The Artful Trade

Mother's Day The last time my mother knew me was a few years ago on Mother's Day. She had started forgetting and remembering in the wrong order. Forgetting the things around her, remembering the distant past...like Time was suddenly dyslexic. They had her in this hospital ward for the elderly on some back street off the main drag called Memory Lane Memory Lane would be funny if it wasn’t so cruel. Sometimes living's the same way. She kept asking for a mirror but didn't recognize herself anymore. She was 17 again but trapped in an 80 year old body. A young girl staring in disbelief at the person she would become. She didn’t know her husband or daughters or sons anymore. Some days she thought I was her long dead uncle or her brother. And near the end she thought I was her father. She pleaded with me again and again to let her see that Irish boy that was just back from the war, the one that got shot in the head and survived and kept knocking on the door