The old woman who takes her pants off does not like my mother. Neither does one the old men, or the woman with enormous bags under her eyes. Many of the residents of my mother’s new home do not like her. She is shunned by many of the residents, mostly because she is constantly speaking gibberish, and because she has lost the ability to determine what is her space, and what is theirs. She touches their stuff and they do not like that. She paces and wanders, and sometimes wanders into their zones and commits acts of great social misconduct. They can not understand her, and they actively move away from her when she approaches.

This is very weird to witness because of course you don’t ever want to watch someone you love being ostracized, and yet, she seems to truly not care. Of the handful of phrases she can still get out, “I love you,” is still at the top of the list. She loves her family, and the staff, and the nurses, and she smiles and is friendly to everyone, including the old bitches she lives with. Even the one who takes her pants off.

I also would like to believe that the other residents do not like her because we are there every day, and they are jealous. My dad is often there and people comment to me about how beautiful his dedication to her is. My sisters come at least a couple of times a week and I try to come on weekends with my guitar. My mother sees me coming and will stop her pacing to get situated in her room and wait for her private blues concert. She smiles and taps and punches in the air like she is back in senior water aerobics class. She teeters on her feet as if her body wants to dance but can’t quite remember how. I keep playing. I play and play, and for a little while, she is quiet and does not chatter on.

My sisters and I got together recently and went through my mother’s stuff at the house. Her clothes, the garish plastic jewelry she has been attracted to the past few years, the antiques. I wanted her red and green plaid sewing ham. I do not sew, but she let me play with it when I was a little girl at her feet in her sewing room. I wanted the red tin of buttons, I can still remember what they smell like, but that has disappeared. I wanted the duckie broach my grandmother gave to my mother when she found out she was pregnant with me. I wanted the diaper pin the doctor gave her.  I wanted all the art supplies. My sisters and I had a peaceful time going through her stuff, and spoke to each other respectfully. There were watches, some very old, but I did not want the antiques. I wanted one she wore, and when I took it to the jeweler to get a new battery installed he told me it was ruined on the inside and would never work again. When I cried he told me it was just a cheap watch, like a Timex, and then said only “Oh,” as I walked away, muttering that it had been my mother’s.

When the doctor told us that my mother’s frontal lobe dementia would compromise her ability to communicate, I naively though she would get more quiet. I figured her words would be trapped in there, like a piece of duct tape over her mouth. I did not envision it would be the opposite, that she would talk and talk and talk and say virtually nothing. But “I love you,” she also says. I love you, I love you, I love you.

It is hard to say how much my mother recognizes me now. I bring the music, and she knows that. I think often about the lyrics to the Willy Porter song, “Unconditional”:
I will always love you, no matter what may come
I carried you inside myself, the two of us are one
No matter how you fall down, or how it comes undone
To me you will always be shiny

“My baby,” my mother said as she saw me recently. “My baby. My baby, I love you.”