Death? When you live long enough you stop worrying about it. You know it's unavoidable. You know it will happen one day whether you like it or not. There is no point of worying about it. You just live your life and trying to enjoy it as much as you can. There is no point in being unhappy. What scares you the most is: what if something happens to your children? You cannot stop worrying about them . It's simply impossible. It's like a building block with a hole in it in your nervous system. You do not want anything bad happen to them, you just cannot prevent it, that feeling of hope and despair that mingles inside you and give you some sleepless nights... Well, it's the price of being a mother, I guess. That worry will be always with you as long as you live.
Next to that I can put my scare of old age. If you live long enough you become ... old. I do not want to be that old. When you cannot walk or do things, when diseases of old age cripple you and turn you into a scarecrow to frighten young children... I do not want to be that old, but may be I won't, may be I will perish before that, before I will become a horrible burden to myself and to others. I do not want a nursing home, empty foreign faces who help you without real compassion, just for salary, just for being paid. I would hate that. I do not want to be old and unable to provide for myself, to be really poor, living in a shabby room with no nice things in it, without friendly faces around, unable to clean even that shabby room, I am so scared of that. And of loneliness, loneliness of an old ugly woman nobody needs, not even a cat... when all friends are far away or dead, and children've forgotten you, they are having their own lives and problems, and you are just an old witch and no one needs you. How terrible can it be?
My mom was not very old when she died but she was so lonely. I moved with my family to another country, my brother was dead , even my dad, though they were divorced died really soon, after some terrible disease ate him away. She was so lonely in the country with all that rough changes, a much younger person might have problems to deal with. I never realised I could lose her so suddenly. May be if I stayed with her and never moved, I wouldn't have lost her that suddenly. It was quite a shock for me. We think our parents will live a long life, we forget that they are mortals like everybody else. Now I am scared that might happen to me and my children. I do not want to be alone. I do not want to be abandoned. I do not want to be a burden. I am so scared of that... It's the biggest scare of all.
