Even Her Smile Is Changing

Along with every other physical feature that once helped define her for me, my dear Mother's smile is changing. When I was young -- when she was young -- it was unencumbered. It was bright, joyful, radiant. It amplified the beauty of her head-turning face.

It was sunshine.

Today, that face is just as beautiful. But it's different, too. It's fragile somehow, etched by years of laughter, pain, loss, and happiness. Sixty-nine years have come and gone in my Mom's life. For forty of those, I've been with her.

Sometimes it's hard for me to imagine what she was like before me, before Carrie. It was always the three of us, a united front in this crazy world. But she was once a child like my Mary Claire, once a teenager with a gap-toothed grin who dated the handsome football star. The Golden Couple. That's what my Mom and Dad were called in high school. When Carrie and I were little, she was beyond social. She had a vast array of friends and would-be suitors. She ably balanced her time between mothering and playing. She never thought twice about fulfilling her own needs -- about putting her own oxygen mask on first -- so she could better parent her two young girls. And for that decision, I have so much respect.

Now she has sweet Bob to stand beside her with his patience, his kind and generous heart. He administers her medicine, shuttles her to and from her appointments, brings her dinner in bed when the pain in her legs won't subside.

She is changing. Every day, she's changing.

She stayed overnight with me this weekend. And caring for her was more challenging than ever before. She's so weak, so worn down by illness. She moves so slowly, her conversations require such effort. I can remember well the dinners we'd have at Weston Village Apartments. Dining on macaroni and cheese with tuna, she'd coax Carrie and me into conversation.

"How was your day at school, girls? Did you learn anything exciting?"

And she'd expect us to participate, to reciprocate. "The art of conversation means everything," she'd explain. "Be interested in whomever you're talking with. Ask questions. Look her in the eye. Be present."

Advice to carry me through a lifetime.

But now, my Mom's conversations are limited by the synapses in her weary brain. Sometimes they fire when she needs them to, sometimes they abandon her completely. She searches for words, but can't always find them. Frustrated by her own declining memory, she resorts to her famous sarcasm, her biting wit to cover her embarrassment.

She is never, though, an embarrassment to me.

When I hold her hands with their paper-thin skin to help her walk to the car, I am simultaneously shocked and saddened by the age spots, the bruises, the gnarled knuckles that betray her years. As a young girl, those hands held me, comforted me, supported me, sustained me. I think about pictures of my Mom as a beautiful, vibrant woman -- the wind in her hair on a Hobie Cat, her ready and contagious smile.

She was loved by so many, treasured by all who knew her. She'd laugh with Sister Helen Therese, vacation with Patti and Jimmy, sail with Janet and Mike. Never, ever a third wheel -- always the life of the party.

Still she is treasured, still she is loved.

But even her smile is changing. It's tentative now, guarded, as if perhaps it might pain her to allow that beautifully wrinkled face to submit to a full, unguarded smile.

I feel as if I'm standing at a crossroads with my beloved Mom. From cared for to caregiver in one small step. From needy to needed.

Yet always -- always -- loved without limits.