My Mother's Nightgown

By Linda Rendleman
Linda@BusinessWomenConnect.com

"When we can no longer physically hug and kiss and feel that special Mother and Daughter bond, we’ll still have our secret."

(I wrote this piece to my Mother last year for Mother’s Day.  She passed away October 2nd, 2007after a very long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.  Thank you for reading this.  God Bless our Mothers.)

My Mom and I have a secret!  It’s a secret we share with one another. We don’t have to whisper about it, because she has no words.

She doesn’t live with my Father anymore.  She has another home now. And when I walk in the nursing home, past the nurse’s station, past the wheel chairs, the recreation room with its baskets and its crafts, past the kitchen and through the locked doors to the Alzheimer’s Unit, I know she’ll connect with me with her eyes.

She knows.  She knows that when I can carve out time, I’ll be there.  She knows that my work is important and she wants me to make the best of it.  She knows my children need me.  She knows my children’s children need my contact, my touch, my love. And I theirs. She knows I’ll be there to sit with her, to feed her, to kiss her, to brush her hair, to hold her because she knows I love her.

And she knows our secret.  When I drive the hour and a half to visit her, I spend the night with my Father.  You see, that allows an evening visit and a morning visit…and time with Dad in between.

And she knows that after feeding her dinner, after our walk around the halls of the nursing home that has now become her world….the world of this woman whose been to Paris, Germany and Rome….who’s traveled the United States, baked my favorite pies, sewed dresses for my high school dances….and been there for me every time I had a broken heart……

She knows that after our visit and before I wake in the morning and go back to her world to feed her breakfast, that I quietly go into her closet, open up the box where we have placed all of her nightgowns and slip one on before I slide into bed. 

I usually pick the one I loved her in best.  The thin blue cotton one with the little rosebuds.  The nightgown I saw her wear when she made me coffee on a summer morning and we sat on her porch swing and talked about life.  The nightgown she’d slip on at night, while I poured us a glass of wine and then she gave me courage to be the woman I was wanting to be, strengthening my commitment for standing up for myself and making my life matter.  The nightgown she wore for those intimate talks when we would hold one another and talk about her prognosis and plan for the future of caring for her with her disease.

And when her disease has run it’s course.  When we can no longer physically hug and kiss and feel that special Mother and Daughter bond, we’ll still have our secret.  I’ll  sleep in the little blue nightgown with the rosebuds.  I’ll remember her lessons and our talks and smile that we had our time together.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mama.

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