You're driving me crazy.

The rhythmic pulsing of the monitors and gentle hiss of the respirator broke the silence. Kate stared at the marble face of her mother and wondered at the oddity of it. So unlike her animated expressions Kate remembered from days past.

“You’re driving me crazy,” Kate muttered under her breath.

The nurse at the machine looked up. “I’m sorry?”

“Just …” Kate choked. “… something we talked about.”

The nurse nodded sympathetically before turning back to the readout.

Kate thought of her youth and arguments where she and her mother flung that phrase at one another like daggers. Little did she realize how those wounds would reopen as Alzheimer’s stole her mother away, one tiny piece at a time. Kate remembered one of the last coherent statements her mother made before lapsing into muteness and becoming someone else. The tears in her mother’s eyes and the look of confusion when she said, “I just forget. Everyone forgets sometimes. I’m not crazy.”

In the months since then, the disease ate away her mother’s thoughts and personality. Then it destroyed her body.

The nurse finished her readings, “Did you want me to take that?” She nodded at the clipboard, lying forgotten in Kate’s lap.

Kate looked down at it, puzzled for a moment. The lettering across the top of the form read, “Do Not Resuscitate.” Tears filled Kate’s eyes, blurring the words, as she scrawled her signature at the bottom of the form. Wordlessly, she handed the clipboard to the nurse.

“Thank you,” the nurse said gently. She left quietly, her rubber soled shoes barely whispering on the floor.

Kate took her mother’s cold hand. “You’re driving me crazy.” Tears filled her eyes, “I love you, Mom.”