text: So most days she doesn't even recognize me. And most days that's fine. It's fine because as hard as all this is, it only gets harder if she sees me as who I am--her son-- and she's made aware of the fact that the person laboring over her, feeding her, wiping away the spare soup from the corner of her mouth, listening to her mad ravings, and having to hold her and rock her in his arms until she finally calms enough to sleep, is someone she cares about; someone she loves. And other days, on the good days, I am nothing short of destroyed when she fails to recognize me; when her eyes look directly into mine while she's telling me some happy story from my *own* childhood and I think I see in her a spark of recognition only to be let down when she calls me by my father's name or, worse yet, asks me who I am. She needs more help than what I give her. She needs help dressing herself, washing herself, going to the bathroom, and I cannot help her in these ways so she has a live-in nurse to do these things for her. But in all the areas that I am qualified and capable and emotionally able to care for her, I do. I do because those exceedingly rare moments when she is both in a good mood and able to remember me make the other shitty times mostly worth it. *Mostly*. But if I don't help her as often as possible, even through the awful, gut-wrenching and heart-breaking moments, then I'll miss those rare good moments, and I know she has a very limited supply of good moments left. And in this fact there is a strange and uncomfortable reversal of life. When we're young, our parents spend as much time as they can spare watching us and interacting with us so that they can catch all of our joyous first moments. They lose their minds at our first steps, they shed tears of elation when we utter our first 'momma' or 'dadda,' they clap and cheer the first time we ride a bike without training wheels, and they cry along with us when the world first breaks our heart. We mark all of these firsts in life because as a species we value people entering the world and coming to experience all that it has to offer. We find our joy in watching a new life become a thriving member of our shared world, and we all aspire to leave our own marks in that virgin clay, to help shape a child into an adult so that some small part of who we are will live on in them. But what we almost never acknowledge is that for every first there is a last. And we never mark these events because it’s too depressing to think about. And even if we wanted to mark these occasions, we can’t because we can never know which otherwise routine moment will be the last of its kind. Still, you’ll experience exactly as many lasts as firsts in your life. It’s an unavoidable, mathematical certainty. There will be a last time you'll ride a bike, a last time you'll fall in love and a last time your heart will break. There will be a last time you'll use the words 'mom' or 'dad' out loud, a last time you talk to the people to whom those labels apply. And as I approach the limit of my mother's ability to share any sort of meaningful moments with me or anyone else, and realizing that all of her firsts are behind her, I do my best to celebrate her lasts with her in a grim and depressing way. Maybe celebrate isn't the right word ... commemorate maybe? Or simply to commiserate. I never got to share my father's lasts with him, and he hardly got to share in any of my firsts. He was taken by cancer when I was only four years old. In the many years since, everyone in my life has asked me if I remember him. All I can say is that I've always tried to. I have memories that I'm almost sure are real, but I can never be truly certain if I'm remembering events as they actually occurred or if I'm just creating an image of them based on stories that my mom has told me. But in any case, almost everything I know about my father comes from other people. I'm told he was a good man. I'm told he loved my mother and me more than anything in the world. I'm told by some people that he's watching over me from heaven. I’ve never been sure if I believe this last thing. At any rate, my mother was the only one who shared all of the firsts of my childhood with me. And together we shared many last moments, too. I actually remember the last time she ever picked me up and carried me around. I remember distinctly that she told me I was getting too heavy for her, and that soon I’d have to walk everywhere on my own, and she was right. And that was it; a last moment that no one marked or recognized or even realized until after the fact. "Daniel," her voice calls me, feebly. I look up, torn from the endless and self sustaining cycle of cynical thought that pervades my day to day existence and for a moment a smile cracks my lips. "Hey, mom," I say, "How are you feeling?" "Oh, I'm fine. How are you?" she asks, as if we're just two old friends catching up, as if this is all routine, and in a way it kind of is. I can tell she's only about halfway here, but then, so preoccupied am I with my musings and reflections on the ancient past and the near future, I'm not much more than halfway here either, I guess. Her eyes look into mine and there is a connection there. Some part of her understands that this lucidity she's experiencing is only a temporary state. There is a darkness etched into the shadows of her face by this understanding, and I can tell she longs to make some deeper connection before the ephemeral awareness passes. I know what the look on her face right now means because this has happened several times before, and it will probably happen again. But I can't *know* that. I can't know this won't be the last time she’ll be here and aware enough to know who I am. "Daniel, my baby, my boy. I love you so, so much." She has said these words or some variation of them many times before in these fleeting moments of near consciousness. "I'm going to see your father soon, you know," she says, wisely, smiling. These words she has never spoken before. At least not out loud. At least not to me. I wasn't planning on telling her that Jamie is pregnant. I couldn't see the point in it. But her mentioning my father has brought a completely unexpected emotion to the surface. "I know, mom," I say, "You know I'm going to be a dad soon, too? You're going to be a grandma." She smiles at me warmly as the recognition and the lucidity fade from her face and once again her mind recedes behind that curtain of fog beyond which I cannot hope to reach it. If this is the last time she's ever truly awake and aware again, I'm glad to have left her with something to smile about. And at the thought of never speaking to my mother again, I am suddenly and undeniably broken. I pick myself up and get all the way to the front hallway before I cannot contain the tears any longer and I let them flow. And flow. And flow. I have had endless arguments with Jamie lately about how much time I'm spending with my mom while I have a pregnant girlfriend to look after. It's not that Jamie is unsympathetic, but she grew up in foster care and has never really felt towards anyone what I feel towards my mother. And she's not wrong, either. If I'm being truly honest with myself, my mom has been gone for months already. She's still breathing, but she isn't living. I am trading feeling my child's first kicks from within my girlfriend's womb for watching my mother shed her last tears in a home she no longer knows. I am trading being a father to a child for trying to parent a parent. But this is my obligation, I tell myself, this is my duty. But now I am choosing to interpret my mother's smile as her consciousness fades away as a blessing. I believe if she could, she would say "go and be a father, you've already been a good son." But I'll never hear her say that. I'll never know if she really feels that way. I just have to trust that I knew her well enough to guess what she would want. And I suppose my guesses as to how she might interpret any given situation is all I’ll have of her going forward. I leave my mother in the nurse's care and I drive home to my girlfriend and my future child. I am leaving behind a few last moments with my mother to ensure that I don't miss too many with my child.