Dementia

New York radio station WBAI has Gershwin classics on all day. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong are singing the one that always made her laugh. I hope she’s still able to hear it; I turn up the volume:

You say potato, I say po-tah-to,
You say tomato, I say tom-ah-to, . . .

She sits mute, a breathing statue whose life has been slowly erased from within.

Our days are gray, bleak, silent. Her silence can last days, sometimes weeks. I hear only half-words, gentle grunts, mumbles, and sighs. I wonder if she is able to think.

Dad and I visited Ma every day in the nursing home. Sometimes she greeted me with a smile and a welcoming, “Well, look who’s here!” Other times she dismissed me with a menacing look and hurtful words: “You’re a piece of shit.” Dad would remind me that it was her dementia speaking, but that didn’t erase my heartache or dry my tears.

Despite lacking higher education, due to her immigrant parents’ belief that daughters did not deserve a college degree, Ma was a smart woman. She read constantly, both novels and newspapers, and she could mentally add up her grocery bill, always coming within a few pennies of the actual cost. Ma had a sharp mind, one that did not allow for false flattery or foolishness; instead, she would set a goal and achieve it, allowing nothing—and no one—to stand in her way.

Dear readers,

Our first inkling of trouble came when Maman, my Belgian mother, got lost en route to our house. After my father died, Maman had been living alone in a New Jersey apartment, and she would periodically drive across the George Washington Bridge to come visit us.

One day she didn’t arrive on schedule. After an hour had passed and we were growing frantic, the phone rang.

“I’m at a restaurant,” Maman said.

“Which one?”

“The one we always go to,” she said.