This last week I took my MOM on a cruise.

5 years ago my wife lost her mom. My mother-in-law was a great lady and my wife and I both wish we had more time with her. Another dinner, another vacation. I learned that time is fleeting and we need to make the best of the time we have. Ever since then, I have taken my mom on a vacation every year. We have been to Iceland and on a few cruises.

My parents divorced when I was 10. My brother and I lived most of the time with our Mom. There is a tight bond between us. This year Mom and I decided to go on a cruise out of Tampa. What she didn’t know is that my brother and his son were going to join us.

We boarded the ship, checked into our stateroom and went and sat on the deck. My brother texted me when he arrived. I said, “Mom, lets go see if our luggage is here”. We went down in our room and I texted my brother that we were here.

There was a knock on the door and I asked mom to go get it. She opened up the door and there stood her grandson. She was stunned. She looked at me, back at him and said, “how did you get here?”. Then my brother stuck his head around the corner.

After she was done crying we went out on the balcony for a group photo

The trip was great.

Mom has always struggled with directions.  She is the kind of person who needs a GPS to get out of her driveway. We can laugh about it now BUT she spend a great deal of time wandering around the ship trying to find our room, the restaurant or the casino. I pointed out that our stateroom was 79. Therefore on the ODD (starboard) side of ship.

At one point my brother and I were sitting at a bar and talking to someone about mom’s lack of direction. We look up, and there goes mom wandering by. A few minutes later she wandered by in the other direction.

It was a pretty stormy trip. Rain and wind but we had a good time. Our stateroom had a good size (nearly walk in) closet. Mom had stepped in to get a shirt and a wave pitched the boat closing the closet door on her. There was NO HANDLE on the inside of the closet! She did manage to wedge her fingers in and get the door open. It was pretty funny.