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.