a. Coal-fire warmth & a pall of cigarette smoke w/ news buzz on TV. Dad lights up & watches a newscaster while I’m in an armchair, legs wrapped around Mam in front. My cheek rests on the Persil-scented cotton of her dress as, one by one, she snips my toenails.

b. A universe of hurts gone by, I take your hand, veined but capable, while your sensory faculties falter, and we shuffle to the idling car, your ankles thickened and spine bowed. Your stoic isolation/solitude is a grief to me, my mother disenfranchised from opportunity, poetry, and wonder. (50)

c. His early-onset dementia collapses his personality but makes him smile to see his wife. He eats oranges from her hand, his sour green apples forgotten. She enjoyed her children when they were babies, and this virtual infant compensates for years of his hard drinking and neglect. When he dies of pneumonia, she snubs anyone who says it’s a blessing. (47)

d. I always liked virtual reality, stories of me, but never where I am nor who you think I am. I inhabit a figment who stamps her flamenco heels on her enemies, who rides a blazed stallion over the virgin prairie. Who calls to you from the shadows.

A daughter’s solicitude is determined by her mother’s frailty and isolation, though she keeps busy with puzzles to block the velleities of her 90 spent years: no regrets for dreams unfulfilled or her evasion of consequence for a refusal to see and failure to love. (39)

He’s a second-career abstract artist and she a college administrator nearing retirement, perfectly happy in late-life love. Dinner is always home-cooked and shared over pass&play Scrabble, spelling or score immaterial in exquisite moments together.

No fantastical hopes left for Mom’s recovery. There’s only grief, splintered memories, and time, though Mom has fraught inward conversations as if she bargains for a quick end or a reprieve. Or is she telling secrets that refuse to face the posthumous chill of judgment.