The things we love wear out over time, don�t you know.

My mother and my car are both wearing out. We calculate dog years, do we calculate car years? My mother is 85 and my car is 14, but it has less than 200,000 km on it, which is really quite remarkable, considering that it was our only car for 10 years. My mother, on the other hand, has racked up considerably more mileage, borne three children, weathered a 52-year marriage, and is now a widow who has just suffered her first heart attack. I just got off the telephone with her, and last night she had an angina attack, an episode which left her feeling very weak and with leaden arms. It was the same sensation as the one she had in Israel, so she called the nurse who came immediately and did all the right things to get her past it.

She told me that she is now seriously considering changing her lifestyle. Perhaps it isn�t such a good idea that she live alone in her house. She is thinking about moving into a retirement home where she would have neighbours, around the clock care if needed, and a sense of community. She says she now feels less emotional attachment to her house, my father�s paintings, her photographs, the memories. But she is concerned that if she were to sell the house, my brothers and I would lose our �home�, since growing up we knew no other. I reminded her that at some point she had to accept that she couldn�t go back to Delaware Avenue, and so we would live with the change. Just between you and me and anyone else who reads this diary, she has been offered a considerable sum for that house. There would be no question of her being able to afford the kind of care she needs.

This turn of events has induced emotional turmoil in me. I have always thought of my mother as a staunchly independent person. Even during her marriage, she never let my father�s stick-in-the-mud attitude keep her from doing what she wanted. She�s travelled the world with nature groups and has a fabulous slide collection from many of her trips. She�s been to Costa Rica, Scotland and Wales, Iceland, Israel many times, and all across Canada in both directions. She�s camped on lava flows and tramped around in a rain forest. It is so hard for me to see her as a frail, needy, elderly person. And yet, just as she has to start reassessing her own needs and abilities, I have to change the way I see her. This is my Mommy! If she�s getting old, that means that I am too. It is so weird that this is happening when I am sure I am experiencing pre-menopausal symptoms. I�m just not ready for all these changes.

And then there�s the business with my car. According to Normand, it needs about $1,500 of work immediately to keep it roadworthy. The timing belt is shot, front and back brakes need to be replaced, the muffler is rusting to hell, the front pipe already is detached, and he showed us photos of the underbelly, riddled with rust. He suggested getting the internal repairs done, and just giving the outer body a �bandaid solution�, sandblast away the rust, paint it with a zinc primer and touch it up, instead of doing a proper thorough body job. He said it�s just not worth it. If we were to sell the car today, we might get $1,500 for it. And yet the internal workings: the motor, the transmission, are still good. Imagine, less than 200,000 km on it. Why do we even bother owning a car when we use it so little?

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