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Her voice carries through the long hallways of a continuing care retirement community, "Where life is better among friends." I recognize the song as I pass the door totems of flags and crosses, family photos pinned to bulletin boards and cross-stitched squares that promise devotion to love, God and the Chicago Bears.
In the atrium my mother sings the Louis Armstrong standard On the Sunny Side of the Street, and all the defences I have constructed to deal with coming here melt away.
"Grab your coat and get your hat, Leave your worries on the doorstep, Life can be so sweet, On the sunny side of the street."
She stands fenced in by her walker that, for unknown reasons, she has named George. A pianist less than half her age accompanies her, and a small knot of residents is gathered in front.
My mother sways and gestures dramatically. She draws out each word with exaggerated vibrato, reminding everyone that this is no ordinary performance. This is her Chicago Opera House, where she once auditioned unsuccessfully for the Lyric Opera.
Mom looks past the other residents to some distant territory only she inhabits. That vague stare is a new development and finding her blue eyes when we talk is increasingly problematic. She is so easily distracted and alarmingly disorganized. She squirrels money away in her one-room apartment and then forgets where she hid it. Her thoughts are an endless loop and she often gets stuck on certain unrealistic ideas: "I need to get over to the park district and sign up for tennis lessons."
Mom might not know the correct month or year, but she can sing from memory more than 50 songs from her musical catalogue. And she sings all the time – to the nurses aides, to social workers and to fellow residents.
I wonder how long it will be before she no longer recognizes me. She is so fragile, losing weight, but still vainly watching her carb intake. Hugging her is like holding a skeleton. I urge her to eat more ice cream. "I don't like that soft serve stuff," she counters.
Her drugs are now monitored, kept in a locked box, an endless sore point for her. "Everyone is controlling me. I worked so hard at being my own person," she complains with tears in her eyes. But then she smiles and sings the Dean Martin hit You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You while staring at the television that is always on, even when she sleeps.
I stop a few yards from her to watch the performance. Her singing frames my past. At White Sox games, her voice drowned out the other voices during the national anthem. When she prepared for work in the mornings, she would apply toxic clouds of hairspray while belting out Rodgers and Hammerstein show tunes.
As a child growing up in small-town Iowa she suffered mysterious fits. She would hide away with her Nancy Drew mysteries down in the cool root cellar where Grandpa's sauerkraut fermented. Before the correct diagnosis of epilepsy, my grandmother said God was punishing her for being a bad girl. She was fraught with low self-esteem, a sense of never accomplishing anything.
Mom did not want me to suffer the same constraints her own mother placed on her. When I turned 10, she handed me some quarters and a map of Chicago and said, "Learn the subway and bus system. Put yourself forward into the world."
By the time I turned 17, I was living in an off-the-grid cabin in southwestern Colorado. She began to refer to me as her butterfly.
"You come home, flit around and then you leave." Except for occasional holiday visits, I would not return for good until 30 years later. By then, everything had changed.
"I used to walk in the shade with them blues on parade, Now I'm not afraid – this rover has crossed over."
As I watch her sing and as I reflect over the past two years of mental and physical deterioration, I wonder where my mother has gone. Where is that beautiful blonde with the perfect posture? Where are the men who would hound her for dates, push a few bucks in my hands and tell me to get lost? Where is the emotional fierceness that would bedevil me and, most surprisingly, why do I miss it?
As often happens, my own anxiety keeps me from noticing the obvious: Mom is more content than I have ever seen her. All the disappointment and bitterness have been packed away in some distant attic.
I used to dread talking to her on the phone because our conversations would last up to an hour as she recounted in angry tones each and every slight. Now, when I call her and ask her how her day went, she says, "The tree outside my window is turning red. It's so beautiful."
Can it really be that dementia is the reason she has forgotten the chronic unpleasantries of her life? It really does not matter. She has found the Be Here Now state that people spend thousands of dollars to attain. And, although she might not realize it, on this afternoon, in this most unlikely of venues, the stage is hers. The audience – some of whom are now dozing – love her for the singer she is, not for what she did not become.
Stephen J. Lyons lives in Monticello, Ill.