In early March, Mom’s residency called to say that for safety purposes, they needed to establish limited visiting hours. I completely understood and swung by to see Mom on her birthday, March 9th. A few days later I received the call that because of the pandemic, family would not be allowed to enter the facility until further notice.

Today is Mother’s Day, and with the quarantine still in effect, I have not seen Mom in two months since her birthday. Family members of other residents will experience the same mandatory separation. Social media offers no connection or comfort with loved ones who have Alzheimer’s or Dementia. No one knows how long such safety measures will last, but this new normal is not normal. Maybe the silver lining will be a new appreciation for those we care about. The severed access to loved ones accentuates the value of time with one another, however small the moment may seem.

For Mom’s birthday, I purchased a six-dollar pint of Haagen Daz Triple Chocolate ice cream, and she ate every spoonful. She has had a lifetime love affair with chocolate ice cream and Pepsi.  She often mused with theatrics and dramatic flare, “The day I can’t eat ice cream is the day I’m dead,” and in the battle with Frontal Lobe Dementia, her medication came camouflaged in chocolate ice cream or in Pepsi as a miracle cover up that worked every time.

The last time I brought over chocolate ice cream (before this birthday visit), she wouldn’t eat any, which had never happened before.  I couldn’t get her to recognize her favorite indulgence, and she kept brushing the spoon away. I used all my sonly charms and magic but couldn’t get her to take a bite.  I loaded the spoon and tried to bring it to her month, but she swatted my hand away. I attempted to press her fingers in the ice cream, and then maybe she would lick her lips and viola, discover chocolate.  Mistake. This only annoyed her, and when she gets irritated, look out my friends, she doubles in size and triples in volume and makes the bravest guardian of the galaxy slip away in fear. I halted the chocolate assault but not until Mom, the table, and I were mottled in spoon-size melting ice cream dollops.  Discouraged, I did not try such ice cream shenanigans again, until my birthday visit two months ago.

She ate every bite.

Bringing comfort to our parents brings comfort to us. It’s a reassuring feeling to do something for the ones who have done so much for us. For those of us who travel this path of Alzheimer’s or dementia, we walk beside the ones who raised us and who continue to disappear from us. Sitting with them, standing with them, spending time together comes redolent with hope, if only for a moment, to catch a glimpse of them again. Maybe I kept up the ice cream bombardment in an attempt to keep one last vestige of the mom I knew. Yet, I realize her illness is progressing exactly how the psychiatrist said it would thirteen years ago. Mom has moved from simply repeating questions asked earlier in conversation to the place where her speech impairment and regression allows only a few distinguishable phrases: “Thank you” or “Love you too.”  And someday this too shall pass away.

On a lighter side, up until a few years ago, we had entertaining conversations, at least for me, because I never knew what she might say. Once while driving to our house, she said, “Are your parents going to be there?”

“One of them will be.”

“Good.”

On that same visit, folding clothes together, out of the blue Mom said, “Is your Mom here?”

“Yes she is.”

“Did she say anything to you?”

“Yes, she did.”

“So, we’re okay?”

“Yes, Mom.  We are okay.”

“Good.”

I have no idea which synapses fired in her brain but often found such conversations endearing. I suppose this is grace. Colorful fragments from the past that light up the present.

When we first started this journey in 2007, I would pick Mom up from her residency, and we often ran errands together. I multi-tasked by spending time with Mom and by getting other stuff done too.

On one of our first visits to Wal-Mart, Mom grabbed a Kleenex box, opened it, blew her nose and put the box back on the shelf.

Always an adventure.

I put the Kleenex in our cart, and as we checked out, Mom saw the open Kleenex box and exclaimed for all to hear, “They don’t expect us to pay for this.”  It was not a question.  She was outraged at such nonsense.

On another shopping excursion, Mom took notice of a well-built, blue-jean-cut-sleeve-thirty-something guy in the fishing gear aisle. She no longer wanted to be with me but with him.  He had no idea the danger he was in, and unfortunately, as he walked down the aisle, Mom locked in on him and headed straight for him.  I tried to steer her away, but she was not having it, and when I attempted to bodily block her view of him, she threw a fit. “Get away from me!” which put me in an awkward dilemma.  If this idiot would get out of her sight line, she would soon forget about him, but he kept walking down the center aisle oblivious to the lifetime memory burn he might experience in Wal-Mart.  I needed to get Mom out of the store, but I became the enemy.  Thankfully, before the scenario got out of control, an understanding, young adult employee helped me walk Mom out to the parking lot.  Once we got in the car together, she was fine.  I became her good friend again. Dementia is like a box of chocolates on clearance, you never know what you are going to get.

These last couple years, I have not had the confidence to take her out by myself, so we walk around her hallway or amble through the facility stopping by the piano to play a few chords, or we walk down the Norman Rockwell picture hallway that represents an era of her life.

On another visit after the first of the year, we settled in the dining room and at the adjacent table sat a resident whom I have gotten to know. I admire his determination to walk independently as he moves at the speed of inches. I have met his son’s family. Good people. An almost instant camaraderie bonds those who walk the same path. During the dining room bustle, in random wonder, he burst into song with a strong, vibrato voice and sang in entirety, “Jesus Loves Me.” When he finished, everyone, staff and residents, remained quiet for a long moment.  I broke the silence with applause. He locked eyes with me, and struck out into the song again. I’m sure he sang as a church choir soloist.  After his strong encore, he faded back into his chair and disappeared. But I saw the glimpse; I saw the marvel revealed in this marred world. These sequestered octogenarians, these hidden lives, these music boxes closed, these finished books, these parents may have more to write, more to sing, more to say to us before they cross Tennyson’s bar:

Sunset and evening star,
          And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
          When I put out to sea,

As a child, my parents were an age beyond anything comprehendible. Yet, as my decades add up, Mom is only twenty-three years older than me, which now seems strangely small, a blip of time. Reflecting on this Mother’s Day, like our aged friend who sang in the dining room, I hope to get the music out.  And with Mom and the residents at her facility, maybe there is more music to write together.  These moments with our loved ones are like individual notes: brief, bright, ordinary. But played together they form a melody, one that we remember, one that protects us against the pangs of temporary separation.

A few residents from Mom’s facility have passed away from the coronavirus.  I cannot imagine the stress of the staff or the sorrow of the families. I pray for Mom’s safety. When I see her again, we’ll celebrate with another six-dollar triple chocolate ice cream pint and a Pepsi.  We will have a festival, the two of us. If this reunion does not happen in this place, then we will talk again and have the party in the better place, where time (as far as getting old) will be no more, where the old becomes new, where the broken gets fixed, and where the ice cream is exceptional.

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
          The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
          When I have crost the bar.
— Alfred Lord Tennyson, Crossing the Bar