The Last Day of the Season

The toddler presses her hand against the screen door glass and waves with the other. She has no concept that I’m merely a visitor in my hometown, a town in a country that’s marching more distant from my memory of this place each year I visit. She doesn’t understand this anticipatory grief gnawing inside me — sometimes in nibbles, sometimes in great mouthfuls — or the reason I’m going on this walk in the first place.

All she knows is to smile and wave at everyone.

I put on a smile and wave back enthusiastically, contrary to these emotions churning within.

The leaves rattle in the breeze on this beautiful last day of summer. Or is it the first day of fall? Either way, the skies are clear and cerulean blue, the breezes are mild, and the temperature is bordering on being too close. The trees are starting to change color, to drop their leaves, and my mind links this to where Mom was in her journey at this time last year. The leaves were changing then as we struggled with the diagnosis we already suspected: probable Alzheimer’s.

Her seasons aren’t quite in sync with the world’s any more. Neither is her body nor her thoughts most days. She’s ahead of us, it seems, entering late autumn where the trees have shed most of their leaves and the vibrant colors they once displayed are browning. She doesn’t turn around, can’t turn around, so the rest of us who love her are moving behind her, witnesses longing to catch up, as she rushes towards the winter of her life.

I love her. She gave me life, gave me hope, gave me shelter and three solid meals a day to keep me sated. I learned how to cook goulash, how to iron a dress shirt, and how to fold hospital corners into a bed from her. But most of all, she has taught me to care, to think critically, and to have grace, and to love unconditionally. She’s said I should pick my battles wisely, to know the difference between what I can change and what I can’t change. Most importantly, I’ve witnessed the energy you put out into the world can have a profound and positive impact on others, and I try to offer that as often as I can: even if I’m burned out.

I hope she’s proud of me. I think she is. She doesn’t recognize me some of the time. I’ve seen this disease make these plays before, so I’ve been preparing for this eventuality. I just didn’t think it would be this soon. They told us 10 years from diagnosis last year, but within 9 months, we’re in the middle stages. So strange to hear your own mother talk about you in the third person while you’re standing right in front of her. Or sometimes not even comprehend what she is trying to convey when she tosses out a sentence out-of-sync with what the rest of us are discussing. What’s the next sentence I should say? Or just nod my head and pretend to agree?

On many occasions, she says she wants to go home. I ask her where home is. She can’t tell me. Relatives who died years ago — parents, aunts, uncles — come up in conversation as if we could only pick up the phone, dial a few numbers, and they’d answer. If only it were that simple; I have so many questions I need, no I want, to ask.

But then she decides she needs to clean up the table, or some other mundane chore, and I try to switch gears with her. With this damned depersonalization, it’s not as easy as it used to be.

I play the game. Like I would with that little girl leaning against the screen door, waving, I put on my best smile, a charming laugh, and play along.

She’s entering the winter of her life, and she’s leaving us all behind. But I’ll try my best to give her as much love and care as I can to last her on her journey home, wherever that may be. It’s what she imbued in me, and it’s a way I can honor who she was and is.