You know, it lifted  my spirits. The whiteboard next to the dining room. In green and red ink: Holiday Special / stollen and eggnog / with or without brandy. And my mind flipped to merry olde Wisconsin. Seventies-era fun in dim bars. Faux leather seats in paneled rooms, glasses of beer and Old Fashioneds on wreath-trimmed napkins. A three-piece combo ragging in the background, barely heard over a buzzed crowd laughing, smoking. The occasional flirtatious shriek.

Today we enter a well-lit basement room next to the laundry. The scent of laundry-softener. The folks’ dinner partner, who fell last week—gone. Like many spouses. And dogs. Those quarantined for pneumonia behind doors hung with blue plastic, pockets stuffed with face masks, disposable gloves, yellow protective gowns.

Mom wears a copper-colored sweater, beige stretch pants one size smaller than when first admitted. Her leopard print sneakers make her the envy of the second floor. She leaves her hearing aids at bedside, the dainty machinery too delicate for Parkinson’s-clumsy fingers. Aides seat us, circulate with plates of pastry, paper cups filled with thick nog.

I think of us then in our cold Christmas past. Remember the ache that rushed into our living room whenever the front door opened? How predictably frigid the temperatures? Icy vinyl seats. A thin whistle of heat from the front vents.  

I’m already hot in my novelty turtleneck.

We sit across the table from a stranger in a wheelchair. His first social get-together, he claims. Though blind now, he loves to read, spends his days with a Fresnel magnifier. He knows the west: Idaho, Utah. Wyoming. Yellowstone, where our parents fell in love in 1948. The stranger likes westerns. Too many romance novels in the library here, he says. His son mails him paperbacks. He can hardly tear himself away to eat.

Dad wears cowboy boots and jeans, a snap western shirt. He rouses himself out of his Alzheimer’s addle, mentions the woman next door in Missoula, a widow who loved Ranch Romance magazine, how she handed piles of slick issues to our Uncle Bud. Every now and then Dad saw them in his brother’s trash.

Mom begins to stand. Dad wriggles forward to reach the edge of his chair, pushes himself up against their ornate wooden arms. The two toddle behind deluxe aluminum walkers to the elevator. An aide pushes the western-loving bookworm.

Mom’s quiet. Later, she tells  me how she enjoyed remembering high, dry places. Dusty vegetation, glaciers seen from across the lake. She’s a crossword and thriller type, rarely looks back, but she does so now, to the one she didn’t marry, a rancher from eastern Washington. Nice guy, she repeats several times. Seventy years ago, she declined his offer of sage and steppe, cattle and isolation. Picked the tall Montanan in a Pendleton jacket instead. The guy with empty pockets.

I was with her last week when she paid for her funeral policy: two dozen roses for the altar. A pink onyx urn. A tree-shaded plot on a bluff above the river, where a shared headstone waits, names and birth dates ready for another number to be filled in.

Until then, there’s people here to meet. New desserts to try. A few more great grandkids to be born.  

Back at the room, Dad disappears again behind open eyes. She picks up the remote, her fingers struggling for Jeopardy. I say goodbye until tomorrow. I need a nap now. They exhaust me.  

– Margaret Coombs

Author’s Note: When this story occurred, the assisted living facility was still new to my mother, and it seemed full of stimulation. The pandemic lockdown put an end to that. I like to remember her this way: hopeful, curious, and reflective about her emotional history.