By Father John Donato, C.S.C., ’86, ‘90M.Div., ’96M.S.A.

Maybe it started the day my aunt, beginning to suffer from dementia, kicked my mother out of her house, right after the dinner she had invited Mom to, the dinner they had enjoyed with my uncle. Mom was devastated. “I am never going back,” she said. Nor did she, in any number of ways. 

Within months my mom couldn’t find the telephone when it rang, or her car in the mall parking lot. One day children mocked her as a crazy lady. I took her car keys away; she never noticed. My brother and I sold her house and found a place for her in a “senior living” facility. Euphemism of euphemisms…

For a year I traveled across the continent once a month to see my mom. She called me all day every day whether I was there or not. Sometimes thirteen times a day. Dementia has good days and bad days, good hours and bad hours. Lunch was a good hour: “There is no problem here,” she says, dignified and elegant. “I am quite fine and really don’t need anyone’s help.” But by the evening she could not find her apartment, or once inside, her bedroom in her apartment.

I moved her again, this time without the help of my brother. I moved her to my coast, where I could sit with her often and keep watch at her Calvary. Things grew worse. She forgot to take her medicine, she forgot to turn the coffeepot and stove off, she escaped from the facility into a snowstorm, wearing her pajamas, intent on finding me herself. “He has to be close,” she told the policemen who found her. “You know my son; he’s a priest at the University.”

I found another facility for her and things seemed better for a while. Then just as I was to set sail for France, my brother had a sudden heart surgery. I remembered our father’s dying words: stay together.

I brought our mom to his bedside. Mom was very disoriented; every time she saw my wan brother again, she experienced the shock of discovering her boy was very ill. Nor did she recover from this disorientation; when we returned to the west coast, everything was terror-ridden and I was to blame. She tore up the photographs she had of me in her room and smashed the frames. She cursed at me when I appeared in her door. She shook fists of frustration at me.

I felt that she was possessed, as surely as any demon could possess her; and I realized, for the first time, how Jesus must have felt in the presence of those who suffered from such illness. Compassion begins with empathy; we see the shadow of our own crosses. Take nothing with you, only your faith, says Jesus to his disciples — probably because he knew that we will lose everything that we possess, and in the end have only what faith and hope and love we can carry.

I moved my mom once more, and this time perhaps Saint Joseph, the saint who cares most about our domiciles, had a hand in things, for she seems happier, and the place seems perfect — large rooms; a new building; immaculate; secure; delicious food. She’s been here more than a year. She has company twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, if she desires it. Sometimes I think she has become the house favorite. Everyone seems to light up when they see her. Her elegance and inner beauty are radiant. I’m told she brags about her son the priest. She is utterly delighted to see me when I visit. We sit and look at photographs, we hold hands, we pray, we listen to her favorite music, we stare at roses in bloom and trees losing leaves. She is slowly losing her ability to communicate. In a real sense, I am watching my mom recede; I am watching her leave her body altogether. But there are moments still when her light shines through, when her sweet gentleness pokes through the haze, and she says thank you for all you do for me or I need to hug you. And there are moments when she is so weary that she gently puts her head on my shoulder and rests on me, as I must have rested on her shoulder a thousand times, a thousand years ago, when we were young.

Father Donato is associate vice president for student affairs at the University of Portland, a Holy Cross institution in Oregon. This essay was originally published in the Spring 2011 issue of Portland Magazine. His mother passed away in January of 2015 and Fr. Donato had the gift of being there with her as she breathed her last and went home to be with God.