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The harkening hours of the day close rapidly and I find it hard to contest any adoration for my mum. I have always loved my mum, but has she really loved me deeply? If she loved me deeply, would she so easily have forgotten my face. The day I was conceived, the sound of my first cries should still be attached to the earlobe of her memory. Every turn of my body should show her the life I built for myself that so heavily involved her. The caesarean scar on my stomach shows she has three loving grandkids who can't understand why grandma stops making cookies or is in the hospital. The bruise on my left knee has been there since I was five. It bore the mark of me playing too rough with the boys in our neighbourhood, wanting to be tough but ending in the back of an ambulance with a broken tooth, flesh scarred hands and a knee in a cast, heavily kissed by her lips. I'm still conscious of it like it was yesterday. She is not conscious of anything. Anything that means something to me, I suppose.  

The fact that she will remember me for a split moment, an hour, a day even. Then, she’s taken away from me. The black hole that she came out of quickly warps her back into a reality that is not in the present world. The world where she is my mum, and I am her daughter.  

I cry alone sometimes. I have no choice. If I cry to my husband, he tries to fix it which he can't do. Bless him. He hates seeing me like this. I can't cry in front of my friends. They think a good therapist and a glass of wine cures the biggest life altering moment that I 've ever experienced. Wine and therapy cost money; the money I’m paying for my mum to have proper care. I can't cry in front of the kids. NEVER IN FRONT OF THE KIDS. That would make me senile. An Unfit mother bent on sending her children to social services.  

People judge me when I tell them my mom is in a nursing home. They say "oh" and its ever so weighted. It really means how could you send your mother away. The one who has loved you and cared for you. Nourished you from her own body. Listened to you when you were stupid and silly. Worried sick about you when you were out late with your friends. They call me selfish. They call me spoilt. Spoilt? I can't even afford basic food groceries looking after my mum and they have the audacity to call me spoilt. People say anything without knowing the true facts. Here’s a true fact; I'm broke in money and heart. Truly heartbroken.   

I don't know what set it off. The forgetfulness. It was gradual. Forgetting what she had for breakfast. Forgetting she had left the shop without paying. Parking in the neighbour's garden. Forgetting her name and her late husband’s. Then just forgetting everything, as if the whole world had stopped existing around her. How can she possibly forget? Mums shouldn't forget anything.   

It was us gals, me and my mum against the world. When things would go wrong, I would go straight to her house. (Which everyone in the family is fighting over by the way. How pathetic.)  A couple of brews later we're watching TV and acting as if I hadn't sobbed myself senseless of how useless I was. My mum got me. If I wasn't in her face she was in my ear, and we would chat on the phone a minimum three hours on end about what we were up to. Now, I can barely form a sentence. Sometimes hardly a word. I hate that I can’t talk to her. I hate it.  

So, to the people that tell me that I sent mum to a nursing home they are wrong. I sent a shell of something that contained my mum. She still breathes and lives in my heart. There are photos which breathe life about her all over the room. I still see her sometimes in my mind. The way she smiled with her mouth like it was stitched to her heart. Before she had smiled with intention. She would’ve never smiled if she didn’t mean it. Now, she only smiles clinically. Stone cold. Heartless. I remember when she would dance confidently around the kitchen when the radio played. She could never dance now but I remember her dancing so badly and I miss it. I would never send my mum to a nursing home if I couldn't cope. I really couldn't.  

To end my silly rant, I shall place you all in the present, It's Christmas day. I get her all dressed up in red, the way she usually loved to look back when. I doll her up and she doesn't fight like she used to. She just lets me powder her with foundation that takes off ten years and apply what was once her favourite dark red lipstick. That red gown that she had been trying to fit in for years finally fits perfectly, perhaps a bit loose. (she hadn't been eating properly but she’s slowly on the mend) I almost cry remembering how she longed to fit back in the dress she implies got her “Chad” (that’s her late husband).  Now she just looks in the mirror and says, “that’s very nice dear.” That’s okay. I’ll remember it for her.  

I pray for her to remember. I look for it in her body. I pray I would see it in her eyes. Even if it didn't transmit to any other part just let it be confined in the brown pupils which I have gazed at many a times. Her body language says it all. She doesn't know where she is. It is only in her eyes or I'm I imagining it? I want her to remember so bad that I conjure up the hope in her very eyes. I sigh with the lump and pressure of keeping down tears. I see you mom. I miss you. I love you.