Unclaimed Emotion

"Are you my sister," she asked? "My sister-in-law?"

You just never know how it's going to go.

"I have one young child," she told me.

"Oh, what is this child's name?" I ask these questions ever so gently to see where she is in her mind today.

She nods earnestly and says, "Cameron," then she smiles. In this moment she does not remember the others. I sense she is waiting for him. She is mixing her tenses up and looks more confused than usual, her confusion being one of the only consistent things I can predict from visit to visit.

I perch on the side of the bed. She is having a late afternoon rest. She doesn't really know where she is, who I am, what is going on and she sincerely doesn't care. But this Not Caring is a State of Being rather than an Attitude.

"You're a smart one," she says to me. "It's easy for you."

"What's easy for me," I ask?

She laughs. "I don't know! You're like me." The dichotomy between her Memories and her Present is a veritable chasm. For all I do know of those memories, it is still a mere snippet of her life.

All at once I am so utterly exhausted. Is this my exhaustion or am I just receiving a powerful message from her Soul? I don't know. For as smart as she believes me to be, I really feel an ineptitude that belies my usual convictions.

I scoop her body into a gentle embrace. "I love you, Mom," I mutter in her ear. She heaves a heavy sigh and says, "Mmmmm! You smell SO good!" This makes me want to cry. A wad of unclaimed emotion lodges in my throat and I carry it away with me like an unanticipated door prize. I'll figure out what to do with it later.