A new piece, very very rough
A Mother’s Gifts
I’d say it was stark
the way the student drove
on the wrong side of the road
side-swiping my mother’s Toyota
She pats its dashboard
like a schoolboy’s head
there, there; good car, good car
We listen daily to the story
of her first driver’s test
new to America,
fresh from her Nazi father
bribing the proctor
with a twenty
while her hands shook
She’s slipping
and
I’m slow to wake to it
When I finally see,
I want 50 bucks
to bribe my way out
I want my one call
from my cell
not to a lawyer
but to God
to shake his shoulders
and ask why
he left her alone with me
The car still needs to be fixed
the college student stays ignorant and votes for Romney
I live the hell unimagined
the one dream in which
my mother
does not know
who holds her in the death bed
I have to wake in an hour
and send my daughters to school,
my Flower Girls,
and me in the middle
twinklysparkles 
We’re treading common ground Twink.
A simple tumble down the stairs and my moms life went from regular daily routine to assisted living overnight, last April.
No more home, no more car, no more life. She becomes more childlike every time I see her.
Christ, the difference a year makes.
I have vowed it will not be so for me.
UGH! A lot of the poem is fiction, but you got the gist of it. More childlike is exactly right. It’s very odd. Sometimes there is a difference from month-to-month. My mother never had a fall, but has many, many ailments and more major things have gone wrong in just 2 and a half years. I guess that was the beginning of the severity.
I know I am already doing many things differently than she did and of course I had a HUGELY different and healthier childhood. She grew up during the war in Germany and lived a hellish life, nothing we could ever imagine. All that fear and stress! Oh, so much more I could say.
I hope your vow holds! Keep moving your body, keep interested in new things. Learn at least one technique to battle stress. I think those are the biggies. GOOD LUCK and let me know what works! I want to get old (I think) but not in too much physical pain or mental confusion. Maybe it’s all genes and luck!