A Visit from a Friend

I'm pretty sure this will end up being one of my all-time favorite photos of my mom.  Mike Corley, high school and neighborhood close friend, college roommate our freshman year, fraternity brother and, really, friend for life, came in from Sarasota last Friday and asked to visit my mom.  In the midst of a busy day as I prepared to leave town with my family for a week in Springdale, Utah and Zion National Park, I managed to find time to meet Mike at my mom's place after lunch.

And, damn, am I glad I did.

Watching my mom's face light up when she saw Mike was something I'll never forget.  It's strange and touching, too, because I don't think she knew who he was, or at least she couldn't remember his name.  However, I could see that deep in the dark recesses of her mind or, maybe, of her very heart and soul, that she knew this was someone whom she had laughed with, cried with (when Mike's longtime high school girlfriend and our dear family friend, Jennifer Grizzle, died), yelled at, and most of all, just loved with the deep, abiding love only a mother can have for a son and his best friends.

I saw and felt all of that in an instant as sure as I see the people around me this morning in Springdale, Utah, in the Deep Creek Coffee Shop I'm sitting in, sipping the first good cup of coffee I've had in 3 days.  It was ephemeral and it was palpable, which I'm coming to believe is the yin and yang of the Alzheimer's journey we're on with my mom.

When Mike and I walked outside to the parking lot after our visit, he seemed to be a bit shellshocked.   He had the familiar, sad and troubled look I see on friend's and loved one's faces who haven't seen my mom in a long time.  It's hard for them, I know, to see my mom in her reduced state, physically and mentally.  It's jarring to see someone who had a flame that burned so brightly with  laughter, humor and, well, life, to have her flame reduced to embers that flare only once in a while.

I also saw, on Mike's face, a look of sympathy for me, and for my family.  The kind of look you can only get from someone who was with you as you transformed, or tried to, from a teenager to an adult.  Someone whom you talked with late into the night about things insignificant and important, at least to an 18 year old's mind, like we did during our freshman year of college in our dorm room at Reese Hall.

The best part of the visit was when Mike was kidding my mom shortly after we arrived, sitting with her at a table in the common area.  She laughed, looked at him, and stuck her her index finger up in the air, giving him "the fake bird."  My mom's signature move for so many years.  Mike laughed, my mom laughed and I laughed.

And, for just a few seconds, my mom's flame flared and burned brightly again.