Mom

She just sits there, mostly. Where she used to waltz around, barking orders, butting in on conversations, asking if everyone has had enough to eat, she now just sits. When she does offer conversation it's usually sudden and incongruent. "How's everyone doing your way?" she asks me out of the blue, right as my brothers are in the middle of ranting about something unimportant. I just answer that we're all okay. Silence follows.

Her right hand shakes, not tremulously but noticeably, but she takes it in her left to control it. It's an unconditioned reaction. You can tell. You just can.

I've begun driving her to Church on Saturday afternoons, even though I don't like her Church. But it satisfies my Sunday obligation, and, though it's the only driving she had still until then done, we feel she should not do that. And it was Dad's Church, Dad's Mass, so it's important to her to go there. She's an usher, like he was, and she smartly marches down her aisle collecting donations, although the other guy handles the cash.

She seems to like my being there, to drive and at Church. She introduces me as her son to the same people I met last week. I pretend it is new. So do they, bless their souls.

I'm no martyr. My brothers, especially Phil, bear the brunt of her illness. I do next to nothing. But the parents raise the kids, then the kids raise the parents, eh?

The trouble is, the kids know the endgame.