OCD.... Welcome

You may know me as TxDove or even CrazyCarla, or not at all but to three of the most special people in the world I am "Goodie". My mother departed this earth on January 25, 2005 physically; her personality was absent for much longer due to Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's took my grandmother away too. I remember mom crying in her room because grandma didn't know who she was and worse, didn't care to know who she was. I remember too, and very vividly so, the first time I recognized the symptoms in mom. I lay in bed hugging myself tightly and choking on the revelation. I thought I would explode. I knew from experience that mom would forget me and there was nothing I could do to change that. 

I remember well the last time grannie knew who I was. My grannie always added an "r" to most words when she spoke. The last thing she said to me was, "Carler, what are we going to do about this". That was it! She was then gone again never to know who I was. I became the "nurse" that came to visit her. Well, I tell you what Carler did. I sat down on the bed and sobbed. This tough cookie crumbled.

The last time I saw my mother as my mom. She had been hospitalized and I sat up watching over her. I was reading Torah quietly, thinking she was asleep. 

"Carla Jean, what are you reading?" she asked. 

"Torah, mom", said I.

"I know that! What are you reading?"

"Mal'akhi (Malachi) Chapter 4", I responded.

"Read to me", she said.

"What do you want me to read darlin?"

"Just read, I want to hear your voice."

"Yes, ma'am" and I began where I had left off, "For the day is coming, burning like a furnace, when all the proud and evildoers will be stubble; the day that is coming will set them ablaze," says Adonai-Tzva'ot. "and leave them neither root nor branch. But to you who fear my name the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings: and you will break out leaping, like calves released from the stall."

Her laughter caused me to cease my reading for I thought she was in one of her "moods". I was wrong for she told me that she was visualizing herself leaping like a calf released from the stall and the vision "tickled me" she said.

(to be continued...)