Mom dumped a stack of clothing on my bed the size of Mount Olympus. The shear mass paralyzed me. She said I could not watch Hercules until I folded all my clothes. Such an impossible feat stretched beyond my physical capacities as a five-year-old, but an idea struck me. Dangerous, but necessary. I gathered up all my belongings, entered the bathroom and tossed everything back down the laundry chute. Brilliant. Watching The Mighty Hercules made the eventual reckoning with Mom’s fury worth the reeducation I received about chores, responsibility and refolding clothes forever and ever.

Half a century later, I reversed roles with my mom and became her primary caregiver. This spring her memory care residency sent home a newsletter note encouraging guardians to clean out winter clothing from overstuffed closets. Mom wears and shares the clothing of her community by virtue of dementia. On my last visit, I don’t know whose green slacks and blouse she had on, but they looked lovely. I have learned not to ask too many questions. Mom’s apparel disappears and reappears, except for the beautiful winter coat my sister bought for her that vanished last Christmas. At present, Mom wears an unknown wedding ring that we cannot pry off her finger, and with no one searching for this symbol of marital vows, we have chosen not to provoke her wrath until someone complains.

On a recent visit, motivated by the residency spring-cleaning note, I felt inspired and dumped all Mom’s closet contents onto her bed. We would give away or pitch whatever she didn’t need. My sister could shop for any missing necessities. My knowledge of women’s apparel remains minimalistic. In the early years of marriage, I failed Shopping With Your Wife 101. I would get unfathomably bored and lower myself to reading the directions on the back of hosiery boxes. Fortunately, tired of my sighing and Braveheart cries for freedom, Deb released me from such torture, and our marriage survived. With my mom, I underestimated the amount of stuff that could be packed into a medium size closet. Her bed looked like Mount Olympus. We filled her couch, chair, and top of her chest-of-drawers with piles clothing and bric-a-brac.

The sequin high heels that Mom wore at my brother’s wedding 20 years ago, comparable to Dorothy’s ruby slippers, reappeared. The Mickey Mouse sweatshirt from yonder decade returned to circulation. Single socks and shoes, none Mom’s, came out from the darkness into the light.

A curious crowd of Mom’s peers gathered and a party scene ensued. Mom welcomed all entering wanderers with gestures and jabber. She could no longer speak in full sentences, her words ended in unintelligent syllables, but her tone remained inviting, and she was (and still is) never at a loss for conversation.

One lady replied to her, “Oh honey, I only speak English.”

Another lady with precision steering wheeled herself with swift determination into the front of the action and demanded Mom’s bright red sequin top laying on the bed. “That’s mine!” Her pitch and delivery came flying as deadly as a 90 mph fastball aimed at my head. I relieved her clenched fists and pursed lips by saying, “Yes, it is. Here you are,” handing her the twinkling sequins. She relaxed to an appreciative, “Thank you,” and soon forgot the prize, which I reentered into the inventory.

In the movie, Collateral Beauty, Edward Norton played the co-owner of an ad agency that may not stay solvent. He moved in with his mother who swings in and out of reality. She informed him that the werewolves were meeting outside at all hours of the night, and he answered by saying he had a raccoon friend on the Task Force with a wire bug hidden by the trashcans. They would tape everything the werewolves said and planned to bust them on a RICO statute. His mom said she didn’t know anything about that. She patted him on the knee and smiled. The movie received justifiably bad reviews, but this was a sweet, endearing scene that I could relate to. I don’t know if the technique of entering into another’s reality is backed by evidenced-based research, but from a decade of personal experience, I agree with the wisdom.

A lady coddling a Raggedy Ann doll joined the closet cleaning party and gently placed Ann at the head of the bed.  With her hands free, she began to  rummage through the piles, and I commented on her beautiful baby and expressed my care to work around her sleeping child. The lady beamed.

A pair of matrons walked in together, and one thought I was her son, “Brad? Are you my Brad?” and her friend asked, “Are you her son?”

“Yes.”

“How nice to have your son come and visit you.”

Mom enjoyed the company, and the faint echoes of hosting parties in my father’s early career reemerged as she danced around the guests with welcome greetings of gibberish.

Ladies started folding clothes and examining various tchotchkes. Only one elderly gentleman entered the closet cleaning festivities. He saluted us with an uplifted hand of greeting and protection, “Everyone okay in here?”

Mom returned his greeting with a friendly tone and pleasant pat on the arm, but upon his closer examination of the mess and the folding party exercises, he left for more suitable adventures.

A tidal wave of haberdashery crested on top of the couch, and the swelling tsunami broke upon a lady who sat down. She disappeared beneath the flood of clothes, a moment so comical that I refrained from immediately pulling her up, maybe out of curiosity to see what would happen.

In The Mighty Hercules era of childhood, I sat in the boat and watched Mom swim a mile across the second basin at Lake James from Lone Tree Point to Bledsoe’s Beach. She kept in great shape throughout her life. Cora and I inherited her waterbug abilities, and we had a run of a dozen years in which we took Grandma Mills to Pine Lake in Berne, Indiana. My wife referred to it as the mud-brown, glorified swimming pit, but for The Kid, Grandma Mills, and me, Pine Lake was the perfect summer swimming hole. We continued to take my mom to Pine Lake when she moved into her first secure memory care unit. Our last visit came when she slid down the black tunnel. We knew Grandma Mills was fading, and we had to be careful, so I would go down first, and Cora would follow, after directing and sending her grandma down the slide. On this last attempt, Mom disappeared under the water at the tunnel exit and never came back up. I dove in, lifted her out, and apologized to the lifeguard stationed there. We did not take any more chances, and Pine Lake became another ending of good memories.

Like my mom at Pine Lake, the lady submerged in the couch, became disoriented and began to kick and flail. She sputtered a number of unmentionables as I brushed away the clothes, and soon she settled comfortably amongst the outfits. The swearing that surfaces from these elderly saints can be surprising, discouraging, or entertaining depending upon a caregiver’s experience, point of view, and humor. I have said to my daughter that if I get struck with the disease and start shoveling out creative profanities she has never heard before…fill my pockets with breadcrumbs and shoo me into some Enchanted Forest at the edge of town. I will see her at the restoration of the all things when I am young and sane again.

As the folding festival wound down, Mom and I filled three bags to drop off at the Goodwill. The party-goers began to wander off, and I thanked them for visiting and smiled as some left with parting gifts, snatched trinkets, and five-finger discounts, all which may reappear in time back in Mom’s room.

My brother, who lives four states away, has often expressed his appreciation that I take care of Mom, but I’m the one who should be thankful. These moments are the good stuff of life, albeit, intermixed with cuss-worthy frustrations and I’ve-got-to-get-away-and-reflect-alone sorrows. This Mother’s Day, I find myself grateful. Many my age have lost their parents, but mine remain. My sister and I will visit Mom today and go for a walk, taking turns holding her hand. We will probably work a 300-piece puzzle, which Rochelle and I can put together in an hour even with Mom pulling the pieces apart. We will smile at each other when we say, “Love you, Mom,” and she responds with “Thank you” or “Love you, too,” and then rambles into unknowable conversation.

Our mom is one of the unfortunate 5% to acquire the disease in her late 60s. Statistics indicate that people who reach their mid-80s have a 50% chance of getting Alzheimer’s or dementia. Such a sobering reality causes me concern, especially when I can’t remember why I just walked into the garage or what I was just about to say.

With this in mind, I want to remember all the good in life with Mom. We are not done yet, although the woman who swam across Lake James, slalom skied at night, and cannonballed off the 30-foot platform at Pine Lake, has left us. In a life to come, she and I will pull up lake chairs by Heaven’s crystal sea and discuss these caregiver days. I hope she will be proud of me. If my mind passes before I get there, and my physical shell continues here, I hope my residual effect for Cora will be like the gentleman who gave the brief cameo at our closet cleaning party.

“Everyone okay in here?”

On Golden Pond

The choir assembles
as we take our seats
under the canopy of
a eucalyptus tree—

waltzing mallards,
twirling swallows,
bowing reeds—
singing summer songs.

We sway with the
orchestra in the breeze
and watch the sunrays
dance upon the water.

Tomorrow
she recalls
nothing
Today.

We live in
the moment,
Mom and me.

Mom. Taken at Lake James in the summer of 1977.