Heresy

   Would I risk my life to save the cat? Maybe.

   Would I risk my life to save my Mom? Absolutely.

   Would I risk my life to save what remains of Mom?

   I worry that distant relatives are offended that I write about "the sweet little person who used to be" my mother.
   But I'm trying to be truthful.
   People should be offended — everyone should be offended — if I were refusing to use the word "person." Mom and also other demented people I've met where she lives are manifestly still persons. She has an emotional presence and awareness of herself as an individual. She claims the word "I."
   Being demented doesn't make her a nothing.

   In March last year, just before we put her in hospice, she was vomiting and vomiting, and as the  aide held her head, she stopped saying, "I'm sorry, I can't help it" and looked directly at me and said, "I love you. So. Much."

   Her dementia isn't any more profound today than it was last March.

   Does Mom's dementia make her something less than human, the equivalent of, say, a pet animal?
   Now there's a suggestion that stops me: I might even call that an obscene thought.
   But let's dare to think about it.
   Pets, at least all the cats and dogs I've known, are distinct personalities. Each one has value ... But how much of that value do I invest in them? Biologists say that we layfolks anthropomorphize like crazy, reading into pets a reciprocity of feeling that they can not truly share.
   And yet I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that our cat Mackey would mourn Michael's absence were he to vanish. That cat would be crushed, bereft.

   If I died, Mom wouldn't remember I was dead long enough to mourn me. Mom doesn't suffer.

   She might have a blue moment, and she can be weary and regretful about being "old"; when she realizes she can't remember something, her face contracts in what looks like pain. But give her a smile and very quickly she's grinning. She's eager to be happy and cheerful.
   I have seen her break down one time in the past 16 months: The afternoon I foolishly answered her request that we go to my house by saying that we couldn't, ever.
   That day she wept. And I bawled.
   I woke up the next morning weeping again — because it had occurred to me as a possibility — and then I realized it was true — that she had been crying in reaction to my crying. In trying to be truthful, I had been cruel.

   "Let's go to your house now."
   "Sure. What do you want for dinner?"