For the holidays my extended family converged in Chicago for Christmas after a yearlong coronavirus hiatus.  Before the re-assembly, I developed an aggravating cough with no other symptoms, but could not shake the hack, so I took three Rapid Covid-19 tests within nine days.  If one wants to vex the present population, simply start wheezing around the nearby public and prepare for raised brows and lowered patience. Initially, at the Windy City reunion, I did not hug or hold family members but flung air-fives and wore my mask. I reminded my nephew of his good fortune, since I would not wrestle, he’d receive a free pass from our customary headlocks and smackdown body slams. He patted me on the head and smiled with the confidence and invincibility of a sixteen-year-old. As we all gathered in the dining room to celebrate the holidays, I socially distanced and self-regulated myself to the children’s table.

The Christmas Eve and Christmas evening dinner conversations swung around the room with a familiar ebb and flow ranging from the family cookie contest to the present state of equality for women in the workforce. When the discussion spiked in intensity, recommendations to break into small groups and report back for further insights came with good-natured humor as the conversations volleyed back and forth. I enjoy these table talks, and we picked up where we left off before the pandemic.

My station at the children’s table (counter area) may have benefited all, since from afar I tended to talk less and listen more. At my perch, I had a bird’s eye view of all participants and absorbed the boisterous banter.

We were back.

We would move forward. This homecoming merited warm Christmas thanks and good will toward all, but the contrast of another reunion tempered the celebration.

***

A few weeks before the holidays, I visited my mom. After almost two years, visitors are still not allowed in the “secure unit” where Mom resides. At present, all guests must schedule appointments, and one never knows when her residency may shut down from COVID concerns that swirl in and out of the building. Since visitors have been allowed back, her residency has had intermittent lockdowns, and the reopening has been an uncertain, stutter step affair.

Two staff members brought Mom out to the family lounge, where supervised visits take place. Wood carved bears with “Welcome” signs greet us, and plenty of stock furniture lines the room with pots of synthetic plants in the corners and motivational posters on the walls. With only one family unit allowed at a time, the ample, empty space has a barren and sterile ambience with the scent of disinfectant. The two certified nursing assistants walked with Mom, one on each side, and she stepped with a tentative gait she never had before the pandemic.

“Hey there, young lady,” I said, moving to her side and taking her wrist. I held her arm as she groped along the sofa cushions to find a place to settle. She perked up for a brief moment and turned her head toward me when I spoke, as if to recognize a familiar voice, but soon lulled back into the couch.

I pulled up “Singing in the Rain” on my iPhone to stir movement in this sedated setting and held her hand, but she showed no interest or connection to our past dance duets, and with dull eyes stared at nothing.

This has become the new pattern of our visits. We sit.

Before the pandemic, I saw her weekly, and through the years as the dementia raided her intellectual abilities, Mom and I spent our time walking in childhood places, Foster Park and Pokagon State Park, or strolling down her residential hallway, or dancing in her facility dining room to Elvis and the golden oldies. I loved The Beatles; Mom loved The Beach Boys.

Even with her cognitive decline, I quipped that her constant motion and physical fitness would allow her to outlive us all. Mom spent her life in movement and kept in great shape. As a kid, I watched with amusement as she mimicked jumping jacks with Jack Lalanne, the first national exercise guru, whom she watched on TV. I helped with curiosity as she unpacked his mail order exercising and stretching equipment. Despite the regression of Mom’s cognition, she remained active and we both enjoyed our outdoor amblings and hallway hikes that made these visits engaging and not a burden to endure or a duty to fulfill. We could walk forever.

But this has passed. Our strolls in the park are over. Our dancing, albeit a simple shuffle back and forth, is done.

Now we sit.

***

Despite my gratitude that the pandemic restrictions have eased to allow me to see my mom, our reunion has been a reminder of what’s been lost. For fifteen months, I could not see her at all, so for fifteen months, I did not walk with her on the journey we’ve been on for almost fifteen years.

Before COVID, Mom’s dementia had been incremental, a gradual loss stretched over years. She entered her first memory care facility at a “high functioning” level, which sounds cold, yet with time, one adapts to the terminology. Mom could still read, write, and recall long-term memories. I watched her lead Bingo and help with the activities for her fellow residents. For very brief conversations with new acquaintances, she would seem fine. But Mom could not retain any short-term memories. None. Cora and I would make our get-away when her attention distracted from us, and she would immediately forget we visited and not get angry with the left-behind, caregiver team. In those early years, we often coordinated with the on-duty residency staff for smooth, Black Ops departures. But in time, all of Mom’s memories and mental processes diminished. I sat with her in the activity room when she held up a bingo chip and asked, “Scott, what do I do with this?” She could no longer make the connection to match the numbers. We crossed this milestone together.

Through her decline, I reminded her how to use a fork at the dining room and made sure she brushed her teeth before I left. Her procedural memory kicked in and she would perform these automatic applied skill responses. In time, the hand-over-hand promptings did not reboot such abilities. She could tie her shoes for the longest time, and then this left. She could open the lid of an ice cream carton, but no more, and we passed these points-of-no return hand-in-hand. For my own emotional processing, this gave some sense of letting go.

After the pandemic surge, and upon my return to her facility, Mom could not walk by herself and needed a person to support her.  Over the holidays, I received calls that she fell three separate times. Thankfully, she broke nothing and only had minor bruises. This new stage of her exponential physical decline, although expected, has bewildered me. Mom has become frail. This happened too quickly because I wasn’t there—the pandemic stole this transition from us. For her, I know it doesn’t matter as she can no longer comprehend with any self-awareness. But for me, although Mom and I are still on this road together, I feel like she passed this significant mile marker alone. So did I.

***

Before leaving for Christmas in Chicago, I planned to see Mom, but because my annoying cough would not subside, to play it safe I briefly stopped by her facility to drop off holiday chocolate bars to thank these essential workers for all they do.

In Chicago, as the holiday highlights moved from the dining room table to the rollercoaster bus ride to and from the Art Institute of Chicago in the five-lane swathes of Lake Shore Drive, I could not help but consider the gaping contrast between the twinkling, holiday bustle of the big city and the dim gradations of restrictive spaces that my mom now occupies.

In a Christmas Past, Mom received not one but two Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devils as presents. I didn’t know my sister bought her one too. As someone who lived in constant movement, Mom loved Taz’s characteristic tornado spin. In later life, she purchased a Kawasaki 750 motorcycle and drove it halfway across the country. Though Mom’s velocity through this present world has ceased, our reunion after the pandemic has brought this new, unfamiliar activity to both of us: we sit.

But we sit together.

***

Christmas nightlife in Chicago doesn’t get better for me than family board games and renewed rivalries around the table. If the playing pieces scatter across the board in frustration, we’ve witnessed a fine game, my friends. As we kids have gotten older, the attempt to behave ourselves as adults and be better examples to our children remains a worthy goal, but doesn’t always prevail.

In one such game of Splendor (the board game of choice this Christmas), the movie Hoosiers came on, where another contingent of family sat in the adjacent, living room and watched on the wide screen. I paused my battle plans to briefly lean against the adjoining wall trim to catch a favorite scene.

The basketball team at Hickory High School, population 60 students, has made it to the Indiana State Finals. Dennis Hopper (nominated for an Academy Award for his role) plays a drunken father trying to make right as an assistant coach, but he relapses from the pressure of the tournament and ends up in a hospital ward. His son, a starter for the team, visits him in the antiseptic psych unit before the championship game. The dad attempts to apologize, and the son interrupts, “It don’t matter Dad. You’re gonna get better.” 

I appreciate this moment in the film:  It did matter to the son, but how could a teenager be expected to articulate this? I admire the hope this scene gives in spite of the possibility that his dad may not get better. As the movie portrays, for a complexity of reasons, people we love, get broken.

Love will not repair every fracture or eliminate loss or guarantee safe passage through this life, but it helps:  Love “always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13:7 NIV). A redemptive hope abides where love resides.

Dementia cascades in one inexorable direction: downward. My mom will not regain what she has lost: her memory, her speech, or her physical and cognitive abilities. Medical science cannot fix this. Love cannot fix this. Not in this life. But I adhere to the Christmas Story’s promise that because of the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, the time will come to reunite and restore what we have lost in the resurrection of all things. This hope allows us to walk love’s painful path of loss with tidings of comfort and joy.

And in the meantime, I will pull up a chair and sit. Mom and me. Maybe I’ll read to her and see how that goes. She read the Uncle Wiggly stories and the Little Golden Books to me before bedtime as a kid, so maybe I’ll return the favor. We will see. I plan to stick around until she leaves this place for the far better one.

The father/son scene in Hoosiers ends with the ballplayer saying he has to get back to the team, and his dad shares his wish to be at the game. His son will soon enter the applause and cheers of playing for a state title in the spotlight and pageantry that surrounds an Indiana basketball championship. Yet this teenager takes the time to visit his dad. The small town drunk who embarrassed himself and his son in public, and yet here they are. Maybe the father will get better or maybe he won’t, but love gives enough light to endure the dark spaces.

Back at her secure unit, at times my mom will still say, “Yes,” and “No,” and I always leave her with, “Love you, Mom,” where on occasion, perhaps welling up from yesteryear, she looks at me and says, “Love you.”

Mom and I didn’t get the Christmas reunion I hoped for before leaving to see family in Chicago. But if we had, and if I could have said anything to my mom who loved the Christmas TV Specials and the tree decorating and the family car rides looking at holiday lights, I would have shared the same words that teenager in Hoosiers said to his father in the hospital ward before leaving for the big game:

“I’ll be thinking of you.”