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The Duck Pond
My parents, lifelong New Yorkers, would escape the city’s summer heat for vacations in the mountains – in New York’s Catskills or New England’s Berkshires.
Yet as they got older it was the winter cold that drove them out of the city. And like many east coasters, Florida became a desired winter destination – although my mother protested that it was not her first choice but it seemed all her friends were headed down there!
And so for several winters my folks did spend some time in Florida, although not the whole season as my father wasn’t retired. In fact my father’s refusal to retire was a sore point between them! (See Around the World in 80 Days)
Then one sad September day my dad died — with his boots on as he’d always wanted. My folks had rented a Florida condo for a few weeks again for that winter and we hoped my mother would go. And for a few more years she did and enjoyed her condo which overlooked a small duck pond. She loved to watch what she called “my ducks”, and of course she enjoyed the company of her brother and sister-in-law and friends who lived nearby.
We visited her in Florida each year, and then one winter I flew down myself, my husband to join me later. But rather than pick me up at the airport as she usually did, my mother told me to take a cab and when I got to her house I found her in bed and terribly weak. Alarmed, I took her to the doctor the next day and he immediately hospitalized her.
My mom died a week or so later. But her last words had comforted me, she’d told me not to mourn as she’d lived a long and happy life. (See The Dinner Party)
When we got back to my mother’s house I went to the pond to bring the sad news to her ducks.
– Dana Susan Lehrman
Dana Susan LehrmanThis retired librarian loves big city bustle and cozy country weekends, friends and family, good books and theatre, movies and jazz, travel, tennis, Yankee baseball, and writing about life as she sees it on her blog World Thru Brown Eyes!
www.WorldThruBrownEyes.com
This is a happy sad story! So glad you could be there for your mom, and that she found contentment at the end of her life. Nice picture! And your dad carried on as he wanted until the end as well. Those moments mean so much, as do the connections to nature of which we are all a part. Hooray for the ducks.
Thanx Khati from me and the ducks!
Such a tender end-of-life chronicle with such a sweet final sentence. Sometimes simplicity is the way to write about hard subjects. You have exemplified that here.
Thanx Dale for your very kind words.