Thanksgiving morning

I went to her room and she was sleeping in her big chair. When I woke her, she smiled at me with recognition.

"It's Thanksgiving. Would you like to come over?"

"Yes, I'd like that," Mom answered, blinking. I got her coat and offered to help her stand. Although I held her hand, she couldn't rise from the big chair. I put my hand under her upper arm and lifted her to her feet. While I put her coat on her arm she sat back down.

"Let's put that coat on while you're sitting." With her coat on, I lifted her to her feet again. "Let's walk to the door." She took small unsteady steps, uncertain, shuffling. It took five minutes to walk to the door of her room.

"I think I need to sit down," she said. We turned around and began to walk back into her room.

"We can sit you in your big comfy chair," I suggested.

"That's not my chair."

"You can sit in it anyway," I said.

"That's what I always say, whose-ever it is." We shuffled toward the chair, Mom becoming incrasingly unsteady.

"I don't know if I'll make it."

"A few more steps, Mom."

"Yes, BIG steps. There we go! At last!" I sat her down, back in the big chair. She closed her eyes. Her hands moved and shook with a life of their own. I helped her get her coat off. After a while I got up to go.

"Stay with me. I'm scared," she said. And so I sat a while in the quiet room as she fell soundly asleep again, the sounds of relatives coming to collect other residents coming from outside the room.

It's a long walk down this hall, Mary.

I'll make it.

Whoo! How much farther?