Death has a way of making your mind sticky (other people’s death, that is, presumably not your own. But who knows?). Wisps of thought are caught in the mass of gray folds, thoughts that on better days would barely skim the surface before disappearing. The smell of your mother’s hands when you, five or six, sat in her lap, pulled palms and long-tapered fingers up to your face and inhaled deeply: /Mom/. The melody of her well-modulated voice, like water over cool, smooth rocks, even after dementia robbed the words of any sense. A worried look (worrying equaled loving), a blazing smile. A conversation with Big Sister, aged 8, on the quiet, prideful joy of having the prettiest mom in the class.
Here’s what you don’t want to do while your mother’s brain is going dark and death is thundering its way toward her: Don’t play an audio of her voice. Don’t play an audio of her voice over the stereo from three years earlier. Of her talking, and making sense, and reminiscing about her childhood. Don’t play it. You may think it will help your kids remember their grandma before the trouble with her brain going dark, but it’s cheating. It’s too soon. It’s dangerous. It’s a shout below a precipice of snow, an avalanche in the making. Let the wisps come and stay if they want. Don’t force the “good memories” because at certain times, those are worse than remembering your mother’s gray, slackened jaw as the men from the funeral home carried her away. Let the wisps come. For now, let go of the rest.