Off I went the next daya frigid one at thatarmed with good intentions and a plan. I’d bundle her up and take her to the mall. It’s an outing I typically eschew, but she desperately needed a new winter coat. Hers was 15 years old, a down affair that seemed to grow ever puffier and strain mightily at the bottom button as her already diminutive stature shrank. She, who had once given no quarter to anyone sporting a few too many pounds, now needed at least a size up.
When I arrived, she greeted me joyfully, all dolled up in ancient pants and a wildly patterned animal print T-shirt. She had completed the ensemble with a zippered Members Only golf jacket of my father’s that I hadn’t seen since well before he died in 1999. When I pointed out a hole in one of the seams, she shrugged. Normally meticulous, she didn’t care. The jacket was not coming off.
I had plotted my strategy for our shopping expedition. I decided in advance that I would take advantage of valet parking, a $10 extravagance that can really change the entire experience of shopping in a perpetually overcrowded mall that feels as large as a galaxy. And looking for a parking space with my mother offering running commentary would surely convert me into a spitting cat.
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The next day, one of my sisters came to take her out because her caregiver remained in the hospital.
My sister sent a photo of their outing to a nearby diner. There was my mother, smiling away in her crimson lipstick, surrounded by two grandchildren whose names she has forgotten.
She was wearing my father’s golf jacket, the old down coat tucked into a corner of the booth.
