Instead of just down the street, my sister-in-law Amy is now two and a half hours away, outside Boston, where her daughter lives. Amy had been in a relatively cheerful assisted living place, but a seizure, broken kneecap, and her rapidly deepening dementia relegated her to a cinderblock nursing home where she gets round-the-clock hospice comfort care. Most of the time she sleeps, which is what she was doing when Hannah, Sam, and I drove up to visit her over the weekend.
The nurse tried elevating the head of her hospital bed to rouse her, but Amy dozed undeterred. We took turns holding her hand and talking softly to her. Intermittently, some awareness or expression would animate her face, but random flickers aside, we were okay to be there and love her without overt reciprocation.
Her old-school radio on the bedside table was (of course) set to NPR, which droned softly in the background. Behind a thin fabric privacy drape, Amy’s invisible roommate blasted some true crime show about catching a pervert. When we held Amy’s warm hand, she held ours, and tightly, which may have been reflexive, but it felt good to hope otherwise.
Just before we left, I whispered in her ear thank you, I love you. It’s gonna be okay. You got this. That’s when Amy came back from where she’s been, where she is, to say, very clearly, no.