Author Archives: deirdremendoza

  Heavily medicated, Pat began a new chapter at The Gardens. We had to secure her stay by paying for a night nurse, often a young Ukranian woman, who arrived after Arlene left for the night, at about 10 PM. The nurse would sit in the lumpy chair, locked in Pat’s room, crocheting, studying forContinue reading “Who the fuck is Ed?”

“Your mother is bothering other residents. We can’t have this. Last night she set off an alarm. Then she walked into the room next door and scared Helen so badly she fell out of her bed!”

I couldn’t resist the pigtails and the raincoat when I ran into her on Lexington Avenue–a knockout if I ever saw one. She made me appreciate good theatre.  We saw everything on Broadway. She’s one helluvan actress. It’s 4 o’clock. Is she “napping” again? We paid 50 grand for two years of that lady shrink, andContinue reading “10 Things My Father Said About Her”

Her story about the Luau Party was filled with the kind of lusty murmurings that awaken memories of a younger self.  The rest, the details provided here, are made up, imagined,  patched together, much like everything else I know about the twelve years in which the woman known as my mother slowly disappeared. There wereContinue reading “After the Luau Party     “

  A woman in love. A woman, 75 or so, who danced at the Luau party in the arms of a stranger for the first time in how many years? A woman who held a place for love in a mind that was fast becoming a hoax, a grim repository of gangsters, monsters, hecklers, forgottenContinue reading “A woman in love”

5. An article in the New York Times about Alzheimer’s patients in facility care talks about the continuing search for love and joy: “Imagine if all the people you know and loved disappeared,’’ said Dr. Richard Powers, chairman of the medical advisory board of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. “Wouldn’t you want to find someoneContinue reading “The Neighborhood Bear”

  After the escape –-which they call elopement, as if you’ve gone to Vegas to do something sexy or clever with a hot partner by your side—The Place in Hollywood put tight restrictions on the poor girl. She was tried and found guilty behind closed doors in Tom’s third floor office, and the verdict wasContinue reading “Sundowner’s Revenge”

  4. She arrived at The Place in the back of the squad car and was taken, not to her room, but to the lockdown facility known in assisted living parlance as “the more advanced wing.” Each facility she went to had a euphemism for the same type of secured ward. I won’t forget theContinue reading “Welcome to the Neighborhood”

What is it to think you have a purpose, a mission, a plan?  What is it to have none? She had successfully completed a daring escape that looked, on first glance, like nothing more miraculous than a woman of a certain age, privilege and stature moving on her dancer’s legs past the desk of theContinue reading “Return to Assisted Living”