It’s four in the afternoon on a Friday, and my grandmother is slowly melting into the sofa. Her eyes, shadowed by time and memory, are half-closed, her body sinking, surrendering to the day’s weariness. Her fingertips, like delicate antennae, brush against the floor, searching, grasping for something unseen, a secret world only she now inhabits. Ninety years have painted lines on her face and etched stories in her silence. Dementia and fading senses have drawn her inwards, into a quiet space where words are rare. Questions are met with simple echoes: Yes. No. I suppose. Sometimes, her lips part, a silent struggle for words, like a fish gasping for air, unable to bridge the gap between thought and speech.
The day gently urges us towards evening, towards the ritual of bedtime.
Our routine is a practiced ballet of care. I guide her into the wheelchair, a seamless transfer. My mother becomes the steady hand pushing down the hallway, towards the quiet bedroom at the back of the house. As we enter, music fills the air – Dean Martin’s warm voice serenades us with “That’s Amore.” I lift her from the chair, a familiar embrace, onto the bedside commode. Together, with practiced ease, my mother and I help her shed the clothes of the day, replacing them with the soft comfort of a nightgown. Then, the small white pill, her nightly ritual for thirty-five years, a sedative swallowed since the devastating plane crash that took her husband and two sons-in-law in the Idaho Floodwoods. I remember the story, the agonizing wait at the edge of the airstrip as the sky bled from purple to black, a bruise of despair. I place the pill on her tongue, a silent communion, a prayer for peace in the long night ahead. But some nights, peace is elusive. On those nights, my mother finds her awake, lost in the darkness, twisting Kleenexes into fragile knots. Where did he go? she whispers into the void. Where is your dad?
My grandmother is a looking glass, reflecting a possible future. My mother in twenty years, myself in forty. If I ever get like this, my mother confides, her voice barely a breath, promise me you’ll put me in a home. I nod, a hollow agreement, but the images of my nursing home years flash in my mind. Faces lost in sleep over cold breakfasts, shivering figures wrapped in thin sheets, waiting in shared rooms for a familiar face, a loving touch.
No.
My answer is unspoken but firm. French toast, my mother’s favorite, will be my morning offering, a sweet start to each day. Afternoons will be filled with gentle comedies on television, or quiet moments on the deck, bathed in the soft September sun. And when four o’clock arrives, and her head begins its slow descent, down, down, down, I will guide her wheelchair to the bedroom at the back of the house and prepare her for the night.
Children were not part of my path. I try not to dwell on the solitary question of my own future.
To help her stand, I secure the transfer belt around my grandmother’s waist. Her legs, fragile as sweet pea stems, rest on toes curled in unpredictable ways. My mother’s hands are gentle, coating her thin skin with cream, a barrier against discomfort, followed by cornstarch, a steadfast soldier in the battle against bedsores.
My grandmother’s gaze drifts, lost in a distant landscape.
Where has she journeyed? The determined woman who outgrew the confines of a mid-century housewife in a North Idaho logging town. The woman who embraced education alongside her daughter, embarking on a nursing career in her early forties, the age I stand at now.
It’s time for a shift, a gentle turn towards the bed, to ease her into a resting position.
Would you like to dance? The question is a soft invitation.
Her arms encircle me, a light embrace, and her head finds its place on my shoulder. Dean Martin’s voice fills the room with another timeless melody. We begin to sway, a gentle rhythm born of love and care. My hand rubs circles on her back, feeling the delicate sharpness of her shoulder blades. Her cheek rests against the pulse in my throat. My baby, she murmurs, a word that transcends time. Beside us, the mirror on the bureau reflects our joined forms. But I don’t need to look to see. We lean into each other, grandmother and granddaughter, in a tender dance, as if we have always moved together in this way, holding each other in a unity that blurs the lines between us.
