The air was dreary and drizzly, family was visiting from out of town, and we sat inside talking, wishing for the weather to clear.

Then, instinctively, because something out of order darted by, Jim jumped from the couch and bolted out the door while blurting he had seen a giant bird.

Well, maybe not so giant.

A pigeon, banded on both feet, had flown in low and landed on the porch roof.

We peered up at the bird only feet away — a homing pigeon who was not home. And yet, he appeared at ease in our presence, standing still at the roof edge, while fluffing his feathers, physically uneasy about something — the cold, the wet, was he hurt, was he lost?

Lost.

A lost homing pigeon.

A lost home.

A home lost.

I am responsible for my mother’s home — selecting it, caring for it, making it home.

My mom is 87 with shades of silver-streaked hair and light blue eyes like a cloudless sky. And yet, when you stare into her eyes they are cloudy, radiating the confusion within that makes you wonder.

She no longer speaks in words that make sense, so wondering is a constant part of the story.

Early in the story, the selfless, hardworking, and patient mother of five managed her home in a loving way … with an edge — a look, a tone, a silence. The edge was where you learned whether she approved. There was no wondering.

But dementia dulls, and today I am left guessing.

In a different story, my dad’s story, a climactic scene in a hospital room where between just two a promise was made, forever made guessing my responsibility.

So whether a lost home or a home lost is mine to determine.

For the past six years, my mom has lived in a memory care facility carefully selected for her. It was a home search with a specialized checklist — what is the level of care, is the staff trained, what is the ratio of staff to residents, how much does it cost, are all meals provided, are activities included, is it secure, does it feel like home?

I remember the weight of choosing the place to call her last earthly home.

I described the setting to my siblings who lived in other states — the freshly painted cream brick building with a generous covered front porch, the security keypad granting access to the living spaces inside and protecting residents from wandering out, four halls lined with bedroom doors marked by numbers and personal picture boxes, calendar and activity message boards seasonally decorated like those in a kindergarten classroom, floral paintings that matched the floral fabrics of seating arranged for community, and in the air the sound of oldies that you hope remind of a happier time.

Assurances that her care would be the top priority sealed the decision to sign.

Over time, I’ve learned that the setting in a memory care home is less defined by the physical space as by the residents who live there and the operations and people who support them.

The character development of each resident begins with what they bring with them — a closet full of Ferragamo shoes or only two pairs of pants from Walmart. In short course, they reveal their present personalities by what they say, for there are no filters working in the minds of persons with dementia. (Click for the story Noooo! Mom Did Not Say That!) Boundaries are learned by how they behave, and it takes a skilled staff to redirect screaming matches into happy sing-a-longs. Families come into the setting and fill in the blanks — sharing about the storied past, assuring it used to be different, and revealing the journey that brought them there. In the vulnerable space of sharing, family members form friendships — the kind only those living through dementia with a loved one can understand.

The story plot in a memory care home is filled with rock throwing, but character decisions are not made by choice. The conflicts are set in chaos with no understanding, no clear journey to a climax, and no resolution that answers the questions or gracefully finishes the story. Readers of this story are emotionally invested and so despite frustration with the plot holes that would make others close the book, they are compelled to keep reading.

And yet, the story is rich.

In a strange way, I am reminded of parallels to one of my all-time favorite books — You Can’t Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe.

The parallels are stronger to the construction of the writing than to the storyline of the book itself.

Like my mom’s long journey with dementia, the book is lengthy, over 600 pages, and there are passages that stretch on and on in great detail without clarity of to what end.

The story is episodic, like the changing moods and behaviors of dementia, moving between run on streams of consciousness to griping scenes that sometimes are connected to the story and other times are not.

Like at my mother’s home, there are colorful characters folded into the narrative but then abruptly disappear from the story.

The strong sense of place is evoked less by the actual locations in the story and more by how the characters are descriptively set in the spaces.

“Born to brick and asphalt, to crowded tenements and swarming streets, stunned into sleep as children beneath the sudden slamming racket of the elevated trains, taught to fight, to menace, and to struggle in a world of savage violence and incessant din, they had had the city’s qualities stamped into their flesh and movements, distilled through all their tissues, etched with the city’s acid into their tongue and brain and vision.” 

It is Wolfe’s description of the men on the loading dock that paints the scene of the New York City warehouse setting.

Similarly, neither fresh paint nor floral paintings and fabrics can describe the sense of a memory care home as well as a thin grandmother with disheveled clothing and tousled hair, slumped on a soiled chair while staring blankly out the window, ignoring the full plate of food in front of her as her caregivers rush by without noticing.

The book may have too many subplots that lend no understanding of the choices made, but oh the beauty of the writing.

“The voice of forest water in the night, a woman’s laughter in the dark, the clean, hard rattle of raked gravel, the cricketing stitch of midday in hot meadows, the delicate web of children’s voices in bright air — these things will never change.”    

OR

“He loved this old house on Twelfth Street, its red brick walls, its rooms of noble height and spaciousness, its old dark woods and floors that creaked; and in the magic of the moment it seemed to be enriched and given a profound and lonely dignity by all the human beings it had sheltered in its ninety years.”    

OR

“Nothing that had ever been was lost.”    

And oh so many more.

My copy is dog-eared, underlined, footnoted, highlighted, and has pink sticky notes extending from the well-read pages. Despite its construction shortcomings, when I long for words to make me feel emotion I reach for this book and read tagged lines of pretty prose.

A different editor might have cut the book in half, but how sad that would have been for me to have had fewer sentences to make my spirit soar.

I think of my mom’s lengthy journey with dementia, filled with unexplained episodes of anxiety, screams in defense from unknown strangers, and questions of when she can go home. There are no answers to why.

But oh the beauty of some moments.

I could fill a hundred pink sticky notes with moments that make me feel — stroking mom’s hair as she falls asleep while the fits of the day fade to soft mumbling, holding her hand to give comfort when a squeeze back reverses the gift, hearing her laugh at the luau entertainment and her look of knowing the hula performers were actually belly dancers, and watching the water from the shower head mix with her falling tears as I quietly wash her feet.

The story is rich.

So how do you script a graceful resolution to a story with frayed and dangling strands of plot?

Here my story dilemma parallels the storyline of the book, and Wolfe’s main character helps answer my wondering of whether a lost home or a home lost.

“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing’s sake, back home to aestheticism, to one’s youthful idea of ‘the artist’ and the all-sufficiency of ‘art’ and ‘beauty’ and ‘love,’ back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time — back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”

Time and Memory…  my mom has taken one and lost the other.

Over months I wrestled with a wrenching decision, was it time to move my mom to a new home?

If I believe the people define the setting of a memory care home more than the physical facility, then why move mom from her home because now I see the entry keypad that gave me security as a sticky keypad that grants access to the sticky floored spaces inside? Or, because now I know the decorated calendar is full of events never followed? Or, because now I know the chairs are used to seat and separate to prevent confrontation instead of promoting conversation? Or, because now in the air are not sounds of oldies but smells I pray someday to forget?

Like disheveled clothes and tousled hair, an unkept exterior reveals a broken interior.

The home carefully selected for my mom six years ago is not the same home today. Sadly, the loving families who are now close friends and the handful of devoted caregivers who lovingly care for my mom could no longer foil the pressures and pitfalls of new ownership, revolving management, and too many vacant bedrooms that take an unsustainable financial toll.

I lost trust in the facility and the assurance that her care would be the top priority.

A home lost and a lost home.

But, there are risks of further decline when moving someone with dementia, and I will not hide that I harbored anger about feeling forced to face those risks. I wished the edge was not dulled and mom could tell me whether she approved.

And then, I thought about the episodes when she tells me, “I want to go home.”

To which time and memory does she want to escape?

To Lorain, Ohio to her first home? To Knoxville, Tennessee to the home where she lived during high school when she met my father? To Waco, Texas to her first home with my father in Baylor married-student housing? To Memphis, Tennessee to the home in a church parsonage with five young children? Or to the Washington, DC area and any one of the homes she lived in while raising her family, running a business, or watching her husband of 56 years go home?

Again, she leaves me guessing, but it’s my responsibility to decide.

So, I thought deeper about what I say when mom tells me she wants to go home.

I don’t tell her she can’t go home again.

I do tell her, “I know… home is such a beautiful place,” or “my favorite thing about home is looking out the window at your garden,” or “I love it when I’m home and you make chocolate chip cookies in the oven… they are so delicious… boy that makes me hungry… let’s go to the dining room to get something to eat,” and off we go, happy and smiling, down the hall, with her mind on cookies.

Home is where there is comfort. Home is where she is reassured. Home is where there are hugs, and smiles, and people who say “I love you.”

Here are moments of joy, the day-to-day gifts from God.

At the end of the book, the main character confronts the realization that you can’t go home again to a past that is familiar or to a wish that things were as they used to be, and instead he finds hope.

He admonishes a dear friend for taking a fatalistic message of Ecclesiastes rather than being “fashioned for eternity.”

“Man is born to live, to suffer, and to die, and what befalls him is a tragic lot. There is no denying this in the final end. But we must deny it all along the way.”

“The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.” Ecclesiastes 1:5

The daily work and worry is part of life, and yet, I know an adventure in faith, one that puts trust in the right place, is how to find a final home of comfort — for me and my mother.

“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” Ecclesiastes 12:13

I decided to move my mom.

For over three years, my mom has had two devoted private caregivers, Maria and Irene, in addition to the caregivers employed by her facility. There is no substitute for personal one-on-one care and Maria and Irene are the best. They are trusting, dependable, loving and kind and they treat my mom like a queen. Their continued daily presence in my mom’s life gave me significant confidence in a smooth transition.

So, after months of another careful search, my mom moved into her new home.

She arrived surrounded by friends because, along with Maria and Irene, two other families and several caregivers from her former facility made the same move, lending some familiarity in mom’s world of the unfamiliar.

But more, she arrived in a place with a happy presence. Before swiping through the security doors, a friendly staff welcomes you each visit. And once inside, there are not only bright clean spaces but smiles on all the faces.

All shiny and smiles is not simple in a memory care home. The day-to-day can be hard and the responsibilities are many. But fashioned for the correct purposes is how home is won.

Shortly after mom moved in, a letter came in the mail from the founder of her new home. He wrote an assurance that “embracing freedom, family and friends is the essence of all that we do. The way we interact with our residents, the way we manage the day-to-day operations, the way our family of employees interact, and the way we regard ourselves and those around us — it all reflects this fundamental belief.”

The letter made no mention of the fancy facility, but instead spoke to the way their daily deeds are done — their interactions, their acts, their care, their relations.

The priority was properly placed, for personal acts of care is what counts.

In a memory care home, a resident — whether wearing Ferragamo or Walmart — cannot interpret that a caregiver rushes by without stopping because the caregiver has duties to tend. They just “feel” rushed by.

It hurts to watch.

I haven’t decided whether is it is cruel or kind that dementia steals decision making and memories but leaves alone emotions.

With reasoning lost, a person with dementia is vulnerable, and raw emotion determines if personal interactions elicit screams and swats, or smiles and laughs, or tears of sadness or joy.

Caregivers who care take two seconds more — to limit screams and swats and sadness.

They look a resident in the eye and warn before lifting — to calm instead of startle.

They place a towel and cover before undressing — to comfort instead of embarrass.

They stroke a hand and smile before walking past — so a resident can sense they matter instead of feeling forgotten.

Is it cruel their emotions are at risk by care that may be inconsiderate?

But what if dementia stole emotion too?

I thought of the homing pigeon fluffing his feathers — was he cold, wet, hurt, or lost?

What if I didn’t have the emotional clues to help my guessing?

My pink sticky note moments are filled with emotion — smiles, laughs, and tears of joy — both hers and mine. In the absence of her speech, they are the moments when I hear her spirit speak. And in the beauty of those moments — like when I brush her hair and she hums contently in rhythm with each stroke — I have the clearest picture of hope in life beyond the sun. Who cares that her hair is no longer styled for Sunday; now I know how it feels to brush it for her.

Subplots in mom’s story will continue to dangle and there will be plenty more moments of fray, but to answer whether I found her a home can be described in a scene, traveling toward a graceful resolution.

With mom’s wheelchair safely buckled into the van, the driver closed the door and slowly pulled away from mom’s home of the past six years. Mom had no recognition of the place she was leaving and no understanding of where she was going. As I sat in the front passenger seat I was alone with the weight, again, of choosing her last earthly home. I started to cry, unclear if I was happy or sad. But as we made our way through the neighborhood, mom began to laugh. I turned to make sure she was ok, and she glanced at me and smiled. Then she continued in a constant, soft giggle. Like a song sung to me as a child to ease my fears, she did not stop laughing until the van stopped at her new home — at W. Sunset Rd.

Mom has lived at her new home for two months now. Every day since she arrived she smiles, laughs, and hums. Even in her stares of confusion there is a sense of calm and content.

I know she is home, for now.

And the pigeon? After tracking down the owner, I only have an unanswered email…

“Hello. Around noon today we spotted your pigeon (AU 2018 GSAF 3484). He landed on the roof at our place in Comfort, TX. It was cold and misty. We hope your pigeon made it home again safely.”

Home Again.

Look closer!