layers

I am wiping layer after layer of (give or take) a month of makeup off my mother’s face.

Maybe soon she will forget the makeup, too.

I look forward to that while I don’t look forward to that because makeup is a signature of hers, our mother always putting her “face on” and that’s familiar. The familiar things have slipped away with her mind.

She is at a point in her dementia where she never showers or washes her face without prompting, persuading, bribing…

But she still remembers to put on her face, each day. She can’t recognize that there is already makeup there from the day before, so she just adds more. More and more foundation like layers of paint on a canvas being reworked and reworked.

Now she grows tired of my trying and trying, circling as gently as possible around her eyes, the washcloth wet and warm. I refold it for another clean area and keep going before she thinks we’re done. Back and forth, up and down, I can’t find the bottom of it. Then abruptly she says, “that’s enough now” and I stop. We made a little progress, foundation and powder and eye shadow like mud in circles, caked into the creases next to her nose and in every crevice of her ears has had its load lightened. What more can we do for today? Soft thin aging skin can only take so much washing at one time. It’s amazing that she let me do this at all.

I look up and Dad is standing in the kitchen, trying to get the cover off his favorite useful household item — the insulated coffee mug that never lets your coffee get cold. He sets it down hard with a big sigh and I tell him it’s my fault he can’t open it because I twisted and tightened the cover too hard when I put coffee in it. (Some days this is still my favorite way to relieve the burdens of others — taking the blame — even for a coffee mug cover, how ridiculous.)

I grab tightly, twist, and open the cover so dad can put more coffee in and it looks too easy. He shakes his head. His hands are not what they were; the strong working hands of a carpenter. It’s so unfair. How many lids has he opened for me in my life? Too many to count (mostly pickles) with a chuckle and an eye roll over how easy it was for him.

These role reversals can be painful. We use humor to cope. We get used to it, but never completely. This inevitable-for-most-people stage of life is so full of weirdness, discomfort, wonder, beauty, and deep deep pain. I don’t know how we do it, we just do, like so many other things. We reveal layer after layer, day after day, and simply do what we can.