It was a crystal clear night; I was keeping an eye on the gas gauge and the taillights off in the distance in front of me.  Sondra was asleep in the passenger seat and the puppies were curled up behind us.  Everything in our SUV was right.

We had left on our drive to New York at 10:30 this morning.  After countless towns and rest stops that were all designed using the same blueprint, we still had hours to go before we found a pet friendly stop for the night.

Our trip has duel purposes.  On Sunday, we’ll be celebrating Sondra’s parents 50th wedding anniversary with a big surprise party for them.  This was also going to be the first time in over a year that I was going to see my mother, who has been in a nursing home since last November.  I was alternating my thoughts between these two distinctly different reasons for going to NY when my emotions kicked into overdrive and my eyes started tearing up.

Honestly, I was dreading seeing my mom in a nursing home.  Perhaps I had put it off on purpose.  My mother had always been so independent.  Until about 4 years ago she and my Godmother, (94 year old, Aunt Lora) would routinely go to Wal-Mart at 1:00 a.m. just to walk around! 

When my sister died three years ago, it was like a switch was flipped in my mother’s brain and the dementia happened so fast that it was astounding.  We tried letting her be independent and live in her own apartment next to my Godmother, but she just couldn’t do it safely.  My nephew had to get her in for medical treatment last year and the doctors told us that she couldn’t take care of herself on her own.

I was thinking about everything surrounding my mom’s situation AND how incredible it was that Sondra’s parents were enjoying 50 years together.  What an interesting combination of thoughts. 

The question that I kept asking myself as a drove down the just about deserted stretch of highway in South Carolina was; had I done everything I could during the times I had shared with my mother?  The only honest answer that I could come up with was “No”.  I started thinking about all the times that I was irritated with my mom because she called me while I was working or the times I was short with her when she would just stop in at our house at lunchtime to see if we wanted to take a break and have lunch with her.  My logical business reasons for my negative reactions to those moments seem really silly to me now and if I could go back in time and make different decisions each of those times, I would.  The reality is; I can’t; none of us can!

I’m a success coach.  If this were you, what would I tell you?  How would I tell you to handle these emotions that hit me so hard as my life partner was  sleeping softly beside me and my puppies were dreaming of getting their tummies rubbed as they slept behind us?  I weighed that question for quite a while before the answer came to me.

I can’t change the decisions that I’ve made.  I can’t take back those moments of stubborn business logic that seemed righteous to me at the time.  None of us can ever change anything that has already taken place.  The only thing we can do is make sure that from this point forward we use our history to remind us to do better from now on.  I can’t erase all of the moments I may have gotten wrong, but I can make sure that I try to get them right as I move forward.

I’m still not looking forward to walking into the dementia ward at the home where my mother is, but I now have a different mindset about how I will handle it now that I’ve had my “Four lane revelation!