Caring has no age\u2026
\nStories are hardly ever like this\u2026<\/p>\n
Dona Teresa has 72 winters etched into her skin, her hair and her memories.
\nDona Teresa looked after her mother, the houses, the garden, the hens and the rabbits. She was never ill and cured everything with little prayers and herbal teas that her grandmother Maria had taught her to pick in the fields.
\nShe got up every day at 6.30 in the morning and never stopped for a second.
\n\u201cShe ran on Duracell batteries,\u201d says her niece.<\/p>\n
One day Dona Teresa felt unwell, fell in the bathroom and had a stroke that left serious after-effects. She cannot speak and can barely move. She follows us with her eyes\u2026 but it is an empty, distant look.
\nAs soon as we walked into the room, we saw a very thin lady, head bowed, but with an energy \u201cheld back by the pain\u201d!<\/p>\n
\u201cLife is cruel. A mother isn\u2019t born for this! She\u2019s the only girl I have! What will become of me now?\u201d
\n\u201cDo you think this is normal? A mother having to go through this?\u201d said Dona Maria Alice.
\nDona Maria Alice is 88 and now has to care for her 72-year-old daughter.
\nShe talked to us but did not look at us. She was always in \u201ccaring\u201d mode!
\n\u201cThe world is upside down!\u201d the mother kept saying as she lovingly fed her daughter a yoghurt.
\n\u201cYou have to eat, my girl! You\u2019re so thin! You always ate well, my love!\u201d
\nAt the grand age of 88 springs, she never stopped for a second. Her great fragility was hidden beneath the will to care, to love, to watch over her only daughter!
\n\u201cMy life has fallen apart!<\/p>\n
She was the one who looked after me. She cleaned my house. At night she brought me soup!
\nAnd now, look at this! Oh my God!\u201d<\/p>\n
It felt like we were watching a film we had \u201cnever seen\u201d!
\nThe world was now upside down. The mother, already tired and with her \u201cbad bones\u201d, was now caring for her 72-year-old daughter.
\nThe river that \u201cseemed to be flowing to the estuary, to the sea\u201d had turned back on itself.
\nBut Dona Maria Alice \u201cput on the cape\u201d of the super mums and \u201ccame back\u201d to care, to love.
\nThat\u2019s what mothers are like. They put on the \u201ccapes\u201d of every hero and, through ice, strong wind, storms and terrible pain, she makes her way every day to the room of \u201cher girl\u201d.<\/p>\n
From the door, we said goodbye to Dona Maria Alice. She was wiping her daughter\u2019s face and talking to her as she did.
\nThe daughter did not move; her left arm was paralysed and she could not speak. I don\u2019t know if she understood that beside her was a SUPER MUM!
\nA mother who, despite the pain and the limits of time, loved with every letter of the word LOVE.<\/p>\n
From a distance, the world really did seem upside down.
\nBut\u2026
\nIt was as it always had been. A place of care, warm and snug with a mother\u2019s tenderness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Caring has no age\u2026 Stories are hardly ever like this\u2026 Dona Teresa has 72 winters etched into her skin, her hair and her memories. Dona Teresa looked after her mother, the houses, the garden, the hens and the rabbits. She was never ill and cured everything with little prayers and herbal teas that her grandmother […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdo.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdo.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdo.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdo.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdo.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pdo.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdo.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdo.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdo.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdo.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}