You Must Remember This by Kat Rosenfield

Author:Kat Rosenfield [Rosenfield, Kat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-01-09T16:00:00+00:00

My mother had never come back downstairs again the night before, after Mimi called her a parasite. In fact, everyone seemed shaken by it—not just the viciousness of their confrontation, but how quickly it was over, so fast that it seemed like something we’d hallucinated. When I got back from washing my grandmother’s feet and helping her to bed, Adam wordlessly handed me a glass of wine and then poured one for himself, which under any other circumstances would have earned some sort of snarky comment from Richard, but he only stared into his whiskey glass, swirling the amber liquid in it around and around without drinking.

“Someone should talk to her,” I said.

“Good luck with that,” Richard said. “You should know, she’ll never apologize. She never would. Even before her brain started melting.”

“Richard,” Diana said, and he rolled his eyes.

“I may be impolite,” he said, “but I’m not wrong.”

“I meant someone should talk to Mom. To my mom,” I said. What I didn’t say was that by someone, I meant anyone but me. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way she’d grabbed Mimi, and about whether it might not have been the first time. If I measured the bruise on Mimi’s neck, would it be a perfect match, the exact diameter of my mother’s thumb? Was she taking out her anger at being thrust into the caregiver role on my grandmother, one rough touch at a time?

Adam touched my arm. “I’ll talk to her.”

“You shouldn’t have to—” I started to say, but he gave my forearm a squeeze and cut me off.

“It might be better coming from a non-family member.” He kept his eyes on me, but it was clear he was speaking to all of us. “I didn’t know Miriam before, so I don’t know what she used to be like. But I have known a lot of people with dementia, and I can tell you, this is something that’s going to happen. After this, it’s probably going to happen more. She’s scared and angry, and she’s going to lash out. You’ll need to be prepared for that.”

“Dear god,” Diana said faintly. “For how long? How much longer can she go on like this?”

Adam was still looking at me, and in the moment before he turned to answer my aunt, I saw something flicker over his face. It was a dark, unhappy expression that was there and gone in an instant, and while I wouldn’t grasp its full meaning until much later, I understood instantly that there was something, some awful truth, that he wasn’t telling us. Something like the horrible thought I’d had on my own, not that long ago. She’s going to die soon, but not soon enough. You’ll wish she was dead a hundred times over before she ever takes her last breath.

“What’s important is that you make the most of her good days,” he said.

“That’s not an answer,” Diana said, and Richard snorted.

“Good lord, sister,” he said. “What do you want, a timetable? Is Mother

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