5:53 p.m. “Please call me at ____________ it’s about your mom.”
6:18 p.m. I called J/M.
This is how Facebook helped find me after Mom’s fall. My Mom’s neighbors sent me the above alarming messages May 7th on Facebook’s Messenger. They tried several times to reach me to tell me my Mom had fallen in her home and an ambulance transported her to the local hospital. She had been down for approximately 16 hours before they found her, but she was not unconscious. My whole life changed after that 39 minute phone conversation at 6:18 p.m.
I called my daughter, a nurse, right away to tell her the heartbreaking news and then I texted my sister in Oregon. She would have the furthest to travel if she wanted to go to see Mom. Since it was getting late, I would contact my other five siblings in the morning once I found out more information. Worried about what happened and how hurt, inside and out, my Mom was, I had difficulty sleeping.
It was typically a cold, dark winter’s night when my mom would bring out the movie projector to bring us some much-needed entertainment. You see my mom was an amateur filmmaker back in the early 1960’s and my siblings and I were often the stars. We loved watching the old 8mm films of us dancing, being silly and playing games while growing up. It was wonderful entertainment, especially when we also got to eat popcorn while watching.
photo by slc
On my recent visit with my mom, she gave me her precious “first films.” She kept them in a shoe box high up in a kitchen cupboard. Years ago she told us she destroyed them after her divorce with dad in 1996. Last spring, much to my amazement, she told me she still had them. Now, I possessed her film reels. I could not wait to tell my siblings about this incredible gift, but she told me I couldn’t.
Within days, I ordered a Legacybox to digitize the films. I ordered a box to hold all 20 of the films. Mailing and processing of 20 films was expensive but I used the RUSH promotion, for Rush Limbaugh, and saved $200. A few days later I received an empty Legacybox in the mail. My heart rate went up; excited at the prospect of seeing these films again after forty plus years.
First Films, Photo by slc
First, I sorted the films chronologically as my mom hand wrote in the dates on many of them: “Steve’s 2 year – 1st Year at Toddville,” “Christmas ’67 at Toddville,” “Art Tour ’72,” and “St. Louis Arch ’74.” Others my mom labeled: “First Films,” “Wedding,” “Halloween Party,” and “Bulldozer.”
Ready for Shipping, Photo by slc
Next, I applied the Legacybox barcodes to the movie reels. The barcodes used to track the order. The company also sent a return shipping label to place directly on top of the original shipping label on the mailing box. It was an easy process but I was still nervous. Was I really going to mail these precious old films to a company in Tennessee? What if I never saw them again?
With the film reels packed in Ziploc bags and protected by plastic inflatable packaging, on October 29 I took my box of treasures to the UPS store. In return I was giving a Drop-Off Package Receipt. Now, I just had to anxiously wait.
On November 13, I received an email from Legacybox. The original films and their new digitized format had shipped. Again, my heart rate soared.
Digitized home movies, Photo by slc
Today, they arrived. I hurriedly opened the box which contained my mom’s films and the CD’s I ordered. I put the first CD in the player and then watched about three hours of home movies from nearly 60 years ago. There on the television screen in my living room I relived my first birthday, my first steps, family vacations, and Christmases. I also saw film of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, and my father who passed away almost six years ago. Mixed in with family was also video of pigs and flowers as I grew up on Iowa farms.
It was surreal to watch these films again and it will take a while for it all to sink in. The films included everyone in my family except for my mom who actually shot the film. Now, the hard decision. How do I not tell my family I have her “first films?”
Have you used Legacybox? If so, please leave a comment about your experience.
Note: Legacybox currently has a 60% off discount for a limited time. (Author is not receiving compensation from Legacybox for this blog post.)
It is 825 miles from my house in Loveland, Colorado to my mom’s in Marion, Iowa. I have not seen her for seven years. My last visit ended badly. I stopped in for my scheduled visit before leaving town but she wasn’t home. A friend had taken her gambling. Feeling rejected and abandoned by my mom, I left in tears, vowing to never speak to or see her again.
I finally decided to reach out to my mom in 2016 during the presidential election as she always followed politics and so have I. Pretending to be a pollster, I nervously called and asked her who she was going to vote for in the upcoming election.
She laughed; I had her. We did not speak about my previous visit and we have talked on the phone every month or so since.
In 2017, my mom fell at her home and was hospitalized after a neighbor found her a couple of days later. She doesn’t remember being in the hospital. Rehab followed and then she returned home. Since then she has fallen several times. She gingerly walks with a cane and if she falls she needs help getting up, but she still drives.
Mom with glare on her glasses, Photo by slc
Apprehensive about making the drive after what happened last time, I recently visited my mom as I felt I needed to check on her wellbeing. She had isolated herself from most of the family and she had very few friends. Just in case things didn’t work out during my visit, I put together an alternative plan to visit friends.
I knocked on the door of her home. She answered this time, smiling and welcoming. Relief. This scheduled visit would be different.
My mom was guarded but open about her life. She began by describing all the times she had fallen in the past two years. The most recent incident took place about two weeks before my arrival. She had fallen after getting out of bed in the morning and could not get herself back up. There were construction workers working on a shed across the street so she crawled over to the front door, opened it and tapped her cane on the storm door in between their hammering until they heard her. They came over and helped her up.
I listened intently to her stories. Then frustrated I asked, “Didn’t one of your daughters send you an alarm system a year ago which would alert a neighbor if you could not get up?” She answered, “Yes, you did.” I asked her where the alarm was and she said a neighbor had taken it home, but she didn’t think it would work. I also told her she was lucky to live in a safe Iowa town. This situation leaves her vulnerable to theft or sexual assault.
My first home in Whittier, IA, Photo by slc
During our visits over that weekend we talked, reworked her overloaded extension cords, packed up some of her belongings she wanted me to have, moved some items to make it safer for her to walk around, cleaned up her house plants by removing dead leaves, and set up that alarm system I sent her last year. It did work over at the neighbor’s house. Halleluia! She also drove me around the little farming community of Whittier where I lived until the second grade.
On my last day with her, I brought Angry Orchard Hard Cider. I wanted to toast her 85th birthday which occurred in August. She only drank half a bottle because she said it made her feel a bit woozy.
As I drove away that last evening, she smiled and waved from the driveway. Surprised by my overwhelming emotion, I waved back through tears. Not tears of rejection and abandonment, but sweet tears of joy and love for the good visit home. The precious time I spent with my mom and forgiveness.
