It is a snowy day in April

The three of us each sit at our own windows and watch the remainder of our winters,

She says it came out of nowhere.

She means the snow maybe, or the Dementia.

 

The warmth of the conversation

Flows over me;

They laugh together, a mother and daughter in the face of everything

Becoming nothing.

 

We have images and slides and

Dissections

And proteins named and tangles found,

But really, who can know a disease?

 

She knows her mother

And her mother knows herself and she tells me of her dog named Lily

And her music and news and books

And that sometimes she forgets that she forgets.

 

She has a home and love and a care companion named Maddie

And a PhD in clinical psychology.

She treated the mind

Now how her mind treats her…

 

Where did you grow up?

Her daughter answers for her because the answer is too far in the past

Too far to catch so her daughter

Holds it gently, fluttering in her palms:

 

East Coast, they say together.

 

I am watching the snow land on solemn petals.

They laugh again,

At life and at their own closeness,

A side effect.

 

I cannot help but think of my grandmother

Who can’t remember words or where she is

Or who I am

Sometimes.

 

She doesn’t smile.

My own mother, her daughter, is holding her life together

With photo albums and old letters

And trips to the doctor’s office.

 

Then they are pulling me back from the cold

With their spring voices

And I feel they are just content to be

Together.

Image Credit: “Memories” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by kickize

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