Mother's driver's license

So, this has been a week of clean-up, fix-up, fall-down and rummage through old stuff and leave it where you found it.

I found Mother's driver's license. It expired in 2002.  She died in 2004, but I doubt she drove after 1999.  She stopped driving when she couldn't find her way to LDS hospital where my dad had had an operation.  She had Alzheimer's Disease. She must be in her late seventies in this photo.  She died at 81.

I remember when she told me she wasn't walking around Liberty Park anymore. This was the exercise she and her best friend, Francis Dibble, had done for years.

With all self righteousness I said, "You have to do something! You could go swimming up at the U! You like swimming!"

She looked at me as if my head had just popped off.

Even in her best days, my mother would no more have gone looking for the swimming pool on Guardsman's way, undressed in a public dressing room, and gone swimming with strangers than decide to follow a public speaking career.  Never.

What makes me sad about this memory is the way I thought I could tell my mother what she needed to do.  Really?  You think you know better? 

I didn't know squat.

Look at her lovely, open smile. She was likable and sweet in old age. Alzheimer's made her sweeter, like an obedient child.  All irony dissipated.

I wish she would have told me to piss off.