Forget Me Not

Forget Me Not

By Anna Kate Matheson

I knew this call was coming but I didn’t think it would be today. On a Saturday when the sun was shining and the sky was bright blue. I was with her yesterday- she didn’t know who I was but that wasn’t unusual. Her room was bare; when she first moved to the centre I’d brought a photo of me, my brother Eddie and Dad. Not to stir her memory- as the doctors told me time and time again: ‘Your mother is not going to remember.’ I just needed to know she had faces of the ones she loved around her. Faces that were familiar even if she couldn’t remember why. I placed the frame on her bedside table, but when I visited her the next day it was gone.

I found the family picture of us on the bare table of a patient named Rose. The picture was taken on Mum’s fortieth birthday, at our old house. She wore a pink dress, her dark, straight hair was curled. Dad had his arm around her and wore blue jeans with a white shirt. I stood beside him wearing a white dress covered in sunflowers. My brown hair was in messy ringlets and my lips sparkled from the lip gloss Mum put on. Eddie stood next to me looking over in the distance with his mouth open. I remember him calling out, ‘Mum there serving the cake now!’ We laughed as the bright light of the camera flashed. 

I picked up the photo to put back in Mum's room, then paused when I felt someone beside me. ‘That photo was taken on my husband Jim’s forty-fourth birthday,’ Rose said smiling at the picture. ‘There’s me, my daughter Suzanne and my son James. It was in September and we had it in the local hall in Hunua. I baked a chocolate cake and James helped me decorate it with sprinkles and hundreds and thousands. We hired a band, I can’t remember the name. They were very good though, we danced all night long and I had to throw my heels off by the end of it.’

 I looked over at her, her skin was wrinkled and thin silver glasses were perched on her nose. Her white hair was in two curlers and her hands shook as she held onto her walking stick. She looked at the photo with such joy that all I could do was say, ‘You have a beautiful family Rose,’ then place the photo on her bedside table.

Before Mum went to the centre she’d forget smaller things like her keys, credit card number, or she’d turn the oven on then get distracted. One day dad came home to the oven beeping and thick black smoke covering the kitchen. When she came home he yelled, all she could do was cry and pull a handkerchief with a blue forget me not out of her pocket. After that, she started forgetting where she was going, her name, our names, where she lived. One day she called me up shouting, ‘There’s a stranger in my house Chloe.’ Her tears mixed with mine as I tried to explain that the stranger was her husband. That she’d been married to my dad for fifty-two years. 

As sad as I was, I tried to accept why Mum didn’t remember. Even though sometimes I wanted to shake her and say, ‘Mum it’s me, it’s your daughter Chloe.’ I would tell her about the time she took me to the zoo and I fed the monkeys. How she bought me a vanilla ice cream that melted so fast and when I started crying she kissed my cheek and bought me another one. How she met my dad at a Neil Diamond concert and she didn’t like him at first because he spilled his drink on her. Then left the girl he was with to apologize after the concert finished. I’d tell her about Eddie’s first week of school when he sat at the kitchen table and said, ‘I’ve learnt everything now Mum, I don’t need to go back tomorrow.’ She’d always smile as if I was reading a movie script or someone else’s story. 

She was stuck in the past remembering her old dog Max: ‘He always sneaks out and eats the bread we leave out for the birds,’ she’d tell me. Or she’d ask my dad when he’d visit, ‘Why do your parents let you go home and I have to stay here?’ When Eddie called in after work one day she was in the garden looking up at the centre. ‘I’m thinking of selling this place,’ she said to him. ‘It’s far too big for me.’ When Eddie told me over the phone we both laughed half-heartedly. What else could we do? The Mum we knew was slipping through our fingertips and it was getting harder to hold on.

I was with her yesterday- she was sitting on her bed gazing out the window at the roses which blew in the breeze. ‘I think my garden needs more flowers,’ she said dreamily. ‘Maybe forget me nots they do well this time of year.’ She didn’t look sick, that was the hardest part to grasp. Her dark brown hair was still in its same straight bob, she used the same Estee Lauder perfume, Lily of the Valley hand cream and rose-coloured lipstick. She wore a floral top, slacks, and a pink cardigan- on her finger she wore her gold wedding band even though she couldn’t remember why. She looked up at me her cloudy eyes flickered in the light, ‘You look just like my daughter Chloe,’ she said. Then turned back to the garden, ‘Though she’s a lot younger than you, she turned ten last October.’ 

I knew this call was coming to say Mum had finally slipped away. I just didn’t think would be today. On a Saturday when the sun was shining and the sky was bright blue.