Who are you and what did you do with my mom?

This morning my mom walked to the livingroom this morning from her bedroom--it's a small house so the distance is short--but it was too much for her and she needed to rest at length on the livingroom couch. So I brought her tea there instead of to our usual spot in the dining room. She sat and looked through a magazine and sipped her tea and stared at length at the carpet. By and by she said, "Oh...(sigh)...I just wish I could go to sleep, and wake up, and feel good." When she says things like this my throat closes up and I have to fight my emotions back into control. I said, "I know, Mom. I wish you could, too," and I gave her a long hug. After that, she needed to go back to sleep. She is so exhausted and space-out most of the time that she doesn't seem much like the mom I've known all my life. She stares off into space a lot. Or she'll page through the damndest periodicals (TV Guide, my sister's Tack and Tog catalog, etc.) and scrutinize the text as though it's the most fascinating thing ever. I think it's because she's trying to make sense out of typewritten words, a thing of this world, when she's on her way to the next world. Now and again she'll be my old mom: last night she caught me scratching a mosquito bite and said "Let me take care of that." She examined it closely, then said, "No--it doesn't need a band-aid." Or she'll quaver out the melody of jazz standard. She can still sing, though she can't hold a note, this woman who used to captivate audiences. My old mom. I just want her back. It's so trite to say it, but I feel it so deeply: I just want my mom.
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My dear and longstanding friend L. came today to sit with me a while. She came bearing daffodils, one of my mom's favorite spring flowers. She lost her mother recently to cancer, and so she knows what I'm going through. Just her silent presence makes me feel better, particularly now when I feel so isolated and I yearn for company. L. is familiar with what's been going on, and she knows what's coming, and somehow she knows just what to say to me, because she's been there and felt much of what I'm feeling. We went shopping for groceries together, and I felt better afterward doing something chummy like that. Now she's gone and I have a chicken in the oven baking with garlic and lemon and some fresh rosemary from the garden.