When I feel bad about myself or grieve for the state of the world, there’s a certain restorative power that a visit has: maybe it’s her simplicity and innocence, the qualities we idealize in young children. It’s harder to feel sentimental about someone with Alzheimer’s, someone at the end of her life who has sustained an enormous loss (and I have lost too). Yet as I sit with her, reading or writing or thinking, there is comfort in her silent enjoyment of my presence, the occasional quiet kiss we exchange, my feeling of belonging to her and she to me that wafts over the usual muddle and currents of parent-child expectations.

I enter the by-now familiar building and hurry past the many patients on the sixth floor. Once there, I focus on locating her quickly; she’s usually seated in the hallway, nodding in a doze or looking vaguely preoccupied (but not occupied). On the way I say hello to staff members and the very few patients who are sociable—I have a fondness for some of them. I fuss over her when I find her, but she gives me no more than a blank stare until I kiss and hug her, murmuring who I am. She responds to touch better than to words. She will emphatically return kisses, but it’s impossible to tell if she knows it’s me giving them or just likes the attention. I’m grateful that she likes the attention, as many of the other patients don’t seem capable of enjoyment.

Then comes the dreaded transfer to the wheelchair. First, I must hunt one down, then if I can locate one, she won’t always cooperate with getting into it. She has a stubborn streak, and some days will grimly hang onto the chair arms with a comically determined look on her face. Perhaps she doesn’t understand what I’m trying to do and is afraid of where she will be taken. Other times she willingly lets me or a staffer raise her up to her feet, turn her around, and plop her down into the wheelchair.

Then, if the weather permits, we roll along to the beautiful garden, the best feature of the nursing home. I park her wheelchair next to a shady bench, and with a flourish, I produce whatever food I’ve brought; she has only one tooth but manages far better than you’d expect, and this is one activity she can be counted on to enjoy. Her favorites are cheese Danish from the Hungarian Pastry Shop and packages of peanut butter crackers. I may ask her a few simple questions, how she has been, and did she get her hair cut, to which she either nods (I don’t know if that nod means much, though) or answers in a garbled, impossible-to-understand way. I’m not sure if she’s too deaf to discern speech, but she can recognize her favorite songs when I sing them and supplies some of the words: "America the Beautiful," and the World War One songs "It’s Long Way to Tipperary" and "Mademoiselle from Armentières." More than once, she sang one of these very loudly during a Sabbath service I take her to when it’s rainy or cold outside. The music of the service seems to stimulate her, though not its religious meaning—she was never a believer—but rather her ability to join in the collective making of sound. Hers are not the sounds anyone else is making, but that’s not the point for her.

In the garden I turn to whatever bits of reading and writing I have brought along, and she companionably sits quietly, looks around, or appears lost in thought. Is she thinking? I get her back to the Memory Floor before dinner. She no longer waves goodbye, as she did last year. Like a very young infant, she does not seem to miss me when I’m out of sight, though I can’t know for sure, any more than I can tell if she’s thinking.  

When I leave for home, I feel relieved that I’ve verified she’s all right, but I also feel guilty every time—for not visiting more, for not missing this version of her more, for still being vital and free to leave, when she’s not.

She is the helpless one and I am the grown-up who makes all the decisions. I am the actor, and she is acted-upon. I am competent, worldly, responsible, the one who protects and nurtures and makes plans for us both. But we are also back to the beginning of our relationship over a half-century ago, when as mother and infant, all was touch and smiles between us, when nourishment and comfort in each other’s presence were enough. She doesn’t know me now as a fully separate personality with a separate life any more than she did then, but she doesn’t need to. It’s no longer relevant.

Who are we to each other? I am the one who appears and kisses and embraces her, who strokes her hair and hands. And her kisses and gentle touches are most of what she gives to me.

Yet it’s remarkable how her smile, certain gestures of the hands and arms, even tones of voice without words, are the same ones I remember.

I have no idea if she “wants” to be taken off the floor, if she waits for it, even if she can actually be said to “like” it. Her life as it is now presses me to acknowledge the contingent and fragile meanings of words such as “wants,” “likes,” “thinks,” “knows.” Who she is forces me to accept the present as the overwhelming reality, the now-ness of existence we disguise with constant streams of memory, of fantasy, of planning for an uncertain future.

The certainty is love. The uncertainty: who we are when we love and are loved.

If memory is identity, does she live more in me than in herself now?