busy this afternoon with the usual combination of attendants and the elegant elderly New Yorkers who lived here. The Alzheimer’s patients were sequestered on the seventh floor where a key was required to summon the elevator. I had my own key and was allowed to come and go as I pleased. My mother, like the other patients, did not have a key and could leave only in the company of family or staff. People with Alzheimer’s tended to wander and this safeguard was for their own protection. Sometimes I took her out but more and more our visits were contained on the seventh floor, where she was comfortable and would not be confused by the unfamiliar.
Arriving during the time between afternoon snack and dinner, I first looked for her in the common room where she often sat with some of the other residents, chatting or staring through a particular window where a separation between two buildings revealed a slice of the Hudson River. Today she wasn’t there and so after greeting the others – three women and one man who had met me dozens of times and acted as though they’d never seen me before – I found my mother alone in her room down the hall.
She was lying on her bed, propped up by pillows, with her eyes closed. But she wasn’t sleeping. She opened her eyes as I came near and looked at me blankly, her only child, for what felt like too long. She seemed to wonder who this visitor was – until finally she smiled. Every time I visited now I wondered if this would be the time it happened: when my mother wouldn’t recognize me. I dreaded it with visceral revulsion. And it would happen; it was inevitable.
The disease had been stealing my mother’s mind bit by bit by bit for seven years now. At first it had been manageable at home with live-in attendants but eventually that arrangement became too tenuous. She had needed round-the-clock specialized care. I was living on the Vineyard at the time and wasn’t around to supervise the help or visit often and so I found her this home, which had been wonderful. I had long grown used to the sense, when I stepped off the locked elevator, that I was entering an alternate universe. Even Nat accepted the radical shifting of expectations one experienced in this place. A patient might walk up to you and say anything. Or you could tell someone your life story and a minute later they would ask your name as if they had never met you.
My mother reached up her arms and I leaned down into them, resting my cheek against her velvety skin. Her familiar smell was instantly comforting, a unique perfume of musky body odor and baby powder. Then she lay her head back down on her stack of pillows, soft puffs of white hair fanning out behind her.
“You’re a little bit late,” she said with that marvelous smile that always warmed her face to counter a criticism.
“Just a little.” I didn’t bother pointing out that the visit hadn’t been planned.
“Do you have much homework today?”
“Not much.”
“Good. When you’re through you can help me make dinner. Think about what you’d like to eat.”
“I will. How are you feeling today, Mom?”
“Fine. I have nothing to complain about, do I?”
“No, you don’t.”
“There was a picture there, on the wall. He took it down when they repainted. I asked him to put it back up but he still hasn’t done it. Will you ask him? The one with the courtyard and the staircase.”
“I’ll ask him.” But
he
was my father and the picture was something I had never seen. She had mentioned it a few times lately and I assumed it was something from her life before I came along, possibly from her own childhood. I had thought of hunting down some picture that fit the bill – courtyard and staircase, how hard could that be? – to see if I could trick her into thinking my father had finally rehung it. But what was the point? If not this absent picture, then some other phantom item would dematerialize to justify her sense that something was missing.
Arriving during the time between afternoon snack and dinner, I first looked for her in the common room where she often sat with some of the other residents, chatting or staring through a particular window where a separation between two buildings revealed a slice of the Hudson River. Today she wasn’t there and so after greeting the others – three women and one man who had met me dozens of times and acted as though they’d never seen me before – I found my mother alone in her room down the hall.
She was lying on her bed, propped up by pillows, with her eyes closed. But she wasn’t sleeping. She opened her eyes as I came near and looked at me blankly, her only child, for what felt like too long. She seemed to wonder who this visitor was – until finally she smiled. Every time I visited now I wondered if this would be the time it happened: when my mother wouldn’t recognize me. I dreaded it with visceral revulsion. And it would happen; it was inevitable.
The disease had been stealing my mother’s mind bit by bit by bit for seven years now. At first it had been manageable at home with live-in attendants but eventually that arrangement became too tenuous. She had needed round-the-clock specialized care. I was living on the Vineyard at the time and wasn’t around to supervise the help or visit often and so I found her this home, which had been wonderful. I had long grown used to the sense, when I stepped off the locked elevator, that I was entering an alternate universe. Even Nat accepted the radical shifting of expectations one experienced in this place. A patient might walk up to you and say anything. Or you could tell someone your life story and a minute later they would ask your name as if they had never met you.
My mother reached up her arms and I leaned down into them, resting my cheek against her velvety skin. Her familiar smell was instantly comforting, a unique perfume of musky body odor and baby powder. Then she lay her head back down on her stack of pillows, soft puffs of white hair fanning out behind her.
“You’re a little bit late,” she said with that marvelous smile that always warmed her face to counter a criticism.
“Just a little.” I didn’t bother pointing out that the visit hadn’t been planned.
“Do you have much homework today?”
“Not much.”
“Good. When you’re through you can help me make dinner. Think about what you’d like to eat.”
“I will. How are you feeling today, Mom?”
“Fine. I have nothing to complain about, do I?”
“No, you don’t.”
“There was a picture there, on the wall. He took it down when they repainted. I asked him to put it back up but he still hasn’t done it. Will you ask him? The one with the courtyard and the staircase.”
“I’ll ask him.” But
he
was my father and the picture was something I had never seen. She had mentioned it a few times lately and I assumed it was something from her life before I came along, possibly from her own childhood. I had thought of hunting down some picture that fit the bill – courtyard and staircase, how hard could that be? – to see if I could trick her into thinking my father had finally rehung it. But what was the point? If not this absent picture, then some other phantom item would dematerialize to justify her sense that something was missing.
Similar Books
