Blue Sweater

 

I make the mistake of asking my mother

where she got that pretty blue sweater.

 

I don’t remember, she says and shrugs in apology.

I try to follow the rules for talking to people

 

with Alzheimer’s—to avoid asking the kinds

of questions that depend on memory, to resist

 

the urge to correct her when she believes

for instance, that we are in a restaurant

 

when in fact we are in the dining room

of the memory care facility, or that I am

 

her favorite niece, or that the doctor

is mocking her, or that people want to steal

 

her stuffed animals. I’m floating, she says,

and closes her eyes. Hoping so for both

 

of our sakes, I ask her if the floating

is pleasant. But no. It’s scary, she says.

 

I do and don’t want to know what she means.

Drifting in an edgeless ocean, I imagine,

 

a melting ice sheet carried by indifferent waves,

cold, and so alone. I take her hand, hold it in mine,

 

an anchor, warm and heavy. She opens her eyes

and sees me as if for the first time today.

 

What a beautiful sweater, I say.