My Mother with Alzheimer's Died Today

As soon as I walked into the store, a perky salesperson asked me what I was looking for. I needed a black pair of pants to go with a beautiful top I had just bought for my mother, I told her. Together we searched and, after about 20 minutes, I found exactly what I was looking for. As I walked to the car proud of my purchase, I was thinking about how beautiful my mom was going to look in the outfit I had put together. Then, an image of her in a casket appeared in my mind as clear as a photograph. For a moment, I had forgotten the outfit was for her funeral.

My Aunt Marcia, me, and my mom, Vera.

My mom, Vera, died today an hour and a half before my plane landed in Cincinnati, where she was living. After struggling with Alzheimer's for several years and breaking her arm recently, her death was not unexpected. Earlier this week, the hospice nurse told my sister that the end was near.

I thought I had mourned her since she had not been "Vera" in a very long time, as I wrote in my last post. The mourning, however, went to a new level today. My husband and sons will come up in a couple of days, so I found myself alone with hours to kill before my hotel would be ready. I was numb and disoriented. I sat in my car for a long time and just stared at my phone. After a while, I started to think about what I would say at her funeral.

At first, when I tried to pull up some memories, there was nothing there. It was an empty vault, but after I sat quietly for a while, a few memories started to come into focus.

I wask 17 and planning on attending the Friday night football game when my mom and I decided we just had to have nachos from Christy's Pizza. We lived on a very busy street, and it was rush hour. A long line of cars was parked outside our house waiting at a stop light. A driver signaled for my mom to turn in front of him. As she turned, we were t-boned -- just steps from our house.

While we were waiting for the police to come, my mom said two things to me. "Don't tell your dad we were going to get nachos." A few minutes later she started laughing, "When that car hit us, I looked over and your little body was just bouncing around." To illustrate, she raised her arms and jerked her body. I don't remember laughing, but she loved that story.

Later, when I was living in Raleigh and she was visiting, we went to lunch. We had finished eating and were waiting for our check. She placed her hands in the middle of the table, palms down, and fingers spread. She leaned toward me.

"Mindy, let me ask you something," she said. I closed my eyes. Here comes the why-don't-you-go-to-church talk. "Why have you plucked all of your eyebrows off?" I was startled, but I knew what she was talking about. Just days before, I saw a picture of myself, and my eyebrows looked as though they were disappearing. I had been plucking them, but I had no idea that they were almost gone. By the time my mom intervened, I had what one may call half-eyebrows.

About that time, the waiter brought the check. I reached my hand into my purse to find my wallet and something flew out of my purse and fell onto the table between us. It was my tweezers.

"Melinda, that's your problem. You gotta get rid of those tweezers." She just shook her head and leaned back, letting me pay the check.

Then, there was a moment that I hadn't thought about for years until a few months ago. I don't know what brought it to mind. I was a teenager, and my family and I were driving to Florida for Spring break to see my aunt and cousins. My dad liked to leave at some ungodly hour to beat the Atlanta morning commute. This year, he was not successful.

When we stopped for a break, my mom told me about a woman she had seen while they were slowly moving through Atlanta. She was in a Porsche, she said. Her hair was blonde and pulled back in a sleek ponytail.

"She was beautiful and you could just tell she was successful," my mom said. "I want that to be you."

My mom and dad did not go to college, but it was very important to her that I go. And I did. I went to college as a "first-generation college student," as they say today. I went on to build a pretty strong resume. I led a communications department. My car was pretty nice. I mean, it wasn't the black Chevy Chevette I drove in college, so that was something. My hair? Well, it was touch and go -- kind of like the eyebrows. Today, my work is a very important part of my life, and I believe it all started with that conversation.

I could say more about that conversation, and the path it set me on. And there are many more memories I am sure I could share about my dear Vera, but they seem to be stuck in the vault. They will bust out soon I am sure.