Night Sonata by Miriam Mandel Levi

I’d never told my mother that I love her, and she’d never told me. But five years ago, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and, as it advanced, eroding her formidable intellect and softening her self-possession, she became more vulnerable and accessible. I can say it now, I thought. We both can.

***

My mother rests on her side, knees drawn to her belly. At eighty-eight, she is so diminutive she takes up less than a quarter of the queen-sized bed. Over the bed, in a lithograph called  Night Sonata, a woman in a red and gold kimono reclines on a cloud, as bright flowers, sheet music, and harps dance around her. Its color and whimsy contrast with the room’s mahogany furniture and beige linens.

“I love you, Mom,” I say, the words an odd taste in my mouth. A yellow light emanates from the en-suite bathroom, barely illuminating the two of us. A faint scent of roses rises from her lotioned skin. She can still communicate, can still say it — but she doesn’t.

The following night, I get my mother ready for bed again: remove her shoes, socks, tracksuit, and hearing aids; rub Voltaren on her arthritic hip; lower a pale pink nightie over her head; drop her pills one at a time into her palm; offer her a sip of water; lift her legs onto the bed; and cover her with a billowy, cream comforter. “I love you, Mom,” I say, more naturally this time.

Her expression — high cheekbones, wide brown eyes — is inscrutable. She doesn’t say she loves me back. Not that night, not the next. Not any of the eighteen nights of my visit.

It’s not her fault — she, too, grew up with an undemonstrative mother. It’s unfair of me to force her into sentimental exchange when she stiffens at a hug. Besides, the dementia has dulled her insight and empathy. If she understood what the moment meant to me, she’d respond. Of course she would.

I curl her hair behind her ear and tuck the edges of the comforter around her shoulders, remembering the many nights she tucked me into bed. She’d perch on the edge of my mattress, signaling by her stance that she wouldn’t stay long, her fingertips grazing my back like butterfly legs.

The last night of my visit, I crouch close to my mother’s bed, take her beaked hand in mine. I tell her, again, that I love her, that she has been a good mother, that I’m lucky to be her daughter. She lies still and silent on her canvas of white sheets. The hardwood floors creak under my feet.

One month later, she dies.

***

During the shiva, I wander into her bedroom to check on her before remembering she’s not there. Her headboard and dresser stand solid and stately. In the lithograph over the bed, the woman still floats, as remote and regal as my mother in her bearing, as unlikely to say I love you.

I sit on the mattress edge and close my eyes. There, in the eddying darkness, are the memories of paper snowflakes we cut and taped to the kitchen window; the fall leaves I collected and she ironed between sheets of wax paper; there is her petite, bundled form watching me trot around the riding arena in sub-zero temperatures; there are the hundreds of letters penned in her curled, contained script; there is the love she lavished on my children; there is her steady support of all my life choices, even when they diverged from ones she’d rather I not have made; there is the sheen in her eyes when we said goodbye, goodbye, and goodbye again because for most of my adult life I lived an ocean away.

There are the words withheld. And there is my mother’s night sky. In its black expanse, red, pink and purple ribbons swirl and unfurl, colorful tongues rippling and rising.

Image Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/Ben Seidelman