The weekend before we moved my mother into her new home at the dementia wing of a facility, I began to paint. It was just kind of a chance thing, my 8 year old son came across a kid’s palette of watercolor paints and for some reason he asked me, “How do these even really work?” and I said, “Well, like this,” and I knew. Not because I was a big watercolor painter, my degree is actually in ceramics and I was never a big fan of watercolors, but I knew because I had seen my mother do it so many times. Putting that first swath of loose, liquid pigment down felt amazing. So I kept doing it. My son made ink outlines of zombies, and I painted them in. Then I did still lifes. I allowed the paint to spread and fill uncontrollably on the page and I just watched it go. I work as a production graphic artist in packaging during the day, and everything there is controlled and concise down to a fraction of a millimeter. This was free and loose and liberating. It was an opportunity to honor my mother.

Last Tuesday, while my mother was at adult daycare, I took the day off work and went to my parents’ house to pack up her stuff and take it to her new home. I met my nephews at the house, they are grown men now. They, and my niece, had been babies in that house. So had I. We packed up my mother’s clothes and her toiletries and unpacked it in her new room while my sister did an hour’s worth of paperwork to get her checked in. The staff was kind and welcoming and it smelled like fresh baked goods there. It felt safe. I felt safe being close to my nephews as we worked together.

It took all day to do this transition. Dad went and got Mom from day care and we all were there to welcome her. The director offered her peanut butter cookies fresh out of the oven and when I looked at them I remembered how those were her favorite. When I was a kid and she and I would make them together I don’t remember which one of us enjoyed making the crosshatch pattern on the top more.

We stayed with my mother a couple of hours in her new home. Other residents came by and introduced themselves and the staff introduced each other as “my friend…” We stayed with her until it was time to go. And then the staff distracted her. And we left. “It is harder for the family,” one of the staff told us as she entered the secret code to unlock the frosted door and let us out. And out we went. And I wanted to die. I was certain for a moment that I would, because I was sure everyone, not just me, could here my heart shatter in my chest.

Years ago, we all sat around a table in a conference room at my mother’s gerontologist while she read my mother’s diagnosis. “I don’t want to go to into a facility,” my mother said. “Oh, by the time that happens you won’t know what is going on and won’t care,” the doctor told her. I keep thinking about that conversation, and how my mother cried, and then how shortly thereafter she stopped because she forgot why she was crying. I don’t know if she knows what is going on now because her language is so greatly diminished. I visited her yesterday and she said she wanted to go home, but she said she wanted to go home while she lived at home.

The staff reports that she is eating and smiling and friendly. They know her to be charming and pleasant. The facility serves dessert with every meal, because why the hell not, and she likes that. They like her. When we ask the other residents if they like living there they say yes, and absolutely, and very much. That makes me feel better because people with dementia tell it like it is and if it sucked one of them would have said so by now.

My mother is living in the best facility our family can afford. My sister has worked very hard and so has my beautiful, kind, loving father. He has worked very hard for a long time and since my mother has moved, he seems considerably more peaceful. He is sad and he misses her. But we all know that she is safe and is getting the very best we can possibly give her.

The day after we moved my mother into her new home, I woke up, and I painted with my son’s paints, and I felt connected to her as the thin watercolors bled across the surface of the paper. “Come on,” I told my husband, “we are going to the art supply store.” The brand of watercolor paints my mother liked were on sale so I bought a container of 12. And when I put the brush into that real paint and applied it to the paper, it almost took my breath away. The rich, intense blast of blue, and crimson, and ochre spreading freely through the water was amazing.

I wanted a better brush. I wanted to do a better job. “Might as well take Mom’s brushes,” my sister told me, “they are sitting right there in her office.” So I did. I came to the house and there they were, in her old brush holder. I remembered which one was her favorite when I saw it. The one with the clear acrylic shaft. That one is mine now. It is clean and ready to work.

I do not have an experienced watercolor painter’s hand but I know how to do this because my mother did it over and over again, and I saw her do it. It mattered enough to me on some subconscious level to absorb it because it mattered to her. And now years after she stopped painting, a chance to come alive again. Blue and crimson and ochre bleeding through the water into the tooth of the paper, connecting me to my mother as we all transition.