I am returning to America tomorrow, though I have been back here in India less than six weeks. My mother, age 85, is failing rapidly and my sister Lucy, who looks after her, thinks these may be her final days. I pray that I make it home in time to see her once more.

Although Mom has had Alzheimer’s for more than 15 years, none of us are quite prepared to let her go. This is a disease that defies logic and reason and though all of us (seven brothers and sisters) would say we understand that it is what it is, I think none of us actually believe it. I think we all keep looking at Mom and thinking that any moment she will return to us.

How could we not? Mom is the most amazing person any of us has ever met. We revere her for her integrity, her imagination, her constancy and her love of truth. It seems impossible that she has vanished in a cloud of confusion and incoherence.

For the last few days, Mom has stopped eating. Lucy and Dad try to tempt her with small bites of things she once enjoyed, but she is steadfast in her refusal. One day she will eat half a banana; another a quarter of a piece of toast. But overall, she is saying no. No more. The time has come.

A friend of mine sent me this poem by Jane Kenyon:

“In the Nursing Home”

She is like a horse grazing
a hill pasture that someone makes
smaller by coming every night
to pull the fences in and in.

She has stopped running wide loops,
stopped even the tight circles.
She drops her head to feed: grass
is dust, and the creekbed’s dry.

Master, come with your light
halter. Come and bring her in.

I miss my mother. I am running back to her now, to embrace her as she embraced me, to help her to let go and return to her true home.