Call yer Mum!

On Xmas & on New Year's, I figured that surely my mother would be besieged with phone calls from relatives; and I'd told myself that I didn't want to tire her out by making her talk to me as well.

I've just called home & found out my mother has had pneumonia since before Christmas. And, when I expressed dismay {thinking to myself, shame on me, I should have called her} she immediately apologized to me for not having called me on Christmas or New Year's.

That's Yer Dear Old Mum, sincerely humble to a fault.

{I don't mean that to read as sarcastic; we really do ~ amongst ourselves, you understand ~ occasionally refer to her mumship by her full regal title of Yer Dear Old Mum. And yes, she really is that self-effacing without guile.}

She said that she hasn't been hospitalized, that she was feeling better {see above notes re: Yer Dear Old Mum} and that she was expecting to get the results of her X~rays tomorrow.

After the phone call, I checked out the WebMD site to swot up on pneumonia. One of the indications for hospitalization was being over 65 yrs of age; thought to myself, well that's OK then, my mum's barely past 60... then did some quick calculations & realized my mum is going to be 70 in two weeks.

Still, it would be a huge shock to everyone if my mum actually succumbed to pneumonia. For one, she's always been meticulous about her health; and for two, well, um, frankly, we'd always expected Dear Old Dad would go first {come to think of it, he already has gone first}.*

Here's hoping that Dear Old Mum will recover fully.

And I'll call her again soon.

~ ~ ~

* Dad had been a smoker & drinker for most of his adult life, until double bypass surgery and clinical death on the operating table slowed him down a bit.

He once joked to my mum that, when he ultimately went, she ought to compost him and till him into her garden. She managed to sound both meekly apologetic for her answer yet completely appalled by his suggestion when she replied that she didn't think she wanted him in there given all the toxins his body had accumulated over all those years and that, in her opinion, the recent prescription medication wouldn't do her garden much good either.

*snort*

... sorry, I guess you'd have to know my Mum to understand why that was hysterically funny...

Posted by edgar at January 20, 2004 05:54 PM