I am a care giver for my aging mother.

Not much humor in that.

Bittersweet at times maybe,

frustrating, yes!

But funny not so much.

 

If it were anyone else’s mother with dementia

I might find humor in how this lady dresses now.

She was always a clothes horse and

conscious of fashion and her appearance.

 

Now she wears gym pants with a racing stripe,

A gauzy cotton Indian shirt with a nylon nightgown on top

and a big white sun hat with a blue flower on it.

Around the house.

 

Or an orange satin mu-mu over blue jeans

with a green cotton t-shirt over the dress

and a grey furry winter hat that she loves. Why?

To run away from home with her walker. (She’s tried.)

 

A backwards printed top over inside out pants

rolled up at the cuff, because “that’s how

all the girls wear them this season.” And a purse she made

that is covered in buttons and has nothing inside.

 

She loves to squirrel things away.

 

When she passes, I’m sure we will finally find

her two sets of hearing aids, her two missing

pairs of glasses, the gold coins she has always

accused me of taking, and her four missing hairbrushes.

 

They’ll be with assorted fancy cookie and candy boxes

that she thought too pretty to throw away.

Near my Dad’s practically new black cowboy boots

and the baseball that used to be in the toe of them.

He died in 2004.

 

And we can’t forget the pictures! Pictures of herself

that she swears are her mother.

Pictures of her children that she swears are not hers.

Plus perfume and lipsticks that are too old to use.

But so is she. And so am I.

And both getting older every day.