Mercifully in most cases, the aging process is both gentle and gradual. And because the day-to-day and month-to-month physical change is so imperceptible, we accept the transformation through subconscious assimilation.

Indeed, the changes reflected in the mirror seems so insignificant that each of us in private moments dotes on how much younger we look than friends we so frequently see.

But the ravages of time, working upon those we have not seen for a long period of time can be most unsettling, even shocking. And so it was when I visited my mother. Time had dealt her a mighty blow, wrote my brother, preparing me in advance of my visit, saying that her hair had turned white, lines were deep-set in her face and she was ever-so feeble.

“Her body is gaunt and bent and she has trouble breathing,” he said, “and I do not think she will be with us very long.”

Nevertheless I do not believe one can be fully conditioned to absorb the impact of being reunited with someone dear who has fallen victim to old age: so frail, so weak and suffering the cruelest blow of all, Alzheimer disease.
She did not remember be, although she said I looked familiar. And reaching to the dresser top stared for sometime at the family picture taken many years ago.

“I don't know for sure,” she said in trembling voice and pointing to my father, “I think this must have been your father, but he never comes to see me.”

“Dad died almost 15 years ago,” I said softly.

“No, I saw him from the side yard window last month, but he walked by without coming to visit,” she said, dabbing at tear-filled eyes. “I'd know him anywhere in his overalls. He was on his way to the barn with a milk pail.”
She looked at the picture again and then at me.

“This does look like you,” she decided, pointing to me in the picture. “Is it really you come all the way from California to see me?” And shuffling down a hallway in a walker introduced me to a nurse and some of the other old people in the rest home.

“It's my boy come all the way from California to see me,” she said, but could not remember my name. “He was always such a good boy. All my boys were good. I wonder where they are now.”

I visited her again the next day and once more she reached for the family picture.

“That's poor dad,” she said, “and there are you and your two brothers, but I don't know who the girl is.”

“It's our sister, mom,” I told her.

“Well, I do believe you are right,” she said. “But I wonder why she never comes to see me.”

On my last morning in the old hometown, I returned again to the rest home but did not tell her I was leaving that afternoon.

“You never kissed me goodbye,” she said as I turned to leave, and dabbing at tear-filled eyes. “Come and give me a kiss because you will never be back again.”

The train was miles down the track on my return trip before I could hold back my own tears. And she was right. I never went back. She died before I reached California.

Comments: Woody Laughnan, vallefox@accessbee.com