inside out

So today I had planned on a weight room workout, this was going to be my initial experience in this training cycle with weights and I was excited to get that underway. Unfortunately, my day turned into a unexpected day off. My mom is in the hospital.
Before you get all uptight and nervous, don't. She is fine. She needed to have surgery to correct a problem, thats all. It wasn't elective but it wasn't emergency either. When I arrived at the hospital I expected to find her resting but alert. What I found was a woman in a tremendous amount of pain. Could this be my mother? I actually didn't recognize her. She is usually this very confident, very independent woman. The minister who has seen the good in some pretty ugly places in the world, sometimes even stuck in the line of fire. The thing is that Krisie Amanpour is someone my mom admires tremendously. To me, Krisie Amanpour has nothing on my mom. She goes into the line of fire because that is her job. My mom goes into the line of fire as a mission of her faith in humandkind (humanitarian). In anycase, tonight as I sat there quietly while my mom drifted in and out of consciousness, I realized that as much as my mom has always portrayed this ageless persona, she is getting old. Tonight was the first time I saw her age, and it saddened me a bit. I realized that I am at a place in my life where I need to start to let go of her a bit, not too unlike delivering my children to their independence, yet very different just the same. Its a celebration of our lives together, what is past, what is now, and what is yet to come.

Its the first time I have seen my mother as something other than this super human, pain in the ass, can leap tall buildings...heroine. Its the first time I realized that she is just human and this just floored me.