Yesterday I visited my parents and things went well. Mom was more like she had been through the majority of this journey. Mostly pleasant, and sweet. About a year ago she would say everything was beautiful. People, animals, the weather, a cup of coffee, just beautiful. I spoke to her on the phone last winter and she sounded grim and concerned. "Everything is cold and white and we can't go outside." I didn't know it had snowed at their house. "But it's just beautiful!" she perked up.

If I could be heard by my mother I would tell her I feel afraid. I would tell her I often don't know what to do in this situation and that makes me feel sad. If she could talk to me like she used to she would tell me to listen to my gut, and that I am a good problem solver, and a good kid. That would make me feel better. When I was pregnant she told me not to worry about being the perfect parent, and that I had a lot of screwing up to do. But that she knew me, and she knew I was a good person, and she knew I would always work to make it right.

Yesterday I brought my mother some play doh, and a small purple ball that lights up when it gets bumped, and my mandolin so I could play her some songs and keep her out of my dad's hair. My middle sister and my nephew were there, and we sat in the 80 degree family room with me playing songs and my mother talking through it all to thank my sister for everything and to tell her she loved her. As we were leaving she asked me, "Are you going?"

"Yes," I said.

"When are you coming again?"

"Next weekend. Would you like that?"

She babbled something incomprehensible about my "guitar."

"I will bring the mandolin again next time and play you more songs," I said.

She turned away from me like a fickle cat inviting me to sniff her butt hole. "Whatever," she replied.

"I love you," I said.

She rolled her eyes at me, and turned away, inviting me again to sniff her butt hole. And began to tell my sister again how much she loved her.

Whatever, indeed.

Last week my dad and my oldest sister began to explore new places for my parents to live. Last week I went to a psychic and told her I want to know how all of this with my parents is going to play out.

When I was visiting my parents yesterday, my dad was studying something a friend of his had given him regarding curing Alzheimer's with coconut oil. Today when I called to check on my parents I softly, and gently, reminded him what their gerontologist said they day we all gathered in her thin-aired, 90's paint-schemed, plastic-plant-decorated conference room to tell us Mom was ill. "She's not going to get better."

My dad, who has always shielded himself behind evidence and information, came prepared to this meeting with a white 3" binder busting at the seams with copies of articles and newsletters and assorted clippings.

"Maybe she has a vitamin deficiency," he said.

"She's not going to get better," replied their doctor.

"Maybe she is not getting enough exercise."

"She's not going to get better."

"Maybe… "

"She's not going to get better."

I went to the same psychic who told me when my husband and I were struggling with infertility that I would have a son someday. I scoffed. But that happened. She told me we would sell our house, and it would go quickly. And there it went, 6 days after we put it on the market.

"This is going to be a hard year," she told me last week.

Whatever.