Free The Light of Day by Kristen Kehoe Page A

something else that prompts me to speak first.
                  “How is she?”
                  He doesn’t flinch, but his smile falters a bit before he clears his throat.  “As good as can be expected, I guess.  You know your mother.”
                  “Not really,” I say and feel like a child.  Since it’s the truth, I refuse to feel badly about saying it.
                  He clears his throat again.  “She just finished a round of tests with the doctors again, blood work and all of that.  They’re still trying to pinpoint the exact stage she’s in based on memory loss, gaps in social habits and other things in order to complete her overall timeline.  They say this will give us a clearer view of expected years.”
                  It takes me more than a minute to process his words, and finally it hits me.  Expected years.  Life.  My mother isn’t battling a disease anymore; there is no battling this.  What she’s battling for is time, for life.  And it’s a battle she knows she’s ultimately going to lose.
                  Almost two years ago, my mother was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease.  The only reason it was even detected was because she went in for her routine physical and her doctor discovered there were holes in her answers; lapses of time where she was fuzzy, incomplete in her memories of what had happened.  When he asked if she’d had a concussion recently, she couldn’t answer him.
                  This led to tests which led to more tests and finally, at the end of it all, their diagnosis was confirmed: early onset Alzheimer’s, a disease that is usually fatal within ten years of the first sign.  Only, those estimated years don’t take into account the actual living years for the person suffering.  They don’t explain what it’s like to live with someone who’s so afraid of not remembering you, she chooses to forget you before her mind does it for her.
                  I haven’t seen my mother in almost a year, not since right before I went to rehab and she was beginning her slow transition away from the world and into solitude.  I was broken from the divorce, devastated from the failure I felt surrounded every choice I’d ever made, and she was the person to tell me that being disappointed was what living was about.  She looked right at me and I knew what she wasn’t saying: I had disappointed her, so it was only fitting that life handed some of that back to me.  And then she walked away, just like Rafe, and I decided giving up on life was easier than feeling as useless and unwanted as I felt at that moment.
                  Looking at my father now, all these months later, I wonder what it’s been like for him to watch the woman he’s loved and cared for his entire adult life, fall victim to her memories, growing angrier with every one that fades.
                  “I’m sorry,” I say and feel like a failure.  I don’t have the words to express what I feel; an inherited trait from the very woman we’re speaking of.  My mother could never talk to me unless it was to tell me exactly what I was lacking, and I had followed suit.  By the time I turned eighteen, we could go days on end without uttering so much as a word to one another, and if one slipped through, it was always hostile.
                  My dad doesn’t call me on my absent response, though, he just nods.  And then, as if he’s just remembered who I am, he reaches out and places his hand on my shoulder.  It’s a small gesture, one that shouldn’t hold so much weight, but in my family, touching — like communicating — isn’t something we do.
                  “I’m sorry, too, Cora, for a lot of things.”  He clears his throat and drops his hand, sipping from the glass he holds in the other.  “Margaret tells me Mia’s moving back