Fingernails

I had dinner with her last night at her Assisted Living facility. She made a reservation for me, and I had tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich and green beans with her. She's been there a week, and has found a couple of regular table-mates.

I'm struggling with how to tell this story... that goes back decades and that is anew today.

My sister tells me that my emails to family are mostly about the facts, the business of moving our mother to this new phase in her life. About boxes and moving and plans for this and that. Not enough about the emotional tolls and her physical losses. Maybe I paint the skeleton but need the meat and flesh to really tell the story. I'll do that here, I guess.

Well, some other time I'll tell about how she was. Just one bit for now: a strong memory, one of my few, is of her sitting at a table painting her fingernails bright red. I was maybe 6 or 7. It was the 1950s. She was going out with my dad somewhere.

Last week, I cut her fingernails which were caked with filth and were so long they were curling. I shaped them and painted them pink. I cut her toenails. I think it was the most I've touched her in decades. What a difference a half-century makes.

Do those two snippets tell the story I intend? That this glamorous woman who took pride in her appearance, who hosted fancy parties in cocktail dresses and drank martinis, who was runner-up for Miss Kansas ... she now would walk unaware in a stained shirt with filth under her fingernails.

And, OK then, what does that mean for me? for my future? am I destined to sit in my filth? who will hold my hand as they care for my unkempt nails?