“It was the smell of the sage,” my mother told me twenty-five years ago. “I was in a place, like by the lake where I would hunt ducks with my Dad when I was a kid. It was dawn and the fog was so thick I couldn’t see through it. But I knew I was safe there. It was very safe. I could feel the sand under my boots as I walked toward the water.

“I could smell everything so clearly. Everything in the woods, the sage. The sage smelled so good. I knew if I could just get to the water…”

But that was not really what was happening. What was really happening was my mother was moments away from death, an accidental overdose of painkillers as she was coming out of a surgery. She was so tiny. And the dose was too great for her little body. We all stood outside her room as the hospital staff barreled into her room with their paddles and probes and beeping monitors. Screaming her name. Trying to get a response.

“People kept calling my name. It was annoying me,” my mother recalled. “I knew if I could just get to the water, something amazing was going to happen. The fog opened up, and I could see in front of me. The lake, was magnificent.”

She didn’t make it into the water. Twenty-five years ago medical staff yanked my mother away from the shore, and she came back to us.

Early this morning, before dawn, my mother, Veraine Alcyne Harrington Muñiz, stepped on to her sand, walked bravely and earnestly through the breaking fog, the smell of the sage surrounding her in every breath she took, and stepped gloriously into her magnificent lake. And she didn’t look back.

Thanks for everything, Mom. 

Red plastic drinking glasses are kept in the second cupboard to the left at my mother’s home. Checkered coffee mugs with cows on them are in the corner. Silverware is in the center drawer. I know this by heart now. I have spent the majority of the last five days there, some times morning through late night. And I have gotten comfortable with helping myself to the kitchen.

Wednesday I got “the call” to come say good bye, so my dog went to the kennel, my kid went to the neighbor’s, and I went to my mother’s home. And sat with my family. And waited. Many things have happened. We said lots of goodbyes and thank yous. The staff stopped in many times to hug us and tell us it has been an honor to care for our mother, and to show us their scars where she bit or scratched the shit out of them. We told stories and sang dozens and dozens of songs. No one acted like a jerk. We drank over a fifth of liquor and a couple sixes of hard cider. We ate chips and other crap. And waited. We cuddled her, and held her hand, and told her she was beautiful. So did the staff. They got in bed with her and held her while we all gathered in her room, the temperature in there becoming stifling and suffocating as we all packed in there, afraid to walk away. We learned to dress in layers as we waited.

She struggled to remember how to swallow, so giving her drugs orally was a horrible thing to witness. Then her drugs were given rectally, and that was even more horrific. “I’d rather just die than have anything stuck in my butt,” her nurse told us. So we decided to stop everything except the morphine, including the anti-seizure medicine. Then we waited for her to have a seizure. It didn’t come. It may.

She perked up and inched away from the edge of death, and had moments where she made eye contact and attempted to smile. She was angry and frowned. She made nonsensical sounds and we wondered if she would say anything important. “Oh yeah,” she said this morning as I stroked her hair. She trembled. We sat and watched. We became exhausted. We stopped singing and telling stories.

I came home.

This is a weird spot to be in. This waiting. I do not really have words for this.

So I am going to share a story about something that happened last summer that I did not think was funny at the time. But I kind of do now.

I got to work one morning and found a text from my sister in law, telling me that everyone was headed to the ER because Mom had either had a heart attack or a stroke. Of course I left right away to go see her, but on the way I stopped at home and got my guitar because I figured if this helped, I’d just keep playing. Maybe even play her out of her journey.

It’s an hour and a half from my job to the hospital. Plenty of time to fret and worry and try to make child care plans and find someone to watch the dog in case I was going to be gone a long time. Plenty of time to talk on the phone with family and find out my mother only had a seizure, not a heart attack. So that was good. But I knew her brain would be extra scrambled for a while afterward, so I wasn’t sure what I would find when I got there.

The ER in my hometown is quite a production. You have to go through a metal detector and then a concierge meets you at the door and escorts you where you need to go. I guess this is in response to an incident a few years ago where someone walked in and stabbed someone in the ER, which I still maintain is an excellent place to be stabbed. If you need to be stabbed, the ER is where to have it done.

So my guitar goes through the metal detector, and so do I, and the concierge meets me and takes me just around the corner to a room across from the nurse’s station where my mother is. She’s in this wild state of extra scramble plus pleasant plus pissed as hell, and she’s trying to escape the bed she is laying in. But I pulled out my guitar and start playing, and this works. Ok. She settles down. All of my family members slowly start leaving for a short time because they all had something to deal with, and the music is buying us some time.

Eventually my mother starts to get bored and wants to escape again, so I keep playing and singing while trying to operate the hospital bed with my feet to trap her. She’s scooting, like a little girl, or a dog across the rug, digging her heels into the bed and pulling her butt towards the edge and towards freedom. I’m on one foot trying the balance and keep the song going and work the bed. Bang, I finally tap the right button and the foot of the bed goes up, her head goes down, and now she can’t get out. Which is good, but also is making her more pissed. I kept playing.

She needed more anti-seizure medicine in her system, but you couldn’t tell her that and have her understand, so a nurse came in with a tablet sprinkled into Jello. I’m in the ER playing and playing and the nurse is dancing and trying to get the Jello in the extra scrambled pissed off dementia patient, and this only partially works. So they closed the curtain at the foot of mom’s bed, and after a few seconds a male nurse flings the curtain back and stands there like TA-DA!! Mom LOVES this. She reaches for him, smiles with an open mouth, and the other nurse shovels the Jello in. He disappears. He reappears, and we do this about a half dozen times more. Because there’s always room for Jello. By the time we were done we were all laughing.

Until the smell started. You know that smell. You know where I am going with this.

She needed to be cleaned up, but this made her mad all over again and even the Male Nurse Revue Show wasn’t squelching the anger. I was at her head, singing, playing, on and on and on, and the nurses are trying to deal with the mess and of course eventually they got it. But in the melee, while she was wiggling around cursing, she somehow swung around and jammed her fingers in my mouth. It was like a cobra strike. Like where did that come from and how did we get here???

“I wonder where your hand has been, Mom,” I said, and caught the nurse’s face of grossed out concern, a solid “Yuck” burned into her forehead. I stopped playing and got a handful of anti bacterial soap and washed my mouth out in the sink of the ER, my guitar slung over my back like some kind of a bad ass with a mouth full of nasty.

And the nurses left. Mom and I were alone again, me playing and playing and the nurses at their station dancing a little as they worked. I had run out of material and was just making shit up, songs about nurses working long hours and ghastly ER injuries. My family started to work its way back in her room, and we got ready for her release so she could go back to her facility. Of course the paperwork takes longer than you ever want, especially with someone who has no idea why they are there and are only making extra scrambled escape plans.

Mom was happy for the ride in the wheelchair as they released her, and when we reached the entryway to the hospital parking structure she was ready to get the F out of there. But my Dad, who was sent to get the car, was not there as planned. So up she goes, or attempts to go, as my sister and the nurse try to keep her down in the wheelchair. Mom is having none of this so I pull my guitar out again, and start playing again to try to settle her down. People are walking into that ER entryway after having some sort of genuine trauma and are met with our wacky family filling that small glassed in space with some crazy acoustic dance party.

Mom got in Dad’s car and they headed back to the facility. My sister and I went for shots of tequila, me sipping it and holding it, deliberately swishing it over every surface in my violated mouth. We got a phone call at some point from my dad that he has decided to take Mom out to lunch on the way back, and of course this is a terrible idea for many reasons. So my sister and I leave the bar, find our parents at the restaurant, and walk into to what looks like a lunch explosion. Food everywhere, her trying to escape their booth, almost every kind of chaos you can imagine except for the doodie part because that happened just a short time previous. “Dad,” I ask, “why are you here? You have to take her back now.” Ok, ok. We got our parents out of there and got my mother back to the home where they welcome her and were worried about her. She was safe again.

And then I went home. Because I was tired. And I had more tequila when I got there. And I did not think this day was funny. But now I guess I kind of do.

Dementia is a disease centered around metrics. How long, how much, how many. How long will my mother remember me. How much medicine is effective without being detrimental or just pointless. How many years have we been doing this. Dementia is also about time. They even have this little test they give you when you start to lose your mind where you are basically given an analog clock with no hands and you are asked to write in the time. Many years ago my mother flunked this one.

After my mother’s time in the geri psych, she moved back to her adult foster care and brought with her the kit of psychotropic drugs to fight off what we have been calling Evil Twin. They make her more pleasant. They will also make her die faster. Last week when I saw her she was sitting in the shared living room smiling, looking me right in the eyes, trying to mutter along as I sang to her. She wanted to hold my hand, and when I took hers and kissed it, she spoke clearly for the first time in a long time – “Oh thank you.” How long had it been since we connected like that. I don’t know. I stayed with her a long time, played every song I could, and the other residents turned the volume off the Golden Girls marathon on the tv so they could listen along.

My mother’s meds are adjusted and tweaked constantly, as Hospice, and Mom’s geriatrician, and the AFC do what they can to make her as comfortable as possible. Lately this has not been easy. Her knees are causing her tremendous pain, and she shouts any time one of the care workers comes near her legs. How many days until the pain meds kick in. We are told two, maybe three.

Fluid has been a problem too, as it collects in her hands and feet as a side effect of one of the drugs that keep Evil Twin at bay. How much of that medicine will keep her pleasant and for how long. That’s a juggling act.

We are in a waiting and watching stage now. The anticipation is exhaustive. The nurse who runs the AFC looks at my mother so lovingly, so adoringly, and tells us Mom is one of her all time favorites. She hung twinky blinky lights and ornaments on the ceiling above my mother’s bed. She also told us she didn’t think Mom would make it to Christmas. How many days until Christmas. As of today it is 5. The last time I saw my mother she was so present and connected, and I thought nah, she’ll rally. She’s like that. But how much is enough. Only my mother gets to decide that.

When I came to see my mother today she looked like one of the many other residents that I could not bear to look at. The ones who have been propped up in their beds, wearing that gaunt, distant face. The ones who’s rooms I would glance into but pass by without really looking, for fear of what I would see. My mother looked like her body was working very hard to get ready for something very important, and necessary.

How many songs did I make it through today before the tears and tusks of snot choked me and forced me to stop. That one I have an answer to. Zero.

There is little sign in the elevator of the psychiatric hospital that says “High elopement rate on Geri Psych,” and underneath it a clip art STOP sign. They are serious about this elevator. You can not just push the button and get on and go. You have to pick up a phone in the lobby and tell an operator where you want to go, and they will send the elevator down for you. The buttons don’t work if you push them from the outside. This, I’m sure, is because of the high elopement rate. It sounds so romantic and campy, like you and I will steal away, and not tell anyone, and get in this elevator, and leave this psychiatric hospital, and be in love, and get married, and be happy. We will elope. We will experience elopement. 

No one is eloping out of here like that. The windows are protected in a serious way that made me feel exhausted just trying to imagine how someone would try to bust out of them. The people glassed into the nurse’s station are serious too. I figured that our quickly when I asked if I could bring my guitar in to play for my mother, and had to answer their barrage of questions. There are many security pieces in place to keep the geriatric patients from hurting themselves. From eloping. I couldn’t help but admire the strategy of it all, and how it paid respect to how crafty you could be if you really put your mind to it. Even if you were old. Even if you had dementia.

The geriatric psych ward is where my mother lives now. She won’t stay there. She was moved there after falling at her foster care, again, and after being violent, again, and again, and again, until she finally was unmanageable. It was easy for us to blame her first facility when she acted out there. But we are facing another eviction, and it has become clear to us that when she moved out of the first facility, she took her Alzheimer’s demons with her.  And so she is in the geri psych where they are trying different cocktails of psychotropic drugs to control her moods, and her violence, and her seizures. The director of her current home told my sister “Of course!” they would take her back, IF she is properly medicated. We have no other choices. This was discussed as we met as a family with her geriatrician, who told us we are definitely at End Stage now. This is where we are at. We are under that big tack in the map of this journey that says You Are Here. The journey, now much shorter.

We met with the Hospice person yesterday who detailed for us how important it is to stop thinking about long term, and commit to what is right here, right now. It won’t matter if the medicine she is on causes liver problems down the road, if it makes her more comfortable today, that is what we need to do. Strawberry ice cream for breakfast? Yes. Ice cream all day? Yes, she can absolutely have that. And as she gave that example I remembered how for years I had warts on my finger tips as a kid, and after the doctors would burn them off my mother would buy me Dove bars to comfort me from the agony.

The meeting room we sat in to talk to Hospice was better lit with natural light than the room we sit in at the geriatrician’s office. That one makes me feel claustrophobic and sensitive to the acrid smell of old coffee reheated in the microwave in there. This room felt airier. Like I could breathe. Like I could walk out of there and see clearly.

I walked out of the meeting with the Hospice person and saw my mother and she saw me, and beamed. So much happier than the last time I saw her at her home, when she twisted my fingers and dug her claws into my arm and stuck her tongue out at me and rolled her eyes in disgust at me. Her psychotropic cocktail is working. It is better. And truthfully, she was delightful when I saw her. “Better living through pharmaceuticals,” my sister would say. And better dying, I suppose.

The patient rooms in Geri Psych are barren. My mother has a bed and a chair, and a 24 hour person by her side. That’s it. And Geri Psych smells like you think it would. Like old people. Like peppermint and wood soap and antiseptic and freshly washed linens. I walked out of the meeting with the Hospice person and breathed in deeply as I walked down the hall. Everything. I breathed in everything I could with both nostrils, deep into the bottom of my lungs, not afraid of the smell of institutionalized old people. And when I found my mother in a large open room, I sat next to her and wrapped my arm around her, pulling her closer into me so I could press my face into her hair, and breathe her in too.

The Hospice person reminded us that just as there is a process to being born, there is a process to dying. I marveled at the straw texture of my mother’s hair against my face and thought that there was a time when her parents pressed their faces into her little baby head, her fine hair then thin and satiny, and breathed her in too. 78 years prior. Her scent. I wanted it to live inside of me as I undertook the long process of trying to navigate the elevators to leave the geriatric psych ward where my mother lives. Until she doesn’t anymore.

The last time I saw my mother my toenails were painted lavender and we sat in the afternoon sunshine on the deck of her new home, me playing guitar, and she ahold of my right big toe, puzzled, working to rub the color off my nail with her thumb. It was alright. Things here are good. She is well. The deck is warm and the porch swing is comfortable, and there are railing planters sprouting fresh vegetables. This is a good home. It is a better home.

My mother was evicted from her previous home at the end of last June. She was a bad fit there. Really, that is what it was. You could go back and count "incidences" or "situations" that didn't work for either party, but really she was just not right for that facility. There was a breaking point, and a call to my sister, and an official notice that we had to remove her. And panic on all our parts as to where she would go, how we would pay for it, and how to protect my Dad. Moving her back to the house she shared with my Dad was not an option, her needs are too great now. There were dozens and dozens of phone calls to new places, and visits that did not pan out, and scary visits to places that we were grateful we did not end up in. There were repeat visits to a facility that was run by a tanned senior woman who lived on site with her residents, and whose bedroom was decorated in gold and faux animal pelts. She had cared for people with dementia longer than I have been alive. I liked that one. But it did not work out.

We were all angry at the executive director of the previous home. "Mom always hated bitches like her anyway," my sister reminded me. Yes, that was true. Tall and skinny and blonde and smiling too much in her perfect suit. The executive director really could have done a better job, especially with the bullying and the ostracizing. She could have done a better job maintaining order. All the residents there seemed to be on their own too much. Yes, they served nice meals with cloth napkins and yes it was shiny and clean, in a Hotel California kind of way, but there wasn't very much order, and just because people have dementia doesn't mean they don't remember to be pissed off and frustrated about being sick, and take it out on each other. Just ask the woman who always took her pants off. She always had something to say. My mother was asked to leave that home. My mother, who told me when I came home from kindergarten saying that my teacher wanted me to do a better job coloring inside the lines, told me "You don't have to color inside the lines." Then she bought me the 64 box of crayons. So there.

The last time I saw the director of the new home she was wearing jean shorts and a tshirt that said "Shut The Duck Up." She is very real, and her staff are loyal and patient. They love my mother. The ratio of staff to residents is smaller and there are a lot of rules. The day Mom moved in she was told quickly, you will always sit at this place at the table for meals. You will not hit. You will not swear. And I thought - good luck with that. But it is totally working.

My mother lost 35 pounds in six months at the last home. She wouldn't sleep and she was constantly setting off the alarm as she tried to escape. She was stressed and acting out. I thought her behavior was the progression of her disease but it was her rage, exacerbated by its incarceration. At the new home she is gaining weight, and sleeping better, and is coloring again, which is huge. She even learned something, which blew my mind.

I think a lot about the other residents at the previous home. Especially the ones, like my mother, who just disappeared from there. Not because they passed away, but because like her, they did the kinds of things that people with dementia do. They hit or pushed or yelled or whatever they did that was not sit quietly and wait to die. They disappeared and went somewhere, to whatever less-than-shiny place their disease forced them to go. I think about the ones whose families we never saw visiting, and I hope those residents behave because I have seen what their options will be and where they will go when they do not have a family like ours advocating for them. I think how scary it must be to be old and make friends in a dementia facility, and have to wonder what happened to them when you don't see them anymore. My mother had one friend there named Marilyn. I think about Marilyn and wonder if she remembers that they were friends.

The view from the big picture window by the dining area at the new home is wide and expansive and shows a vast landscape of green. A huge yard with a rim of tall trees hides the river's edge. In the autumn it will be spectacular. My mother still paces constantly in her staggering gait in her new home. How she doesn't fall over more, I don't know. But this facilities' hallways are smaller and not so easy to get lost in, and she can circle back and see the view out the window, pass by the staff, and look them in the eye and tell them "I love you." "I love you too," they smile and say.

Everything about this is hard. Nothing about this is easy.

Strained relationships with my mother’s facility, are hard. Communication with family members is hard. And often times, frightening. Trying to wrap my brain around what my sister tries to explain to me about the bureaucratic quagmire we are steeped in, is hard. Driving an hour and a half one way to sit with my mother and try to hold her attention for an hour while she actively ignores me, is hard. It is everything. Nothing about this is easy.

I do not like the stranger that inhabits my mother’s body. I feel betrayed that it has taken her sounds and her scent and the energy I feel radiating from her body when I sit close to her. Walking into her home is like walking into a bizzarro world. All of us who have loved my mother are growing weary. And yet her body champions on, and then I find myself asking how long this will go on, and then I feel like a shit for wondering that.

On Halloween in the year 2000, I almost bled to death. That was a bad day. My husband and I had been struggling with infertility and I was going in for a routine laparoscopy to have a look around my insides and try to figure out why things were not happening. My surgery was at 7:00am, and I was supposed to be home by noon. I was a reasonable amount of nervous about this, but I had been told many times this was no big deal, they were going to make a little incision in my belly button, a few stitches, and I would be back to work the next day. Easy.

That is not what happened. By the time I was able to go home from the hospital I had spent a week there, mostly unconscious, for having lost 2/3 of the blood in my body. I had been nicked, and stitched back up, and a great mass of congealed blood had collected in my abdomen like a huge out of control mold of jello exploded onto  the floor. Clean up was intensive, and the little scar in my belly button became a 6” long zipper from where they had to cut me open again and vacuum the mess all out. My doctor did not want to give me a blood transfusion because he was afraid I would contract HIV, so the healing was slow and arduous. The memories I have of that time in the hospital are of course, disjointed and bizarre, flooded over by the rotating waves of excruciating pain and momentary relief provided by morphine. A vivid nightmare from which someone might turn to the person sleeping next to them and say “I just had the weirdest dream, did that really happen?” and the person sleeping next to them would have to look into their soul and say, “Yes.”

But I also have another vivid memory of that time. It was that my parents showed up to the hospital before they wheeled me into surgery. I was surprised to see them. They had come by our house the day before and I thought they had gone back to their home. But there they were. I remember thinking, “Why are you here? This will be easy. I will be home by noon.” But my mother had this urgency in her eye. She could feel that something terrible was about to happen. She was scared, I could see it. It frightened me. They last thing she said to me as they took me away, was “I WILL ADVOCATE FOR YOU.” I remember thinking that was so weird. Like, ok. Mom, chill, thanks, but I’m good.

She did. The doctor who nicked me tried to sit with my panicked husband and parents and explain what had happened in long, laborious language and my mother looked at him and shouted “JUST FIX HER!! GO FIX HER!!” Not in a crying, weepy shouting kind of way. In a “If you don’t fucking fix my baby I swear to God all 4 foot 6 inches of me will personally, relentlessly, kick your ass into next week” kind of way.

That was my Mom.

I miss my mother ferociously. I miss everything about her.

I think about that story and ask myself if I have done a good enough job advocating for her in return. And I think honestly, probably not. There are things I do not understand about the place we are all in right now. I oftentimes look back on the choices I have made and think I could have done better by her. I'm sorry about that.

Somehow, even though the doctor told my husband and I that we would definitely not ever have kids after his mistake, we ended up being surprised with a child. A funny, smart, amazing boy who has some special needs, and who does not adapt well, and who has struggled pretty much right out of the gate. I meet with his grown ups frequently and spell out what they can and can not expect from my child. I strategize and try to turn a deaf ear to ignorant other parents with “typical” kids who judge me, who judge my child. All five foot, three-quarters of one inch, is prepared to kick a whole line of asses.

Of course this is not new to me. I know how to do it because my mother was always my, and my sister’s, advocate. She always had our backs. She showed me how to do this over and over and over again. My mother gave that gift to me, so I could give it to my son. Thanks, Mom.

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.”


My mother is doing well in her new home. She is adjusting well and never cries. She is sleeping peacefully all through the night and is making new friends that easily understand her through her language barrier. My mother is happy to see me every time I come to see her. She understands that she lives there now so she can be safe, and does not ask repeatedly to go home. She does not try to escape. My mother’s children are remembering each other’s bruised hearts and always speak to each other respectfully and do not call each other terrible names. Everything is working, and I do not lie awake at night feeling like a monster.

And everything I just said, is a lie.

Here are some things that are true.

My mother lives in a very nice facility that has dessert all the time. I told my sister I suspected they pumped in that delicious fresh baked smell and but she disagreed, she thinks it is really fresh treats baking in the kitchen. That’s probably true. The staff is kind and appears engaged. They take the time to remember our family’s names and are eager to problem solve with us.

The facility is full of characters, all of whom have dementia, and sometimes when you get to talking to one of the residents, you may think for a moment to ask them, “Why do you live here?” and then you quickly realize why. One of the women there has 8 sisters and 3 brothers. Guess how I know that. That one likes to yodel, and when I bring my guitar to sing the blues to my mother, she will pop in and yodel along. I like that. That is true.

I took some of my son’s old picture books to read to my mother and she likes that. Especially the illustrated children’s bible. She knows those stories and likes to cuddle up close on the love seat in her room and listen. She likes to lay her head on my chest like a little girl and run her gnarled 77 year old fingers along the page while I read to her. That is true too.

My dad looks good. He talks about being sad and lonely for his wife, but he looks like he is sleeping. The house looks good too, he is taking good care of things, and he and his old, fat, black, dog go for a walk every morning. They cling to each other, my dad and that old, fat, black dog. I’m glad she is there for him. That is true too. I am enjoying time with my dad, being able to sit at a restaurant and talk peacefully, or talk uninterrupted on the phone. He goes to see my mother almost every day, and brings her treats. When I called him late the other night, I found him reading old love letters he and my mother had exchanged when my older sister was a baby. That is also true.

My mother used to have an expression that I keep thinking about. If you were going to say something, but forgot what it was, she would say “it must have been a lie.” How many lies must be getting told at my mother’s new home. There is another expression I keep thinking about, from the Rolling Stones. “What a drag it is, getting old.”

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.

A place has been chosen for my mother to spend the rest of her life.

It is new and clean and big but not as big as the first place we looked. It is not as small as the third place and does not have the second place’s Doctor Octopus showering contraption. The carpet on the floor is a solid color so the residents do not get confused. It does not smell like pee or Ben Gay. The doors are frosted so the residents can’t look out and try to escape. She will go in just over a week, and they are advising us to not visit her for a few days so she can get acclimated.

I very much would like to punch someone in the face, especially some ignoramus guilty of saying that we just callously throw our elderly into old folks’ homes. And the 9 non-consecutive years I spent in training in the martial arts has allowed me to know exactly what that would feel like, to punch someone in the face. Hot, and smacky, and gratifying.

My mother would have appreciated that.

We are actively shopping for a new home for my mother. 

We have been to two so far and have two more to look at. I liked the second facility, the one where a resident named Joan wandered into the demo room and had herself a little nap on the demo bed, and the director just worked around her. My sister did not care for this one, she said the shower room was too creepy. It kind of was. They have to get the residents naked and strapped into this Doctor Octopus kind of contraption to wash them. This is why it helps to have more than one set of eyes. I am so grateful my sisters and I are working together on this. I don’t know how only-children of parents with dementia do this. I guess they do it sooner than we have. That is what my mother’s social worker told us the last time we had a family meeting to discuss how to get my mother moved into a facility. The social worker said other families would have done it by now, they usually do not have the strong teamwork we do. It was good to hear this.

What do you think the end of your life is going to look like? Me – I got it all planned out. I remember hearing a story years ago about a couple that went for a drive when Mount St Helen’s was exploding, and even though they were miles and miles away from any danger, some random rock blasted off the volcano and struck their car, splat!, and they were dead. I like to think that they were driving around after a really satisfying lunch of grilled sandwiches and microbrews, talking about how much they liked each other. Maybe they were holding hands. Now I just need to move myself and my loved ones closer to an active volcano.

My mother had the end of her life all planned out too. She wanted to die at home, and she wanted me to hit her over the head with a brick if she started to get goofy. Neither one of these things is going to happen.

Shopping for a facility to put your mother in is weird. Of course this is a business, and we are making informed choices. I call and make the appointments and juggle the emails and spend my vacation days coming to town, and my sisters ask the hard questions to the staff. I am not opposed to asking hard questions, I just often feel quiet when we are there at the facilities, doing our shopping.

I feel quiet, and I feel sad, and, I feel relieved. I have felt very afraid the past year, afraid she would get hurt at home or get hurt while she and my dad are out driving around during the day. I have confidence that she will be in a place that will keep her safe and hopefully happy. I am looking forward to my dad having some peace.

But she will not go willingly, and I feel a bit like a monster about that.  When she has been out with my sister or I and we go past a strip mall or hospital, she will manage to get her words together enough to say “Don’t you take me in there.” At first I couldn’t figure out what her deal was, but then I got it.  I have some vague memory of being a child and being overwhelmed with fever and being combative under the bright lights of the cold emergency room as adults tried to poke and prod at me. “You have to,” my mother told me, sadly, solidly. “You have to.”

Two more shopping sessions to go, and then a decision. Someday soon we will take her in “there.”  And I will feel relieved, and, like a quiet monster.

There is an ache at the base of my skull, the point at which the 10 year chronic pain I have had in my head radiates out from, that felt especially twisted as I spoke on the phone with the director of the facility I called today. I called there to ask about setting up a tour for my family so we could decide if this would be a good place for my mother to live.

“It’s a terrible disease,” the director said.

“Yes,” I replied.

“So hard on the family.”

“Yes.”

“Blah blah blah…” she went on, “…care for Mom, services provided, blah blah, we will love her for who she is…” 

I began to be acutely aware of the stubble on my leg I should have taken care of and how prickly it feels inside the calf of my pants. It was easier to let my mind drift towards that and the ache in my head, than the pain of calling a facility for my mother. This was my first call to a facility. It will not be the last.

My father went to Texas last week, to be with his people, and I went home to share shifts of taking care of my mother with my sisters. I played guitar and sang to her for hours. Mostly the blues, because she would tap her feet and bob her head to that genre more than to the emo singer-songwriter stuff I usually gravitate towards. My mother’s mouth is usually constantly running, non-sensical words come flooding out like wild rushing water from a busted pipe, only occasionally connecting syllables that make any kind of sense. But when I play her the blues she is quiet and content. She likes Bonnie Raitt and Sippy Wallace’s “Women Be Wise.”

“Women be wise,” I sing to her, “keep your mouth shut, don’t advertise your man…”

“Uh-uh” my mother will respond.

“Don’t ever sit around, holdin’ no conversation, explainin’ what your man do to you…”

“Don’t!”

“Cuz these women now days, they aint no good, they laugh in your face, then try to steal your man from you…”

“YES!”

“So women be wise, keep your mouth shut, don’t advertise your man”

“NO!”

Mandolin has been my primary instrument for the past few years, even though I started playing guitar 35 years ago. The songs I have pulled out of my ass the past week have been buried deep in my brain, I have had to work to remember how they go and what the lyrics are. But they slowly came to the surface, and I began to challenge myself with new and creative ways to play. It was sad and interesting to watch my own mind expand, while hers contracted, right in front of me.

When I wasn’t playing music for my mother I was trying to get her to not eat her salad with a pen, or put checkers in her food, or be frightened from glimpses of things she saw on the TV. We settled on watching the food channel, that was safe. We also watched some Cross-Fit show where very athletic shirtless men climbed ropes and lifted absurd amounts of weight. She liked that too.

My mother wanted to go for a ride, but once we got in the car she wanted to go home. And once we were back home, she still wanted to go home. She tried to communicate with me that she was afraid my Dad was dead, or having an affair, and because she can not understand my attempts to tell her otherwise, it was best just to pick up the guitar and divert her attention.

She would get angry at me, and shake her fist, and glare at me like she hated me. I was amazed at how blue her eyes were when she hated me. And since I often couldn’t figure out why she was mad I just stared at her, struck at how beautiful and tragic at the same time.

It is so weird to have that disconnection with your mother. To sit close to her and feel the warmth of her body and her energy and know in your soul this is “Mom.” And to call her name, Mom, and have her turn and look at you. She knows that is her name. She earned it. And yet she is different, not who she was.

“That is what is so hard on the family, they love the person for who they were,” the director of the facility told me today. “We will love them for who they are now, and who they will be,” And I said ok, because I did not know what else to say. Next time I need to remember to tell them that she likes the blues. And I will be there to see her with my guitar.

This is what I thought the last time I sat on the floor at my mother’s feet, double knotting her shoes.

I thought- this used to be my bedroom. I was a little girl here and I slept here when I outgrew the crib in my parents’ room. I had Peanuts sheets with a Snoopy dog house pillowcase that I sometimes wrecked by falling asleep with gum in my mouth. I have an early memory of being woken up from a nap, being dressed in a frilly blue dress, and taken to a photographer for a photo that is still hanging somewhere in my parents’ house. I fell out of the bed at night and was frightened, and my big sister would come into this room and comfort me.

I thought- this was my mother’s sewing room when I moved into the bedroom down the hall. It was always a little warmer in there when she was sewing. The incandescent bulbs on her desk emitted a faintly noticeable heat when you walked in, and it sounded like the mechanical purr of the sewing machine and the blathering on of am talk radio. She liked to listen to hosts that represented her opposing political view “just to keep track of what they are up to.” It was a comforting sound on a rainy weekend day, and she would usually emerge from there with an impressive creation I will never be able to replicate.

I thought- it won’t be long before we don’t live here anymore, and another family will fill this room with little girls, or impressive hobbies. They won’t know what happened here and won’t really care, just like, unfortunately, I don’t really care about who lived in the present house I share with my son and husband. The people who live in my parents’ house won’t know that I fell asleep most nights to the sound of my parents giggling and cracking each other up.  I hope the next owner will be able to feel it though.

I thought- it doesn’t take long to go from a mother tying her little girl’s shoes in this room to that same girl tying her mother’s shoes. Both instances, so that she doesn’t trip on her laces and fall down.

And that is our biggest challenge now. My mother loses a little more of her footing every day. What is given to you as a child gets taken away, step by step. Like slowly walking into peril. When I recently took her with me to Target, she became confused trying to cross the lot in front of the door, and froze. Traffic was stopped in both ways as I bent down to her, arms outstretched, trying to coax her to me. “Come on, Honey. Come on. You can do it. I’m right here.” I learned that from her, because she said it to me, and usually closed with “Come to Mama.”

My father, of course, would like a big break and would like to, as my sister would say, “be with his people.” He would like to go to his birth family and be with his sisters and brothers and their families. And of course we will do everything we can to get him there. But also of course, I am afraid of how I will take care of my mother when she can’t find him and becomes alarmed and I am afraid of how to care for her physical needs. Double knotting her shoes won’t soon be enough to keep her safe.

When I was a child, and I’m sure long after I stopped being a child, my mother would be so satisfied and filled with joy to be able to go to the local greenhouse around this time of year and buy flowers for her yard. She would save up her money, putting a little bit away every pay day so she could come to this moment, and go to the greenhouse on a shiny, early summer, Saturday morning and fill her car with flowers. She would want me to go along, and I would not be as excited as her. I would be a little bored and would want to dominate this shopping trip with my own choices, and she would let me pick out one or two flowers, but basically this was all her. Now that I am a mother I totally get that. This was HER moment.

The greenhouse always smelled fresh and like wet soil. I was often only as tall as the counters so as I walked with her my direct line of vision was what seemed like an infinite line of amazing colors from the earth. Every year she bought something a little different, but the constants were always petunias, geraniums, and snapdragons for me, in yellow. When we would get home she would open her car trunk like a child opening a gift, just for her. We would lay out the flats in the yard and she would get to work making a little hole in the ground for each beautiful little one to be welcomed to its new home.

Her yard was nurtured like one of her young. There were wild rose bushes that bloomed yellow for my sister’s birthday in June, and pink for my other sister in July. I would wake in the morning to that scent coming into my bedroom. She only watered in the evening, and so the gloaming for me in my parents’ yard always sounded like the soft, gentle hiss of one of her garden hoses that had been punctured many times along its length to spray a constant mist low to the ground. I would forget and walk into the wet yard and drench my feet and my mother would chuckle at me.

She loved the spring and the summer. She loved the sun and the heat and she loved to swim. She relished the whole lot of this and could not wait to get home from her office job to work in the yard.

She and I are different. I do not love the sun and work to actively avoid it. The heat makes me bitchy. I swim if I have to, and, my yard looks like crap.

I feel sad about that. I wish my yard was a glorious array of horticultural delight, but I am often off having adventures instead of kneeling on the patio pulling weeds. I spend my money on instruments instead of flats of flowers. My mother would have been ok with that. I have the life I have because I was encouraged to take advantage of every opportunity I was given. I was told that she was proud of me. She beamed when she saw me on stage, and never batted an eye at me for having a yard that looks like serious crap.

Last summer I came home to my parents’ house and was stricken at how the weeds were taking over. My mother never would have allowed that to go on and so I went to work trying to weed her flower beds. I set her up a little chair in the sun for her and she seemed peacefully oblivious. My dad was trying to plant hanging baskets to impress her and he kept trying to show her and get her approval but she didn’t care. That was sad. Finally she reached over and put her hands into the leaves. “Oh!” she said “I had forgotten how much I love this!”

She has forgotten how much she loves this. And that. And the other thing. And sometimes, me.

I don’t work in my yard, but I know how. I listened and I watched her and I know. I remember.  Some day I will open the trunk of my car, pull out petunias and geraniums, and dig new little homes in the ground for the little flowers my mother would have nurtured and revered. I will remember that she loved this.

Sixteen years ago, as we were planning our wedding, I had decided "'til death do us part" wasn't good enough. Too traditional. I wanted something different and we decided on the more contemporary "until we are parted by death." I thought yes, I will be with this man until the day I die. There will be times we have no money, and times we do. There will be good times and bad times. There will be times when one of us is sick, like with the flu, and the other one will bring soup and a cool cloth for a fevered brow. And we will make it. Nothing but death will tear us apart. I said that when I was 28, and he was 27.

My parents celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary yesterday. I came to town with my husband and son and we went to a restaurant that disappointed my father and caused him to be cantankerous with the wait staff. I cut my mother's meat for her and escorted her into the women's room while she committed an wide array of social faux paus.

On our first wedding anniversary I called in sick to work so my husband and I could spend the day in bed. The next day I could barely walk. I was 29 and certain that in 58 years I would still want to spend the day in bed, so in love with him I couldn't stand to be away from him, especially on our anniversary. But yesterday I split my parents up again so my Dad could have a break. I spent three hours driving my mother around again in circles. She can't stand to be away from him. She is afraid and angry when she can't see him. But I bought her a chocolate shake and that bought us some time. She can barely walk. She is old and her body is tired. She teeters and is tippy. She can barely walk.

For a while my parents owned their own business running errands for people. Dry cleaning, package delivery, rides to the doctor, etc. They were champion grocery shoppers. One of the times I drove my mother around we ended up at the grocery store and I tell ya what, once that old lady got behind the cart, she was like geriatric bat out of hell. She knew where she was at and what she was doing and had increased her speed tenfold. We can not presently give her a walker because she struggles to understand what it is for and that causes more chaos. I think we should forgo the walker and get her a grocery cart.

When I looked at my parents yesterday I felt so naive. "In sickness and in health," I had promised. Just as my parents, young, and in love, had promised each other. Over the years I had occasionally allowed myself to think maybe if something horrible happened to one of us, like cancer, the other one would still sit by their side and hold their hand while they were ill. Two or three years, I would think. Worse case scenario two or three years of serious illness or suffering and then, better. Or dead.

"You are so pretty," my Dad told my mother as he buttoned her jacket for her again yesterday. Eight years we are in to this journey. "You and me, Kid," he will say to her as he reaches out his rough skinned hand for her and waits for her to stagger over to him and place her tiny and gnarled hand into his. She will be sick. Until they are parted by death.

Things have been steady for a while. No big changes. But lately my mother is growing more quiet and reserved, still happy to attend whatever is going on around her, but not trying to be a part of the conversation anymore with her jumbled, fragmented language. I felt embarrassed for her when she would do that. I felt embarrassed for her when she didn't feel emabarrassed. Now of course I am missing the sound of her voice.

She said my name a few weeks ago. My dad put her on the phone, which is usually a struggle, and told her "It's Sara," and she said "Hi Sara!" like she would have. Like she did. Like she used to when she would say "Hi Sara! How's my baby?"

When she said my name, it knocked the wind out of me for a second. I couldn't think of what to say next until I remembered I was supposed to say "Hi Mom!" So I said that. She giggled a little. And that was the end of that. I couldn't decide if I should have written that down at the time. I'm glad I didn't.

I saw my mother at my Dad's birthday lunch last weekend. The only thing I heard her say then was "Corn." My sister offered her a muffin and when she gave it to her she said "Here Mom, it's corn." "Corn," my mother repeated a few times. Like she was rolling the word around in her mouth to experiment with how it felt. My son did the same thing when he was a baby. My mother eats the things we give her and she is delighted at the experience of the muffin, and actually that part is pretty cool. One of my friends told me when I was pregnant that the best thing about being a parent is you get to experience the world for the first time all over again through your child. I guess that is one of the best things about this situation too. Muffins, especially corn ones, are amazing.

After our meal we went to a coffee shop and my Dad disappeared from her view for a brief time. She was agitated. There was a mirror on the wall and my sister told me Mom could see Dad's reflection, but couldn't figure out how to get to him. "Like a kitten," I said, and we both laughed. Mom saw us laughing and laughed too, and then it didn't matter that the mirror confused her. That's nice too. She still laughs.

The doctor told my Dad in the beginning that he would eventually have trouble at night because her sleep schedule would become erratic and she would wander. Her sleep is becoming erratic, but no wandering so far. So far she's been keeping him up because she is quietly singing sweet songs to their ancient cat, or she is reaching over to gently rub my Dad's tummy while he is sleeping and I guess that wakes him. But of course this could be substantially worse. I guess this will, be substantially worse.

My mother and her in-home aide were at my parents house last week. The same house they have lived in for 50 years. My mother told her helper she was going to get up and use the restroom, but then she came back a little too quickly. "I was going to go," she said, "but I can't remember where it is."

"We get up, and we go, and we eat, and we go, and we eat, and we go, and we eat, and... then we go to work," my mother told me. Yeah, that sounds about right. My parents drive around a lot, due partly to my dad's inability to stay still and my mother's need to wander. The past couple of times I came to visit she got bored and put her coat on, and so I grabbed my car keys and drove her around for about 15 minutes. She likes that, but last time got increasingly more agitated that my dad was not in the back seat.

But that was about the extent of her agitation. She was in a pretty good mood. "Uppity," my dad would say. We have been trying to tell him for decades that that is not a nice thing to call someone, but he can't seem to grasp that and continues to use "uppity" however the hell he wants. Shit, he's almost 81 years old, if he wants to call people in good moods a word meaning racist arrogant snob, rock on, Old Man.

"See that?" my mother asked me, pointing out the glass sliding door to their backyard with her gnarled, arthritic finger, "1... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6..." She counts 6 of something out there constantly. I can't tell what because so much of what she says is gibberish now. Not that long ago she at least understood the cadence of conversation. You could say something like "I fell down some stairs and broke my arm," and she would smile and say "Isn't that wonderful?" But the meter of conversation now is all cockascrew and she interrupts and talks when you talk.

Cockascrew. That was an expression she liked to use. Shitmunkledunk - that's a color of displeasing, drab brown. Lord love a duck - that's something you say when you are mildly surprised, but not too freaked out. Holy catfish. I'll be go to hell. Fuck a duck. That one is different from Lord love a duck. Fuck a duck was used when say, she burned something she was cooking. I'll be go to hell was used when new interesting information was presented to her. For instance "Mom. Did you know scientist have decided Pluto no longer qualifies to be a planet?" "No!" "Yes." "Huh. I'll be go to hell."

My mother loved new information that challenged the norm. She said to me years ago, "Did you know there was a woman with Adam before Eve and her name was Lilith? Yeah, I guess Adam tried to tell her what to do too much and she was like FUCK THIS and she took off. I don't know where she went, but there is going to be big music festival named after her. You should go. All women artists." When The Lilith Fair came to our state, a pack of our friends and my boyfriend and I swung by my parents' house and we picked them up and we all went together. We had a wonderful time. My parents were always very comfortable with our friends, and when one of the more adventurous women pulled up her tank top to show everyone her new piercings, swollen and crusted with blood, my mother said nothing in judgement. She just asked for a drink off the bottle of vodka we were passing around. My boyfriend asked me to be his wife at the Lilith Fair. My mother liked that.

Holy catfish. That was a good day.

The weather relented enough for me to go visit my parents yesterday. I had a nice time. My mother was sweet and funny, cracking jokes in her language that only she got, and her laughter was infectious. I couldn't help to laugh along. My dad continues to buy her new clothes and he takes the time to have them tailored for her. She really looked sharp.

When I got to the house she was happy to see me and wanted to be engaged with me. We were going to go to lunch, and there was a slight delay getting out of the house because she had taken one of my dad's gloves and hidden it somewhere. "Go and get your purse and look in there for my other glove. Do you know where my glove is Sweetheart? Is it in your purse? Go and get your purse and see if my glove is in there." My dad did a few rounds repeating this. It's not unusual for him to talk to her like that and it is not unusual for me to alternate between wanting to scream at him "SHE CAN'T FUCKING UNDERSTAND YOU!!" and feeling terribly sad for him.

We went to a dingy diner they like where everything feels weird and dirty and yet familiar and nonthreatening. There is a bleak, cloudy, giant fish tank when you first walk in that houses four enormous gold fish and nothing else. The waitress appeared to be around 70. Her hair was beautiful and her lipstick was on the coral side and she walked like her feet had been hurting since breakfast. She clearly knew my parents and was sweet and patient with them. My dad ordered my mother a mountainous waffle stacked high with syrupy apple slices and whipped cream, and I held my breath as I waited to see if my mother would remember how to use her silverware, or just go in with her hands. She struggled at first with her fork, but got the hang of it, and when I went to cut her food for her my dad kindly took over, and the waitress brought them extra silverware without being asked as if they had all done this dance dozens of times before. No one thought twice when Mom used her sweater instead of a tissue to wipe her nose. It was safe there.

We ran some errands, including going to one of those huge hardware stores people without dementia easily get lost in. I held my mother's hand through most of this and it felt good. Her gnarled hands were warm and small in mine. We all marveled at the self serve machine that cuts keys. At one point my dad got a few steps away from her and when she turned to look for him, he briefly fell out of her sight. "Where is my husband?" she asked. "Right there," I said, "in the overcoat and hat. Doesn't he look handsome?" "YEAH HE DOES!!" she said lustfully. "He looks GOOD!!"

We went back to the house and when she saw I had brought my mandolin she asked me to please, please play them some songs and I did, and she was happy.

And then, we watched the old home movies my dad had asked my husband to convert to DVD. I am 10 years younger than my next sister, and it was very interesting to watch who we were before "we" included "me." Everyone was so young. I kept looking for signals of who everyone would turn out to be. But this was not a documentary meant to educate the youngest sibling yet to be born, it was the things that mattered to the person working the camera at that moment. Landmarks, zoo animals, camping trips. "Look!" my dad said to my mother "there's your dad! And your mom! Look Honey! At the TV!" But my mother couldn't get it. She looked out the window, puzzled. Their obnoxious black lab began to demand to be fed, barking her sharp, piercing bark into my dad's face, like two cymbals crashing together. He tried to ignore the dog. "Look! There's your cousin!" he said to my mother. The dog barked and barked and barked. Like a nail into my head. My mother struggled to understand. My dad, defeated, moaned and went to feed the dog. Coming back into the room he closed all the blinds, trying to drive my mother's focus towards the tv, and images of her past that now meant nothing to her.

I had to go. I had plans at home and so I packed up my mandolin, and put my coat on, and started towards the door. My mother stopped me and held my hand. She looked right into me. Her eyes were so blue. Funny, she used to say that about her own dad when he was old and tired. That his eyes were so blue. She rambled something and in the middle of it was "I DO love you. So much." "I know, Mom" I said. "And I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm so…" and she knocked on the side of her head and stuck her tongue out to the side, tears welling in her eyes. I took her face in both my hands and said the same thing she would have said to me "Listen to me. You have NOTHING to apologize for. Nothing. You are good. I love you very much." I pulled her into me and she rested her head on my breast. It was like holding my child. She smiled.

I got into my car and my mother stood there on the other side of their storm door, smiling and waving and blowing kisses at me. Like when I would drive away to go back to college. From inside my car I told her, goodbye Mom. I love you.

Thursday was the day the people came to my parents' house to evaluate the intensity of my mother's decline to see if she qualified for a Medicade waiver. This is complicated and I don't understand all of it and I am very grateful that my sister does and that is all I have to say about the bureaucracy of that.

It is strange to hope that she will be "bad enough" to qualify, and to know that she is bad enough. I was not there when it happened. My father and my sister were. When I asked my sister afterward how it went she said they would point at her and ask Mom "Who is this?" and Mom would babble incoherently. We both felt it was nice that in the middle of Mom's ramblings she squeaked out one of the syllables of my sister's name.

This winter continues to be unkind. I haven't seen my mother in a long time because the roads have been slippery or the wind chill has been as much as -35 below, or because it snows and snows and snows and snows. I called to check on my parents yesterday and my Dad asked if I would like to try to say a few words to Mom. I said yes. I just wanted to hear the sound of my mother's voice, even though I knew connecting with her would be limited. She got on the phone and rambled confusedly about my car breaking down and them having to come get me. And then, clear as a bell, she said "Well Sweetheart, I can hear in your voice that you are working, so I will let you go for now. I love you!"

I was so pleased for a second to have heard her say that, even though when she used to say it, it would cut me to the bone. This was her catchphrase a few years ago when she didn't want to talk on the phone to me anymore. We would be "chatting" and out of the blue she would say that and I would want to yell into the phone "Wait! I have questions about how to be a mother! Or how to be a wife! Or how to do a lot of things that I know you know that you can guide me with! Wait!" But she would have already hung up.

Yesterday when she said it, there was a warm rush of comforting familiarity so I just caught my breath and said "I love you too, Mom."

But she was already gone.