passes into the after-world, I don't want to spend months of my life going through things. I have worked VERY HARD to sort, scan, distribute and repair all her belongings so that it will be a smooth process for our family.


I had to apologize to my sisters as this is probably the fourth or fifth time I have asked them to help clean and sort things over Labor Day for my mom. It seems like it is just a good weekend to "Fall clean" when everyone is back from summer vacations and when my mom needs the help. When I look back however, each time we have spent the weekend going through things, it paid off later. For example,  when her home burnt down, we had already sorted through the house so we knew that anything we wanted had been removed as we had all gone and helped clean and sort things just prior to the fire.

After having been up all night, we took a quick nap at my sisters after showering and were up and ready to head home. We stopped to get gas and my sister ran into the gas station to get a drink. I pulled up to the store to get her and looked over and there were three pennies under the truck next to me. I smiled thinking how Heavenly Father was sending me a blessing. I pointed the pennies out to my sister and she is used to me pointing them out now as I find them all the time.


We decided to go to dinner with a few of my girls as we were passing through the town where they live and went shopping with Princess One for maternity clothes as my sister had some things to return to Ross. My sister couldn't find anything she wanted to exchange so she had a $30 gift card. She handed it to me as her contribution to the "gas" for the drive up and I in turn gave it to Princess One who needs some maternity clothes for work. It covered just under half of the bill for two pants and four shirts which will help her greatly. While Princess was in the dressing room, I look down and find a silver necklace. Yes, real silver. I smiled and said, "This is better than a penny." He is reminding me of my dream to "trust Him." (Click here for my post about Silver and my dream.)  I was telling my sister about it as we left the dressing room and what did I find on the way to the register? Yes, a penny. My sister couldn't believe it.

On the way home, we stopped to fill our cups with ice and get drinks and yes, I found another penny. She really couldn't believe it but it started a great conversation on the long drive home about trusting Heavenly Father and sharing what we have and trusting that HE will provide all that we need. I felt that He was using me to help reinforce to her the she can have all her needs met by HIM.

I did leave my name and number with the store in case anyone came in asking if someone found a silver necklace. In the past, we have left money or expensive items we've found at the store and actually saw the worker pocket the item. So, I learned that if we find something, we leave our name, item description, and number and tell the store workers to place it in the lost and found and if the person comes in, they can give them my name and number and if they can describe the amount of cash or the item, I will mail it to them. This has been a much better way to handle things. The girl at the register said they still have a wad of cash someone found in the dressing room and no one came in to claim it so someone that works there will get the cash.

Anyway, the heart with the two pennies are the pennies I found with my sister and the necklace. The other pennies were ones in my mom's change bag we used to pay for some of the loads of laundry at my mothers place. I took all my quarters, my sister cleaned out her wallet, we used the few my mother had and then my other sister charged the rest on her credit card. Crazy day when you can charge your laundry wash and dry by passing the card over the machine. The machine will also text you when the load is finished. Really a state of the art laundry mat at my mothers building.

This is a long post but, it was a long night/day/ and night as we arrived home late from our drive. All in all, I think my mother enjoyed her birthday. I'm not sure she will remember who came but I know she will enjoy having new clothes and mended and clean clothes.

I LOVE YOU MOM!