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in Colorado Springs. At the time I hadn’t seen her for a couple of weeks, but she’d been okay then. But after I hung up I drove out there and found her playing solitaire in a threadbare robe with food rotting on the counter. I’d taken her to the ER and they’d admitted her at once. She had a temperature, was dehydrated and confused. She spent five days in the hospital and two weeks in a nursing home getting her strength back. It had all happened so fast, but her doctor told me that wasn’t unusual. I swore it would never happen again.
    While I was sorting through her finances, trying to figure out what she could afford, I learned about her “investments.” My mother hadn’t put up an argument when I suggested she make me power of attorney and had let me move her to Oak Park and into the two-bedroom apartment I’d been renting. To say it was a disaster was to say that the Civil War was a misunderstanding. Part of the problem was that she had no one, except me, to talk to. She refused to go to the senior center, which she said was filled with “old, simple people.” (I’m sure they missed her too.) But she hated being alone— which seemed odd for someone who had lived a significant part of her life alone, but her doctor assured me that this was fairly normal. Whenshe was awake, she needed to be talking to someone, and I was it. And she could be awake most of the night. I hired a series of caregivers to spend some time with her, but my mother drove one after the other away, like a batter fouling off pitches. I wasn’t sleeping much and found myself snapping at her for no good reason. I had trouble concentrating and wasn’t getting my work done. In short, I was becoming someone I didn’t recognize. And then she wouldn’t quit smoking, which wasn’t helping her health or my asthma, not to mention the fire hazard risks. During the two and a half months we’d lived together, she had deteriorated, I was losing my mind, and I didn’t know how to stop either. And she seemed miserable as well. Getting smaller and hardening as I watched. Her doctor told me she probably didn’t have more than six months. That was when I looked into the assisted living option. I figured her savings would last six months, but I wasn’t sure that I could.
    We found Dryden in Fowler, which was a ways west of Oak Park. The deal was that I’d move out to Fowler with her and she would quit smoking. So that’s what happened. I was proud of her for quitting. I guess her (and my) health wasn’t motivation enough, but 24/7 companionship was. And I watched her savings dwindle. And now, although she freely admits she’s not up to handling her finances, she always asks about them.
    “I know I’ve asked this before,” she said, “so please forgive me, but how are my finances holding up?”
    “They’re doing fine, Mom.” I drained my glass of cabernet. “You’re in good shape.” So we both lied to each other. All the time.

    After getting my mother settled in her room, I drove across town to meet with the manager at Willoway Care Center. It was an appointment I’d put off making for way too long. I needed to make a decision on where to move my mother, and I needed to make it now. I should have begun looking for a place sooner. When I first realized that mymother’s physical health was improving, I did look at a few places. None of them measured up to Dryden. I felt good about her being there. Now, I had no choice but to move her, and I didn’t want to confront the options I had.
    Willoway Care Center had the advantage of being close. It was clean. It came with good references. And it was about to have a vacancy.
    The woman who showed me around, Jane Goodwin, smiled a lot and called the residents by name. She wore a bright yellow suit with a black blouse and reminded me of a goldfinch. In order to evaluate my mother, she had interviewed her a week ago, under the pretext of being a social worker studying the ageing process (more