Page 7 of Changing Lanes

“Ms. Christensen, would you like me to put that somewhere for you?” I nod my head toward her lap where the picture rests.

She finally registers someone talking and meets my stare.

Please.

I don’t even know what I’m begging for really. The same thing I always do, I guess. If not recognition, then just peace. That’s all any of us can hope for. It’s hard enough watching someone lose themselves along with their memories but it’s worse when they turn into a different version they never even showed traces of before.

Slowly, she lifts her hand and, on reflex, I jerk back an inch. Her palm caresses my cheek, robbing all of my breath. After only a moment’s hesitation, I lean into her touch, inhaling the once comforting smell mixed with a scent that now reminds me of the dozens of other residents I care for.

Tears cloud my vision and I squeeze my eyes shut. This is the last thing she needs but the only thing I want. I may be a well-trained nurse now but I’ve been a daughter my whole life.

“Mom?”

Her hand drops back to her lap and I open my watery eyes to see her focused on the parked cars once again.

Shit.

She was here, right here, but now she’s gone. In an instant that feels more like a lifetime.

I sit back on my heels, wiping at my face, and let my gaze linger, just…watching her. Assessing her. Loving her.

Missing her.

She hasn’t recognized me or any of her four other kids ever since she was moved to another care facility last year, but her momentary tenderness gave me that false hope that eats away at me faster than the disease consuming her memories.

Her eyes are vacant already as she stares at nothing.

Just like before today’s move.

Knowing the picture isn’t helping matters, I move to grab it but as soon as my fingers pinch it, my mother’s hand slams down on mine, and the movement sends the picture fluttering to the floor. Our heads drop to watch but neither of us move otherwise.

“I miss him,” she whispers, and my heart pinches. It aches. It bleeds. For her. For me.

Desperate to clear my throat, I choke out, “Who?”

“My David.”

She states it like it’s perfectly normal. Like she’s not ripping my world apart with her frail hands sporting dusty-rose pink nail polish. One name, two words, and the room is closing in on me. The walls are pushing closer until the air begins to thin, forcing me to breathe deeply through my nose while waiting for the pressure to wane.

My David. She remembers him. My father who’s been dead for well over a decade. That’s the thing about this disease. It lies. It digs its deceitful talons into you, holding you hostage because you’re so caught up in the false optimism that lying bitch Hope lures you into.

I angle my face to the side, sending up a silent “fuck you” to Hope and her torturous games.

“Is that him?” I ask, pointing to the picture. The picture of my entire family captured on a 4x6 rectangle. My parents—when my dad was still alive—my four brothers, and me. It’s funny how whole generations can be immortalized on a piece of fucking paper, a pathetic excuse of a material, but completely erased from a person’s brain, one of the most complex organs in the human body.

No matter what doctors say, I believe the heart is where these snippets are kept. Buried deep down away from the deceptions the brain notoriously plays on us. The fabrications we make ourselves believe during moments of intense heartbreak. Except it isn’t our heart at all, it’s our head telling us we hurt, warning us away from the danger. So, we hide those most precious memories where no amount of trickery can reach, where we feel without thinking, like breathing without trying—our hearts. While disease is busy rifling through the brain, searching for anything it can ruin and twist and manipulate, the heart protects each individual memory, only allowing clips to shine through for brief flashes before tucking them away again for safekeeping. I just hope my mom’s heart is strong enough to store all of us in there. Big enough to fit our large, overbearing, crazy-as-hell family.

The problem is humans are inherently greedy, always wanting more of what we can’t have. And I’m no exception, yearning for my mother’s love again like a starving seagull scouring the beach for leftovers. I’ll take whatever I can get but still want more. Always more. The shell of my mother who Alzheimer’s has carelessly left behind will never fulfill me in the maternal way I crave but, just like the idiotic bird, I continue to wait, hovering in the crosswinds, eagerly hunting for any scrap of her past self, whether it’s shown organically or I have to bear my own claws and fight for a glimmer.

That’s one of the reasons why she’s here now—with me. Between all my brothers, they were able to pay for her to live in a different place, but it wasn’t good enough. Not even close. Working in the same field, I wanted her close so I had a better chance at catching those rare bits of my mother’s old self, so I’ve been saving up for months and even gave up my beloved single-bedroom apartment.

I considered moving into my brother Jesse’s spare room, but I couldn’t do it. Seeing my own despair every day in the mirror is bad enough without adding his pain. We’re all suffering without our mother but I can’t step in as a cut-rate second-hand replacement. I won’t. We’ve already been there, done that, got the butt-ugly t-shirts.

Having four older brothers and no father meant exactly what you’d think—overprotective assholes on power trips constantly watching my every move and not allowing me a life of my own. They thought they needed to band together to give me—the baby of the family—a father figure. As much as I love them for it, they also blurred the lines between sibling and parent which ultimately became confusing for everybody.

Once I graduated high school and moved out, my life finally began, and it was great experiencing all the things I’d been denied. Any spare minute I had outside of nursing school and the part-time job I somehow managed to stay awake for was filled with vices of my own—the three B’s: booze, boys, and bikes. Unfortunately, it was all cut short with Mom’s diagnosis, ending my dabble in debauchery quicker than it started.

I’d still prefer to live with Paul Bunyan and The Babe than those turds though. Nick is the worst. Only one year older than I am, he made it his personal mission to spoil any and all fun for me that he himself partook in greedily. We’re the closest of the five siblings but we also fight the worst. Love hard, fight harder—that’s Nicky and me. All of us really.