Someone on the Move

“I feel like a misplaced person.”
Mom repeats herself, like a myna bird.
“I feel like a misplaced person."
She wants to go home.
She is home.

“This is just temporary,”

Mom says for the tenth time.
“This is just temporary.”
She’s slipping away.
She repeats herself.

“We’re going home tomorrow.”

Ninety years old, in assisted living.
“I know, I know,” I say.
It is heart breaking.
A lifetime is missing.

This was a news story primarily about moving to a new house.  The reporter compared her move to her mother’s move to assisted living.  I selected words that transformed this into a poem about a different kind of move, a “remove” if you will, as a lifetime of memories is removed from the brain.

The last line was not in the story.  I pulled words from different paragraphs to create it because I thought “A lifetime is missing.” Was a great metaphor.”

© 2012 Catherine Giordano

This picture was taken from http://moderatealsheimers.com