Towards the end of my mother’s life she began to think of death and dying with a new perspective, not with fear and dread, but more of inevitability, a last chapter, paragraph, line in her story.  She would say things like, “God has forgotten me… this is not living… when will it be my time.” I too talked of it differently, comforting her, saying things like, “He hasn’t Mom…. Your time will come….I know it is hard…. Hang in there.”   Sitting in that small studio apartment, with a few furniture pieces from the past, her Christmas cactus, and photos of family…. we were waiting.  Waiting for something we knew was not far away, death, on its way, like a package to be delivered.  Ding dong….

As I take another scoop of the yogurt parfait my mother would always eat, I am reminded of how she could never finish hers and would wrap it up, ever so carefully, like plastic wrap something never to be wasted.  She would cradle it gently in her lap bring it back to her refrigerator where she would keep it with all the other halves eaten meals and snacks. Once in the frig they would begin their own life cycle there. Stage 1: sit in foil or plastic wrap for a few days.  Stage 2: be looked at once again, possibly labeled and then moved into the freezer.  Stage 3:  freezer opened, reorganized and placed back in to collect ice.  Stage 4:  my sisters or I would eventually throw them out – never eaten.  It was like saving all of these foods were hope – hope they would someday be thawed, eaten and enjoyed.  But – their chance of ever being eaten ended once they were wrapped and placed in the frig, stage 1.

Eventually Mom’s diet became a liquid one – Milkshakes, Ensure, ice tea and pills.  She loved her chocolate milk shakes and I would try to get her one every day. I tried different types for a while, from different places, but she liked chocolate the best from a local farm as they would make them not too thick which allowed her to drink them through a straw.

At the farm, you needed to order the milk shakes at a window where ice cream was served.  Often there was no one there so a little bell , like one on a child’s bicycle, was placed there to ring signaling that you required service. Someone, usually a young girl, (although for a brief time there was a very nice young man who I told the story of my mom to and he would always make me a large milkshake and only charge me for a small) would make it for me, “Chocolate please, not too thick,” I would request.

One day I went in for my usual order and rang the bell as no one was in the ice cream window.  A woman about my age, who was working at the counter where you paid, looked over at me and announced very loudly, “Can someone help The Milk Shake Lady?!”  For a moment I stopped breathing, and rewound the tape in my mind.  Did that just happen, I asked myself.  Did she just call ME The Milk Shake Lady?  I had worked in many places like this as a teen and I knew how many of the patrons were given nicknames that only the staff knew,  and now I had one, and it was terrible and worse yet it had been announced to everyone in the farm!  I was known as The Milk Shake Lady!

Now I was not the 95 pounds my mother was at this time, so I’m thinking – they’re thinking – that if this lady would just give up her daily chocolate milkshakes (not too thick) she’d lose 20 pounds!  I suddenly felt the urge to have a t-shirt or a least a button made that said, “These milk shakes are not for me.  They are for my 95 pound mother!”

Well I swallowed what was left of my pride and ordered the chocolate milk shake (not too thick).  I did not chat with the young girl who made it and The Milk Shake Lady left the building, giving a scowl to the woman of my age who had announced my  nickname to all. (I’m still thinking of a name for her – not too flattering.)

I took the milk shake to my mother and told her the story of the milk shake and how they called me The Milk Shake lady and I made her laugh.  She laughed and I laughed and she drank her chocolate milkshake, (not too thick).

Sometimes in life we need to be The Milk Shake Lady. We need to put our pride, and our vanity and our excuses behind us and just keep doing what we know we need to do.  If others think those milk shakes are for me and that’s what keeps me happy – so be it.  But I know they were for a bigger cause, a bigger cause for the smaller things – the small things that make others happy, maybe even make them laugh.  For the milk shakes, The Milk Shake Lady and Mom are all the past.  The package was delivered and The Milk Shake Lady no longer visits the farm.