Two weekends ago, I traveled out of state back to my hometown to visit my aunt who is in a nursing home.  It is always a bittersweet time as memories flood my mind whenever I go back.  I was born there, grew up there and went to high school there.  Even after leaving the state after college, my parents’ house was still there, a solid presence to come back to on visits.  My parents are both gone now, the house sold for several years and no longer in our family.

Because of the mixed emotions when visiting the area, my sisters and I meet there for moral support.  We have been going there a couple of times a year to visit our mom’s sister, usually in spring and again in Fall, around her birthday.  As she is widowed and childless, we are her only family.

My younger sister and I came in on Friday and then my twin came in on the Saturday morning train.  We all went straight from the train to visit our aunt.

We got to the nursing home just as lunch was in progress and we sat with our aunt as an aide fed her.  It was a bit heartbreaking to watch as there was more pronounced dementia than 6 months ago.  I am not sure if she was feeding herself still at my last visit but a year ago, she certainly was.

She has always loved her food and I wonder if some of the enjoyment was due to heightened senses of taste and texture during years of failing eyesight from macular degeneration.  Even after needing to permanently reside in the care facility , her enjoyment of her food remained and meal times were a highlight of her day.  She was always cheerfully enthusiastic about whatever the meal was, especially loved any desserts that were served and though legally blind, she always managed to feed herself. The staff loved the upbeat attitude that my aunt displayed, even though wheelchair bound and blind.

At this lunch, my aunt sat listlessly in her wheelchair, head lolling down as if too tired to keep it upright, attention unfocused and clearly barely tolerating the food spooned into her mouth by the aide.  My sisters and I talked to her, trying to get through the fog in her mind that was more prevalent now.  She talked some but we did not feel she knew us.

After lunch was over, my sisters and I wheeled her into a small sitting room where we could be alone with her.  The special moment that I want to write about happened there.

One of my sisters and I had played some music off our phones for her the previous night and she had seemed to enjoy it. She had always loved listening to Andrea Bocelli and so my sister found and played his duet with Sarah Brightman… “Time to Say Goodbye”, one that was familiar to my aunt.

In the sitting room this next day, we decided to try it again. This time, the music brought my aunt’s mind back to us and we played the song over and over.  My aunt lifted her head, listened with eyes closed as if she could hear better that way and hummed along in places.  She sat enthralled, saying over and over how beautiful it was.  I sat next to her holding the phone close to her ear with tears streaming down my face because I knew my aunt was in the moment with us.  She started talking to my sisters and I in a way that conveyed she knew we were her nieces.  She wanted to know how long we could stay and she said she loved us.

Finally, we felt our aunt was tired out; we wheeled her back to her room and left her in the hallway beside the door.  Before leaving, I leaned over her and hugged her with my arm around her back and my hand on her right shoulder.  My aunt reached up and covered my hand with hers then said, “I love you so much”.  I said the same thing back to her and even now as I type this, I feel choked up.  I had the sense that it could be the last moment I connect with her before her mind is too foggy to “come back” to us.  It’s another of those moments in life that I know are fleeting and I both treasure and am grateful to have had.

We left the nursing home and headed out to lunch and some “sister” time, vitally important to us in balancing out the inevitable sadness of the visits.  We usually go to lunch at one of the restaurants overlooking a favorite spot of ours…a seaside harbor view of small boats moored in their slips and presenting a picture postcard pretty contrast against the blue of the water.

We ate on the outside patio of a Mexican restaurant, overlooking that harbor.  We talked, we laughed, we reminisced; we had the waiter take our picture and through it all, we enjoyed our time as we see each other only a few times a year, if that.  Since I don’t see harbor views where I live, I made sure that I visually soaked in as much of the ocean view as I could stuff into my memory…a bit like infrequent but refreshing, gentle rain on a thirsty plant.

That evening, we went back to visit our aunt and in this last visit before flying back home, she thought we were visiting her at her house.  Over and over, she asked us if we could spend the night in a spare room at her house.  At one point she pointed down to the floor of her nursing home room and said there was a bed there we could sleep on.  We just kept saying thank you but we have a hotel room.

As my sisters and I left her room that night, we decided that she thought we were friendly strangers.  She did not seem to know that we were her nieces and she had clearly slid back into the foggy cloud.

We had that afternoon though with her.  Thank you Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman for helping bring our aunt back to us, if only for a little while.