For nearly a year I've been working on a writing project, and not a personal one in the sense that it's not my writing. It's my mother's writing, a collection of scraps of paper and old journals. Things that haven't fared too well over the decades.
Journals of old poems, faded and torn with pages missing, all nearly forgotten. Found in old boxes and on the backs of shelves. I've been collecting them, and posting them in the form of a blog for my mother, it's her work and the postings are on her behalf. I'm more or less the unpaid help.
She was excited to get her work out for people to see when we first talked about it, but she probably doesn't remember that discussion today.
Her memory is fading, and rather quickly too. She has Dementia/Alzheimer's, which seems to run in the family, and it's starting to play havoc on her memory. It's not as bad as I've seen, but she's in the early stages.
This project has helped me in an odd way, getting to know my mother better on a deeper, more personal level, and to help me get ready for the eventual goodbye.
Thanks to this digital age and ebooks, my mom's dream of becoming a published poet has come true, though she can't really grasp that concept. To her the world is still analog and tactile, so unless you can touch something how can it exist? Odd thinking coming from a woman of faith.
This project has had a more profound impact on me than I expected, and it will continue to do so for a long long time. It's been a bit emotional, but has also given me a lot of strength, helped to keep me focused, and taught me that there's a healing aspect to technology that I'd never realized existed.
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