Mom
It’s amazing, what remains.
Returned from a visit with Mom today.
I find her napping, customarily lying along her couch, arms crossed over her chest, blanket tucked tight, earrings in, her shoes still on. Her eyes are closed as I peek through the blinds but they pop open just as I open the door and announce myself.
Hi Mama! It’s me, your daughter Andrea! I’ve come to visit you!
She smiles tenderly. MY DAUGHTER! OH HOW BEAUTIFUL YOU ARE! LOOK AT YOU! IM SO STRUCK BY YOUR BEAUTY! OH THANK YOU FOR COMING! AREN’T YOU SWEET, I ALWAYS SAY THIS, YOUR FATHER JUST LOVED YOU SO MUCH WHEN YOU WERE BORN! HE’D SAY, IT’S ANDREA! HE WAS SO HAPPY YOU WERE A GIRL. OH, THANK YOU FOR COMING!.
I occurs to me as I type this, that it reads as a kind of absurdist fantasy I could employ to comfort myself given I’m recounting a visit with my Alzheimers-addled mother who, most of my life chose to other me, cast me as bossy, difficult, foreign to her, but no, it’s real. I’m now perfect, wonderful, amazing, incredible—an angel who has suddenly alighted by her side. Good thing I only alight a few times a month. I have to pace my awesome self.
Through her eyes, my grey hair is electric blue, the tone of my skin, green or red depending on the light streaming through the window and when she gazes upon me, and I do mean gazes, she responds as though she’s in the presence of a psychedelic celestial apparition.
Notes from my conversation today with Debbie, the nurse on duty: “Her dementia has dramatically increased”… “She needs full time support now”… “Bathing, toileting, clothing, preparing for meals and bedtime all need redirecting and reminding.” This is the first direct, no-bullshit report I’ve received in months.
Mom recently mistook her closet for her bathroom and attended to some constipation with the aid of her finger and a good schmear along a wall; she’s wandered into the bedrooms of other residents in the middle of the night, fully dressed and “ready for church”. She cannot answer a phone, and seems totally disinterested in reading her once-beloved New York Times. I stealthily swipe the magazine and T sections from the paper and put them in my purse. She won’t water a plant or attend to dying flowers, instead she’s perfectly content to let them rot where they’re placed.
There’s a growing collection of beanie babies and stuffed animals assembled at the foot of her bed I take as evidence of prizes won for joyfully participating in just the sort of activities that her old self would have been too sophisticated to join; balloon tennis, Hawaiian themed mocktail parties, tie dye events…
Her closet is where neatly folded Kleenex go to multiply; tucked in jewelry boxes, in the sleeves of shirts and sweaters, on every shelf a neatly folded “snot-rag” stack is stashed for safe keeping. When I walk into it to assess supplies needed, I’m greeted by the unmistakable scent of urine and industrial cleaner.
She is gentle, funny, grateful, compliant, existing only in the present tense. Debbie says that rarely, when Mom feels pushed too hard on something, she’ll push back. She may snap, but lets it go. “She’s quick to be her sweet self.” Debbie gets a kick out of their little volley back and forth: “It’s me, Debbie! I’m your nurse!” Mom: I AM A NURSE! “I know, Marion! You were a nurse!” Mom: I AM A NURSE!
Our conversations can now be contained to a single side of a record, on replay. Though she’ll feign following along as I babble away at her, I rush through details before she circles back to her only remaining line of inquiry:
WHAT’S YOUR DAUGHTER’S NAME? HOW OLD IS SHE? SHE’S WHAT?!? TWENTY TWO! (eyes wide, mouth open) IS SHE MARRIED? IS SHE IN LOVE? SHE’S IN SCHOOL? WHAT’S SHE STUDYING? WHAT’S CERAMICS? OH I DID THAT TOO! OH, BLESS HER HEART. HOW OLD IS SHE AGAIN? IS SHE IN LOVE? WHAT’S HER NAME? OH, WILKE BEAN, RIGHT?! WILKE JOSEPHINE? (pause) AWWWW — THAT’S MY MOTHER’S NAME! SHE’S YOUR ONLY DAUGHTER? AND HOW OLD ARE YOU? FIFTY SIX?! THAT CANNOT BE! YOU LOOK TWENTY THREE! AND I’M HOW OLD? EIGHTY TWO?! (looks up) THANK YOU, GOD.
NOW… DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER KIDS?
She’ll drift briefly into her own past then — I WAS ONE OF TEN CHILDREN! — and recite their names as a single unbroken word: BOBJOANBARBARAWALTERDANNYMARIONMATTYANDYJOEANDMIKE!, fingers counting them down, a little burst of delight saved always for MIKE.
My mother is still striking. Her skin is remarkably smooth, shiny. Her bright blue eyes have faded to a soft light aqua. Depending on the day, I might find her with slightly greasy hair, a light funk to her skin, or… with freshly short bangs and a bouncy up-curl, smelling of dandruff shampoo having just been to the beauty shop, a visit she neither asked for nor remembers despite wiggling and admiring her gel-manicured fingernails. If left to her own devices she would appear at breakfast wearing her long nightgown tucked into jeans, a too-small sweater pulled tight over top. Or she might just wear the pjs but with a vest and boots.
No matter the look, jewelry is still a part of it. In her ears today are dangly silver and stones, her wrists blue cloisonné bangles, on her fingers a set of simple silver and thin gold bands. Every visit, a different combination. I wonder if it will be the same for me someday: I might entirely lose my mind and memories but still remember to put my earrings in and match my bangles to my scarf.
APRIL 4, 2026
Nursing School
New mani
Lobster Cove, Monhegan Island, 1976
One of dozens of reminders Mom would send me throughout my career as an art director, long before I decided to pivot
