Description of my mother's alzheimer's symptoms |
Once proud, tall, imperious at the end she was Stooped and round shouldered A widow’s hump Neck permanently stretched outward and down If you want to meet her eyes You must bend your knees a bit and look up Even though you are taller She knew a thing for an instant Then it melted away without her noticing Time, geography, people, places, things were fluid She traveled back from here to there From time to time People morphed one into another; time shifted; geography traveled She asked me what date my brother was born Me! Who was not there, but she surely was! What savage aberration was that stole that precious date her first born’s birthday? Her darling red-haired Ballard boy? Born and raised in Iowa she lived the second half of life in Hawaii She knew snow bitter cold as well as she knew a sultry tropical breeze Fields of Iowa green corn and lurid azure of the Pacific “Corn should be knee-high by the Fourth of July” she always said For her, there will always be turquoise, indigo and an Iowa green that revives the soul I carry her colors onward through the years because she cannot. |