The last conversation I had with my mom was on Memorial Day. She was mostly bedbound, unable to walk or stand, and she rarely opened her eyes anymore. She had two badly infected toes that required a dose of morphine before they could be tended to by a nurse. She hadn’t eaten a full meal in many days, and off and on, owing to the Alzheimer’s, she had trouble finding her words.

I stopped at a Whole Foods not far from her memory care unit and perused the aisles for something that might entice her to eat, even just a little. In the past, my brother and I brought her everything from Chinese food to bagels and lox to cheese pizza, all of which she loved. But what she needed now was something tempting that did not require chewing. I settled on coffee ice cream. It wasn’t anything she would have eaten before the dementia, because she was always watching her weight, but later, when she no longer remembered all the food rules she had set for herself, she ate ice cream with something nearing abandon.

“Mom,” I said, walking into her room that Memorial Day morning. “It’s your favorite daughter, Dana, and I have a treat for you!”

Beneath the blankets, the outline of her tiny body was barely visible. She didn’t stir and didn’t open her eyes. But from somewhere in the vicinity of her pillow, the smallest voice said, “Is it a boyfriend?”

Did I ask what she could possibly want with a boyfriend at this point? Or where I might find said boyfriend who, I assumed, she would want to be in good health, and, given that she’d never shown any interest in younger men, would need to be ninety-six or older? I did not. It didn’t seem to be any of my business.

“No,” I said, “It’s ice cream. What’s your favorite flavor?”
“Whatever flavor I’m currently eating,” she said, opening her mouth like a baby bird so I could spoon it in.

Four days later, she was lying in her bed, talking softly to herself and chuckling. I leaned in close.

“Are you laughing?” I asked her.
“Uh huh,” she said softly.
“What’s so funny?” I said, but she didn’t answer.

Maybe somewhere amid the darkness of sleep and the dusk of dementia, the long-awaited boyfriend had come to her, and he wasn’t anything like what she had pictured. Or maybe he was exactly what she’d envisioned, and they were sharing a wicked, private joke in the happily secluded house of her mind. I hoped this was the case.

My brother, sister and I had known for a while that our mom didn’t have long, that because she was barely eating or drinking and not getting out of bed, her body would soon give out. We told ourselves it was the natural order of things. She had lived a full life. She’d been diagnosed with colon cancer in her early sixties, just after my father died, and recovered fully. She’d enjoyed a second, twenty-five year-long romance. Her recent lung cancer diagnosis had yielded no symptoms. But her age and the Alzheimer’s and the toes that should have been amputated decades earlier had taken a toll. The last thing my siblings and I wanted was for her to linger in discomfort.

She died the Saturday after Memorial Day, surrounded by family.

Believing you are prepared to lose your mother and actually being prepared are about as alike as reading about a tornado and being in one.

For a week after my mother’s death, I felt like I’d opened the door to her mind and stepped inside. People would ask me how I was doing, and my words, once easily accessed, felt far away, like they hung somewhere in the sky, and I had to first locate them and then pull them down where I could express them. It took enormous effort.

I woke tired, went to the gym tired, worked tired, and then napped. I remembered reading about Charlie Sheen, who said that as he got older, not only did he need to pee all the time, he needed to pee again while he was still peeing. This was how I felt about sleep: even my naps needed a nap. At times I wondered if I was going to feel this way for the rest of my life, or if this was just how grief came to call: dressed up like bewilderment and feeling like a sickness, until it moved on like a bad storm.

My siblings and I never told my mother she had dementia. To do so seemed like it would have been cruel. Because post-diagnosis, she was happier, less anxious, and more relaxed than she’d ever been in her life, and we didn’t want to do anything to spoil that. But she had an inkling that something was happening. About two years ago, she said she wasn’t sure who she was anymore, but that she’d like to meet herself. She said it with curiosity, not worry or distress.

“I think you’d really like yourself,” I said.

For the last week or so, I have also felt as if I wasn’t sure of my identity anymore. Who I am without a mom seems vastly different from who I was with one, but exactly how I have changed I am not yet sure. I’ve only just awakened into this new reality and met myself. What I do know is that my mother and I will wander the rooms of my mind together for all the years to come, that I will meet her over and over at every threshold, and in doing so will come to know us both anew.

Maybe my mother was laughing that day because her last meal was ice cream and her new boyfriend was a mystery to all but her. But maybe she was laughing because our newest journey was just beginning, and she knew it was going to be a doozy.

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  Dana Shavin is an award-winning humor columnist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the author of a memoir, The Body Tourist, and of Finding the World: Thoughts on Life, Love, Home and Dogs, a collection of her most popular columns spanning twenty years. She is the Literary Arts Program Coordinator for the Dalton Creative Arts Guild. Publication history and more at Danashavin.com. Email her at [email protected].