A Soldier Returns

Eric is slated to be home late tonight after packing up his mother's home in Syracuse, New York. He has been gone six days and he says he has been at battle since his plane touched down.

"Kate, I feel like a soldier coming home from the battlefield." he told me on our nightly call last night.

His mother is brutal~ tough. hurtful. alcoholic. insecure. ill. And now she is losing her mind.

His mother was in a major car accident three days before Christmas. A story for another day. Thank God no one else was hurt and while she was hospitalized for three days the injuries were not life threatening. Eric's cousin was determined for him to witness the pictures from his mother's facial injuries and pulled them up on her camera phone last night much to Eric's chagrin. "It was horrific," he told me. 

My mother in law's reactions to this move in many way are text book- anger, resentment, terrified, belligerent- she is leaving everything she has known for some 76 years. Yet truth be told since we moved to Seattle in 1998 she has wanted to move here. She has made it abundantly clear at each turn. We had been in the planning stages for a few years now but after the accident the timeline changed. The time has come.

She does not want to part with paintings on the wall, mounds of mail order offers she has been collecting for years, cupboards of pots and pans, piles of Christmas decorations, and all the other things you acquire over a lifetime.

Yet most of it  must go. Her assisted living space is tiny. We have purchased all new items to furnish it from the sweet pink flower wreath on the door to the flat screen TV to the tea cups. No, she can not bring the giant framed picture of six crying clowns...

"I don't like people. Especially relatives. You need to know that you are ruining my life," she has said daily. I am sparing you, dear reader, as she has said so much worse. 

But the soldier fought on. Eric filled up nearly two dumpsters of her things. By himself. He would take 20 gallon plastic tubs and load them up and lumber down two flights of stairs (the elevator in her apt. complex was out of service, naturally). He'd then lug these bins across the frozen tundra of the Norstar apartment complex until he reached the dumpster. He did this for five days usually in the veil of darkness after he'd gotten his mom off to bed.

"My heart has been racing," he told me last night. "My friend told me last night on the phone I need to be careful due to my blood pressure issues and all that is happening. I understand how stress can kill & how dealing with aging parents can cause a son to have a heart attack." he was completely serious.

My heart broke. I'd be dishonest if I did not admit to being worried about his health. He sent a good night video to us one evening and he looked like he'd aged 10 years. I went to bed thinking of my elementary school principal who had a heart attack shoveling snow as the strain was so severe.

May God protect Eric's heart. And soul.

I simply cannot wait to welcome my hero home.