Ash and Diana surreptitiously filled a suitcase with Mom’s clothes, shoes, and toiletries. They packed framed pictures of family and friends, and Mom’s parachute book. They went to Kohl’s and bought my mother some stylish new pants and a ten-dollar necklace they thought she’d like. They got her a bath mat and a colorful shower curtain. They bought her some dark chocolate.
While Dad took care of Mom at the house, they drove together to her new home and laid everything out in Mom’s soon-to-be new bedroom with a large window, easy chair, and private bathroom. My sister and aunt decorated the walls with family photos and made up my mother’s single bed with a rose-covered comforter—the one she and I had picked out together for my grown-up bed when I was a teenager. I remember how much we’d loved the floral print with red and purple blooms and tiny dark green leaves, one of the few things we’d agreed on when I was at that know-it-all age. After we chose it, my mother surprised me with a pretty pink teddy bear to finish off the look. That stuffed animal rode on top of the rest of Mom’s things. Ash laid it on the comforter.
They hung pants and shirts in the closet, and the shower curtain in the bathroom. They stocked the drawers of the dresser with underwear and socks, and put the chocolate on her pillow. Just like a luxury hotel.
The next day, while my father drove Diana to the airport, Ashley threw an impromptu dance party for Mom and Sheelah in the foyer of my parents’ house. They blew out Dad’s speakers playing Mumford and Sons. They tossed lightweight scarves up into the air and watched them float down like magic. Mom laughed with delight. Her joy punched my sister in the gut. Were they making a huge mistake? In many ways Mom was like an innocent child, and what they were about to do—move her against her will—could destroy her.
When Dad got home from the airport, he went to the kitchen and got a simple anesthetic: a chocolate chip cookie.
“Scout, let’s talk,” he said, leading my mom to the couch in the TV room and handing her the treat.
And they had chocolate chip cookies and hot chocolate, and that was the end.
As she ate, he said, “You’re getting stronger, and you’ve been getting better lately.” A fiblet.
Ashley sat in the downstairs guest room, where she could best hear the conversation without being seen. She left the door ajar and texted me. In California, I sat on the floor of my bedroom, clutching my cell phone and shaking. I could hear my boys playing outside the door, unaware of what was happening to Nana in New York.
He’s telling her, Ash wrote. Oh, God.
“I love you,” Dad said. “And I want to get better care for you. I’ve found a place. It’s like a luxury hotel—”
“No no no,” my mother said, dropping the cookie and standing up.
“Please sit down,” Dad said.
My mother said, “I love you” and “Don’t.” And then she left the room.
I didn’t hear from my sister for a while after that. She went after Mom. It took a long time to settle her down, but eventually she slumped onto the floor at the bottom of their staircase. My sister huddled with her there.
“Give it a try,” Ashley whispered.
“What happened?” my mom asked, weeping.
“Seven years ago you were diagnosed with a sickness called primary progressive aphasia….” She went on explaining the story to my mother again, as if for the first time.
—
Later that day, Ashley called me, crying. At first, it was hard for me to understand what she was saying through sobs. Then she said it clearly.
“She bit him,” she said. “Dad was trying to give Mom her Seroquel and she bit him! Oh God oh God.” She was pacing on the sidewalk outside their house. “I don’t know what to do.”
She began retching.
Lord, save us from this pain. I wept as I listened to her heaving two, three times. My little sister. My charge. The one I’d always told my secrets to and wanted fiercely to protect. Now there was nothing I could do but bear witness.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“I just threw up on the sidewalk,” Ash said when she was done, as if I needed an explanation, and we both laughed for a moment about the absurdity of it all.
—
Dad spent most of the night in the upstairs guest room. Ashley set up a blanket and pillow on the floor of my parents’ bedroom so she could help my mother when she needed it. When Dad realized that it might be the last time he’d ever sleep in the same bed with his wife, he got up, crossed through a hall to their room, and crawled in next to her. In the predawn hours, he held her, comforting her, and then added a blanket against the early morning chill.
Dad was familiar with the route to my mother’s new home. But on the morning when he took her there for the first and last time, he drove cautiously, afraid that he might get lost. Next to him in the passenger seat, Sheelah chatted with Ashley, who sat behind her, barely aware of what she was saying. My sister kept her eyes on Mom, ensuring that she wouldn’t unfasten her seat belt and once again try to get out of a moving car.
My mother began crying softly. Sheelah unwound a light white scarf from her neck and handed it to Ash to wipe Mom’s tears.
“Scared,” Mom said.
“That makes sense,” Ashley said. “I’m scared, too.”
They parked in the underground garage and met Sarah at the elevator. She welcomed my parents without a trace of institutional condescension. Mom was quiet, somber, weepy.
The fifth floor looked dreary. A few people slept sitting up in the living room. Sarah pointed to a petite short-haired woman in a wheelchair who was muttering to herself.
“Doctor, Ph.D.,” she said. “She was teaching until recently.”
“Oh,” my mother said, shaking her head. She tried to negotiate her escape. The place was nice, she said, speaking in sentence fragments to convey the compliment. In a few polite but garbled words, she communicated that it was not quite right for her but she appreciated their efforts. She actually said, “Thank you.”
My sister’s doubt crept back. Maybe this is a mistake. Mom is more lucid than she’s been for months. She doesn’t belong here. The rooms seemed sterile compared with what Ashley had seen just a day before.
A man known on the floor as “The Diplomat” was wideawake. Ashley liked him.
“There are two men standing behind you,” he’d told her when she had met him for the first time a few days earlier. She’d turned around to look.
“I can’t see them,” she said.
“I can,” he said. “That’s because I have dementia.” He was smart, and seemed to have a thirst for drama and adventure. Just like my mother.
With Mom by her side now, Ashley seized the opportunity.
“Hi,” she said to the man. “This is Linda.”
“Pull up a chair,” he said, barely glancing at her. He was in his “office,” which consisted of a desk near the entrance with an old but functioning typewriter. The New York Times was spread out in front of him. My mother sat down next to him.
My sister tried to engage him.
“What have you been up to?” she asked.
It didn’t work. The Diplomat was busy and quiet. My sister tried again, but he wasn’t in the mood, and neither was Mom. So they got up and headed down a hall to our mother’s room, accompanied by a woman named Lisa, who was in charge of the floor.
Mom barely glanced at the decorations and homey touches my sister and aunt had chosen with care for her private space. She turned and walked out the door in search of Dad and Sheelah. Lisa started to follow. Ashley stopped her.
“What do we do?” she whispered. The question about how to break away on moving day had haunted her and Dad for weeks.
“You have to leave,” Lisa said. “And it’s gonna suck.” Time to rip off the Band-Aid. By then, my sister had her emotions in check. Lisa made it clear that delaying the departure was increasing the pain. Driven by adrenaline, Ash left the bedroom, passed by our mother without saying a wo
rd, and strode the length of the hallway to an alcove at the exit. Lisa had given her the keypad code, 0911. The next step was the hardest.
“Hey, Dad,” Ash called to my father. He didn’t hear her. “Dad, can you come here?” She did the same with Sheelah. Sarah and Lisa distracted Mom, who hadn’t noticed that everyone who’d brought her there had gone away. No one said goodbye.
Ashley’s heart was pounding. She tapped 0911 quickly. As the door opened and they slipped out, they thought they heard my mother on the other side, running toward them. But they didn’t look to find out. The door shut and its lock clicked. The elevator opened almost immediately. It was over.
Ashley broke down in tears as they descended. Sheelah tried to comfort her. Dad was silent.
My family had always made a big deal out of hello and goodbye, especially when we weren’t going to see each other for a while. As he left the building, my father began the latest of many arguments with himself. There must have been better and kinder ways to have left, he thought. But what good would any last hug or “I wish you well” or “I’m sorry” have done?
When he got back home, drained, guilty, relieved, he went upstairs to their king-sized bed. He picked up his pillow from the right side and moved it to the center.
—
After they left, Mom had in fact run after her friend, daughter, and husband, and just missed catching them at the exit.
“I think they went that way,” Lisa told her, pointing my mother away from the door. Mom became hysterical. Various people tried to soothe her but failed. Her arrival was one of the most challenging ever at the facility, then and since.
Finally Sarah stood in front of her and said, “Linda, I know you can do this.”
My mom stopped crying briefly and looked at her.
“Would you?” my mother asked. Would you adjust to this abandonment? Would you force yourself to calm down in this godawful situation?
Sarah thought for a moment.
“I am a wife, a mother, and a daughter, like you,” she said. “And yes. Yes, I would.”
My mother sighed deeply. Her panic subsided temporarily. She had a friend, someone who was listening, who took her seriously, who understood.
It was not the end of the trauma. Over the next few days Mom rattled doors and tied scarves around doorknobs, perhaps in the hope that they held the power to turn into keys and set her free. She lashed out at nurses and other residents. She wailed and was heavily medicated.
But, remarkably, within a few more days, she also began to laugh, and dance, and sing, and make connections. Mom had always loved people, and her floor was bustling with them. Besides the residents, there were warm caregivers—certified nurse assistants with advanced training compared with most of the home health aides we’d hired. She was no longer trapped alone in her house with my father, who was exhausted and numb.
—
My dad broke his pledge to himself about staying away for extended R&R and returned for a visit on the weekend after moving day. He was worried Mom would be mad at him, but instead was startled by how happy she was to see him. She was more herself than she’d been for months, holding hands with him and hugging, humming with pleasure when he scratched her back, laughing at his stories about friends and family.
But after his visit and one other from Anna, my mother relapsed into depression and panic, swinging between breathless, manic highs and angry, agitated lows. Once again the party was over and she hadn’t gone home. So Lisa called for a two-week moratorium on visits.
Sarah kept us up to date. We clung to her stories and brief iPhone videos.
In one short clip she sent, Mom was sitting on the edge of a chair in the living room, clapping her hands and bouncing her feet while she listened to a sweet activities director named Edward sing and play the guitar. She looked cute with jean shorts and sparkling long earrings that swung as she moved. One of the residents, an older man, eyed her with interest from his wheelchair. She was blissful, and absentmindedly flicking the side of her nose with her fingers the way she always had. She looked up at Sarah, reaching out her hand, as if to say, Put the phone down! Come listen! It’s great!
They didn’t take videos of the harder times, though there were many more of those.
I came in early May, three weeks after the move. Lisa had reluctantly agreed we could give another visit a try, if Mom was having a good day. My mother could be combative, she told us, though her doctor was trying some new medications to stabilize her moods without making her too sleepy. We would have to see when I got there. I felt nauseated and light-headed as my father drove me to the home. I didn’t want to make things harder for my mom, but I was dying to see her in person, to make sure she was okay, to tell her I loved her. I knew that at the last minute Lisa and Sarah might recommend that I just tour the facility and forgo a visit. If that were the case, I hoped maybe they would at least let me see her from afar.
But when we arrived, they said I could do it. Mom had been cheerful and seemed stable, and it was worth trying. We decided that Dad would remain in the lobby so my mother wouldn’t see him, and I would proceed cautiously. If all went well initially and she still seemed happy, Mom and I would come down and have lunch together in the main dining room. Dad would hide behind his newspaper so she wouldn’t see him as we passed.
I prayed I wouldn’t make things worse for her. My mind raced with questions. Would she be mad at me? Would she recognize me? Would it be hard to leave?
The staff would be crucial in getting me out the door when I was ready to go. Distraction was paramount. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves as Sarah punched the code into the keypad to let us in. The door unlocked with a click, and we entered Mom’s world.
The floor reminded me of the facility that Jay and I had liked in Tennessee. It was clean, bright, and calm—homier than I had imagined from Ashley’s description. Straight ahead in the dining area, people sat at tables finishing up lunch. Around the corner in the living room, there was a yoga class in progress. I scanned the space quickly but couldn’t see Mom at first.
And then suddenly there she was, walking a little unsteadily in my direction. Her hair looked clean, parted on the side in a style I’d never seen before on her, as though someone who didn’t know what she used to look like had taken great care in combing it. She was wearing a grayish-blue sweater and some pretty blue-and-white earrings to match. She didn’t notice me.
“Hi, Mom,” I said gently. She looked over, surprised.
“Kim!” she said, using my name for the first time in about a year. And then she started screaming.
“Ohhhh!” she cried, reaching for me. She grasped Sarah by my side. This is my daughter, she seemed to be saying. She was laughing, crying.
“I know! Kim’s here!” Sarah said, sharing the enthusiasm.
“Ohhhh!” Mom yelled again, at full volume. She was making quite a scene, but my self-consciousness passed almost instantly. I realized anything goes in a place like this. It’s full of people who are confused, manic, loud. It sank in: This is the perfect place for my mother.
She collapsed into me, sobbing.
“Hi,” I said again, countering her exuberance with a deliberate calm. Time to redirect. I pulled away. “Hey, will you show me around?”
It worked. She clung to me, accidentally digging her pink nails into my forearm. A few days earlier, Sarah had sent us a picture of her daughter, who’d volunteered to give Mom a manicure. Some of the polish was messed up, most likely because Mom was unable to understand “hold still.”
We walked toward the living room. Edward, the activities director from the video, greeted us.
“Hello, Linda!” he said. Mom had bonded with him, perhaps attracted to his British accent, much like her father’s. And she loved hearing him play his guitar.
The yoga session was ending. He was about to begin. We found a spot on the couch. Edward strummed and started singing “What a Wonderful World.” Mom was familiar with Louis Armstrong’s raspy o
riginal rendition.
She listened thoughtfully to him, as though she were attending an opera, and then she began crying again silently. I pulled out my phone to take a video of her, and she looked over at me. She reached her hand toward the side of my face.
“You like this song?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said, tearing up. Then she noticed what I was doing.
“It’s my phone,” I explained, recording.
“So what?” she quipped. Though it didn’t make sense, her tone told me she meant for it to be funny. I giggled.
Next up, Edward broke into “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean,” the old song my parents used to sing to us when we were kids. Mom loved this one, too.
“Bring back,” he sang, “bring back, bring back my Bonnie to me, to me…” I joined in. Behind us, a beautiful woman known on the floor as “Gertie the Birdy” for her pretty voice and elegance, sat up straight, remembering all the words and almost perfectly keeping up with the tempo. Edward strummed the final chord, and Mom took a deep breath and sighed happily.
“How about this one? I know you love this one, Linda,” he said.
“Oh,” she joked with him. “Pooh!” Meaning, I think, What song don’t I like? Or perhaps Are you flirting with me?
He launched into “I Can See Clearly Now,” the popular Johnny Nash song. “All of the bad feelings have disappeared…”
“Come on, Mom, let’s dance,” I said. I pulled her up with both hands.
“Wooo!” she cheered, shaking her hips. Then she was suddenly affectionate, pulling me into a hug and cradling her head into my neck.
“Shut up!” a disgruntled man behind us yelled. Mom shrugged at me as if to say, He does that. I shrugged back, smiling.
I took her to lunch downstairs in the dining room, walking right past Dad, who was buried behind his New York Times. We had some salad and soup, but neither of us ate much. I gathered up my courage to ask a burning question, afraid of what the answer might be or what it could trigger.
“So, Mom,” I said as casually as I could, “you like it here?”
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