The spy ship

Had dinner at Mom's Wednesday. She seemed diminished, frozen, and was quiet. The dining room was nearly full for a change, and we sat and watched a big ship outside the harbor. It seemed to be anchored, slowly turning on its chain. C said it had been there all day. "It's a spy ship," she said. "They want our secrets." Little, bent-over A, who lived with her mom in the place for decades, until the mom's death, and now was declining herself, seemed to believe it. "It's a spy ship, it's a spy ship," she said to me conspiratorially.

C and D were very excited over a new computer they had bought and were struggling to set up. They had gotten voice recognition software -- Dragon -- that as yet wasn't recognizing their voices, and they were getting help from Brennan, the intern everybody loves. They are, really, almost like college roommates, still enthused about things and moving forward -- so completely distant from my mom. Even if she had the wherewithal, it wouldn't be family, and it wouldn't matter to her.

She leaned over and said: "I always think pretty soon it will be Friday and I can go home with you to Ann Arbor, but then I remember you're home already, you live here." And when we got to her room, she made a gesture of disgust, as if, same old, same old.

I saw, on her window ledge, the hibiscus that she had reported stolen from the lounge. "Look at that," I said. "How did you get it back?" She threw a hand and said it was too complicated to explain. She asked about people we'd seen on our vacation. I told her about a woman we know who'd gone to Shanghai to set up a kind of sister-school partnership with a university there.

"Schools do that now, don't they," she said. "I think it's good, it's good for peace."

It was a beautiful day, and she said she had gone out onto the plaza below her room and had loved feeling the air. She had sat on a big swing chair there, and a man had come and sat down with her,  "not too close," she said. They talked and realized that both their spouses had died of Alzheimer's. He just wanted to talk, she said. "He was a nice man."

She has fallen lately, and won't use the walker she has, and with her little unsteady steps, one fall on the concrete plaza would put her in skilled nursing -- 24-hour care -- and I think she would give up entirely.

When I left I went down to the plaza to take a picture of the spy ship, and after a few minutes, C called down to me. "Jon! Jon!" She was in my mom's room, and brought my mom to the window. I said hi, and waved, and Mom waved back.  I yelled up that I was going to leave, and she blew me a kiss.

I always feel so crummy when I go.

The swing chair

Mom and C in the window