RBS Said… part 4 of 4.

Ruth Morgan Baldwin Neber Scheets is on her grave marker. She initialed things RBS. I called her Mom.

When we’d back to her apartment or nursing home from an outing, which had often been a doctor’s appointment, she would look up at me from her car seat while extending her hand for me to help her.

With a tilt of her head she would say some variant of, “Thank you! I had such a lovely time!”

The first few times I thought she was being uncharacteristicly sarcastic.

Then I caught on: whether it was some gerontologists call Automatic Speech or a deep memory, she was sincere.

Or maybe it was a moment of clarity, and she was living fully in the present.

Regardless, I learned to cherish those moments.