There is nothing left now but bits
and bones of the mother I’d known.
Her hair once shiny and nicely styled,
smelling lemony with each morning hug,
now dirty, mousy gray, scraggly.
Hanging down to her knees like
an old curtain. It drapes one eye.
She reminds me of Veronica Lake,
I tell her. She stares at me blankly, this
woman who once watched movies with me,
shared memories of stars “back in the
day” when movies were better, she’d say.
“You tried to braid my hair,” she accuses me,
this stranger’s eyes glaring “I didn’t, Mom.”
My voice quivers and I am trapped in thoughts
of a 10-year-old child caught in a lie she
never told. My heart soars back decades, when
she braided my hair so tightly, so perfectly painful.
I would close my eyes, try to soak back tears, hoping
the ordeal would soon end, but dared not complain.
Even then, I knew looking nice was as vital to her as
breathing. She expected the same of me. Still, it was
torture. Seams didn’t match. Pants were too baggy. Or
too tight. And what’s that fleck no one saw but her?
I miss those days now. Her distorted mirror shattered,
her critical eye blinded by Alzheimer’s. I long for
the days of painful braiding, lemony hugs and gushing
over old movie stars, favorite films. I’ll still see her on
holidays she no longer knows and bring her flowers
she demands I take when I leave. Then I’ll go home
and wait to hear when the vultures of Alzheimer’s
have spit out her last bits of bones, now turned to dust.