I sat across from Mom on the small floral couch by the window, looking out at the maples and neatly tended gardens in the care home grounds.
“You brought yellow flowers,” she said softly. “I like yellow.”
She smiled at me like I was a stranger. Some days, I was.
Mom had been diagnosed with early-onset dementia two years earlier.
She smiled at me like I was a stranger.
I’d learned to take the good moments without asking for more.
Some days she called me by the dog’s name.