In the many years my Mother has been dealing with her mental decline I have never seen her express any interest in shopping for clothes. Typically you have to drag her into a store to look for new attire and Mom will not only fight you on the fact that she needs new clothes but will practically have an apoplectic fit at the prices, no matter how good they are!  Then after the purchases arrive home into her closet or drawers, she never chooses them to wear as Mom does not recognize them as belonging to her….. The whole exercise is a bit of a drain.

So it was such a pleasant and fun surprise to find Mom perusing the ads in the local paper and joyfully land on a page of discounted summer tops with great interest. Mom reviewed all the sections and the prices, then turned to me a little embarrassed and asked me if I could help her figure out how she could get a few of her favorite choices. I was thrilled!

I took out my laptop and pulled up the website for Kohl’s and we searched for the corresponding items she had selected from the ads in the paper.  Mom and I found those and a few other selected items on the computer and she was so excited to be able to choose and purchase them online immediately for, as she exclaimed, “Such wonderful discounted prices!”

My Mother is extremely frugal so after the rush of the purchase I had to spend about 30 minutes explaining her finances, how much money she had in the bank, what her monthly income was, all in an effort to assure Mom that she could more than afford to buy four tops for just over a $50.00 investment!

Mom will receive the tops in mail and like most new purchases, I will probably have to pull them out of the closet to remind Mom they are her new clothes and encourage her to try them. But that matters little compared to the fun we had narrowing down her selections, viewing them in various colors and the excitement I rarely see in Mom choosing something new and fresh for herself. It has been such a long time since we enjoyed time like that together.

Mom may have received the great discounts but for me the whole experience was priceless!