To Be or Not To Be

When my husband’s mother started down the long road of dementia, she would say aloud over and over “to be or not to be”.  She said it so much that she came to be well known for it by the staff at her care facility and when she moved to a memory unit, a person who had worked at the other place asked us if she was still repeating that. I wonder if this might have been her way of coming to terms with things that can’t be changed and had to be accepted — in this case her condition, her dependence and her worsening memory.  Maybe it’s not really so different from those of us who like to say the universe is unfolding as it should, that things will happen if they are meant to be, it is what it is — or as my brother has taken to responding to a lot of things………..whatever.  A little bit like my favorite Tony Soprano response:  “Whaddaya gonna do.”