She folds towels like the mom I watched as a child — aligning corners, sweeping her fingers across the terry, smoothing before flipping for a final fold, her accomplishment culminating in a smile of satisfaction.

Before dementia, her folds had purpose, a mother caring for her family.

Now she folds while not knowing why.

A pile of washcloths dumped on the table — a memory care “activity” — solicits an instinctual reach to perform the task.

 

How is it that mom’s strong legs are powerless to walk, her clear voice jumbles words, and her capable hands are helpless to lift a fork from plate to mouth, and yet she folds a towel with precise motions in proper sequence, including the concluding satisfied smile?

Dementia is perplexing, closing selective networks in the brain while leaving others intact. 

And yet, watching her fold is no less lovely to watch, knowing she is lost as to why she folds.

A few months ago, I thought I would never see her fold again.

The phone call came mid-morning. 

“Your mom is unresponsive… we’ve called 911.”

Sharp emotions pierced my heart. 

Disbelief. 

Fear. 

Had the day I knew would come arrived? 

In caring for an elderly mom with dementia there is an unspoken expectation, but I was still not prepared to lose the singular constant in my life since the air of this world entered my lungs. 

I sped the two miles to mom.

The route was the same — a straight drive up Broadway to the building entrance and four clicks on the keypad to enter mom’s locked-down world. 

But this time the trip was unfamiliar because my mental state was so unmatched to any I’d known before that it blurred the lines on the road and blinded me to the wheelchairs that greet me when the security door opens. 

The wheelchair owners — recognized by the tops of their bald or white-haired heads slumped in all directions — were invisible as I beelined to mom’s bedroom.

The scene around mom was surreal. Six paramedics searched for her weak pulse while peppering me with questions. I steadily shot back answers, but inside a silent trembling roared.

They strapped her limp arms to the stretcher, and I watched, lame, as they loaded her in the ambulance.

An hour later in the ER, the only news of moms condition came from the song and dance of beeps and lights on her bedside monitor. 

I sat, staring into mom’s ice-blue eyes concealed behind closed lids and holding her hand as a faithful statement of loving her until her end, if it was to come, assuring her the hour would not be spent alone.

The doctor showed up and pronounced she had pneumonia.

The prescription:  antibiotics, IV fluids, and waiting.

For three days, her blue eyes stayed hidden. 

I wondered if she remembers in her dreams?

The prognosis turned dim. 

The infection cleared and her fluids restored, but she would not awake.

She choked when the nurses prodded her to eat. The doctors concluded another brain network had closed — the pathway to swallow, a common last step in a dementia journey.

My sister arrived from Colorado and together we digested the diagnosis of a final lap.

Hospital hours were a fog. 

We sought answers from doctors we never saw, communicating through their assistants who showed up unannounced for only slivers of time. 

We fought for time with nurses devoted to excellent care, but who had halls of patients waiting and it never seemed to be mom’s turn.

And we bought moments with our silent mom — brushing her hair, stroking her hand, and whispering in her ear, hoping for a response — the payment made in love.

When we took a break from the hospital, we made funeral plans.

We bought mom’s last dress.

Five days later, she was still asleep and still unable to eat, and the doctor recommended discharging her under the care of hospice. 

The discharge was exhausting, and not because it was physically hard to transport a sleeping, eighty-eight-year-old woman with dementia from a hospital bed to a stretcher to an ambulance to across town to her old memory care bedroom and into a new hospital bed.

The discharge was exhausting because of the emotional transition. 

At the hospital, where the possibility of death crept close, we still hoped the doctors would find an answer for how mom could get better. But now, with the hospital doctors telling us there was nothing more they could do and the hospice doctors stepping in, the only answers we expected were the ones that told us how mom would journey to her forever home. 

Seeing mom settled back in her room — still, sleeping, and silent — is forever seared as a moment when I suspected her end was near and I was then waiting for when. 

The emotional shift from hoping to expecting — although not abandoning hope altogether — called on my faith to prepare for losing our loved mom. 

By this time, “thoughts and prayers” came our way from friends, family, hardly acquaintances, and absolute strangers.

My sister and I launched into a conversation about prayer.

When did sending “thoughts and prayers” move from a genuine expression of condolence to a cliche, or worse, a symbol of inaction in moments of grief?

Why was my sister offended when the “hardly acquaintances” sent thoughts and prayers her way?

Chalk it up to the challenge of a cliche — a set of words strung together because their meaning is so apparent that they are universally understood, but when repeated so often that the words lose their originality, then not only will your teacher or editor criticize your work for using them, you yourself feel wrong or unimaginative for saying or writing them. 

And further, when you do speak or write a cliche because it means exactly what you want to convey, your good faith is subject to suspect. 

I’m saddened that the phrase “thoughts and prayers” is so satiated it casts doubt on the offerers sincerity.

I welcome prayers. And I want those not present to be present with me through their thoughts. 

In the classroom, the teacher will call on you to ditch the cliche and find a fresh way to express the idea.

So, my mind headed to the ranch and took a mental walk in the Creator’s classroom.

In my Comfort world of skies and trees and critters of all sorts, a wiser world exists, a place where lessons of how to confront life sings in the wind and shines in the sun and strikes in your heart when you listen and see.

There, a thought coming my way from a distant friend is like a beacon of light that touches a bloom of the season and then emits a glow of calm…

like the blanket of green moss that covers and wraps, as if surrounding with love and protection…

Or like a bee carrying a blob of pollen, a gift from the flower to nourish.

And prayer?

I feel the sweet hour of prayer while watching a butterfly bowed down in fervent conversation,

or drinking in a supply of support as another bows to offer healing,

or lifting on wings petitions of everything in prayer.

Our prayers and praying for others — whatever is on our hearts, whether burdens or joys or concerns or questions — is what heals.

Each prayer takes flight with unknown possibility but with faith it lands according to plan.

The privilege of the conversation strengthens the relationship.

So thank you for the flock of a hundred little brown sparrows foraging in the field for daily sustenance who upon alert of danger erupt in flights of zigs and zags, lifting together, but each using their own might to carry upward.   

Those prayers, along with my own, sustained me over the weeks that followed.

And during that time, mom recovered.

Each day had surprise — surprise at no call in the night, surprise at eyes that met mine, surprise at an empty pudding cup, and surprise at another chance to give a good night kiss.

Soon, surprise disappeared and hope and optimism restored. 

Each hospice nurse report was like my five-year old’s artwork — no Picasso but their best effort and boy aren’t I proud.

For some readers, that metaphor may not make sense, but my child-parent relationship has been flipped for over ten years. 

The mom who always loved, protected, and cheered me on barely recognizes anyone or understands anything, so she needs me to love, protect and cheer for her as each day she races further down the track.

I run on a track of ambiguous loss — where my mom is physically present but cognitively absent — and the training requires endurance. 

So thank you for your thoughts and prayers that are like the heavens reflected in still water — while thousands of feet apart, the image formed by the connection is artistry so powerful it alters my being for the better.

One day, mom will break through the finish line ribbon and receive the heavenly prize. 

For now, she folds on.