Jitter Bug and Mother's Day

by Sunny
(Coral Gables, FL., USA)

My beautiful, very active mother became quite frail in her old age. It was heartbreaking to see this once vibrant woman decline so rapidly. She began to suffer from dementia, too, and it got to the point where all of us grown kids had to take turns spending time at the childhood home because she could not be alone.

When we were growing up we always had animals: cats, dogs, goats, horses, even some pigs now and again. My parents had sold off a lot of the land but had kept a good portion surrounding their house. Now there were no more animals, and all the fencing and the barn was long gone.

We thought my mother did not remember until one day, while I was making her breakfast, she asked about Jitter Bug. I froze where I stood.

Jitter Bug was the long ago pony who had wound up, along with our mother, teaching all us kids how to ride. He was a stout bay with a white blaze down his face and a mischievous heart.

It was the week before Mother’s Day 2007 when we decided what to do. Though we had all been raised not to lie, we figured this was an exception.

We took our beloved mother to the zoo, where we knew they kept two bay ponies. Standing in the barn, our mother in her wheelchair, my sisters and I wept as mom reached out to pat the pony staring back at her. “Jitter Bug,” she said, and though it wasn’t the real Jitter Bug, we were sure that old pony would approve.

My sisters and I agree that somehow, that was the best Mother’s Day we’d ever had.