Sad news

My stepmother, Renee, died a few days ago. She had late-stage Alzheimer’s and had been suffering in a nursing home for several years. Whether she died of COVID-19 or something else, I do not know.

I met Renee when I was four years old, when she and my father were dating. They moved in together a year after that and got married when I was ten. Renee didn’t like the Cinderella connotation of being called stepmother, so instead she and my father came up with MamaHaha—the word for stepmother in Japanese. Renee taught me about birds, art, opera, ballet. She was always reading, painting, bird-watching or doing a crossword puzzle. I have no memories of her ever raising her voice or being irritated. She nicknamed me Daffodil when I was little, for my yellow blond hair. She used to pat my cheeks and kiss my forehead, and she always wanted to hold hands with me, even when I was an adult. She frequently mailed me postcards, cheering me on through tough times and offering me sage advice. She signed most of her notes with, “Remember to be good to yourself! Love, Mama H.” My real mother never showed me that sort of affection, and my father’s behavior was erratic at best. MamaHaha was my most loving and stable parent for almost thirty years.

Ten years ago, Renee started exhibiting signs of dementia. She asked the same questions over and over. She could not retain information. She lost her ability to make decisions. She started wandering off; my father would have to call the police to find her. She spoke less and less. She would often stand frozen in a room and stare like she could not make any sense of what she was seeing. My father would give her bifocals to her and she would hold them in her hands and turn them over and over, but she wouldn’t put them on. She no longer went in her studio to paint. She started having violent outbursts. Eventually she stopped talking entirely.

The last conversation Renee and I had was six years ago. We were at my sister’s house for Passover, Renee’s favorite holiday. Throughout the Seder, Renee barely spoke. She folded her Haggadah in her lap; she couldn’t read. She did not eat or drink. After the Seder, I was loading the dishwasher when Renee came up to me. She took my face in her hands like she used to when I was young. She said, “I’ve known you since you were a little girl, you know.” I said, “Yes. I know.” She stared at me, holding my cheeks for an uncomfortable length of time before saying, “You had blond hair when you were a little girl.” I said, “Yes. That’s true.” She said, “I’ve known you since you were a little girl and I have always loved you very much.” I hugged her and said I loved her too. Then she wandered out of the kitchen, looking dazed and running her hands along all the cupboards.

After that, I didn’t visit often; the trip up to Boston was too far and too draining. Renee’s dementia worsened, as did my father’s health--physical and mental. My parents declined and became as unrecognizable to me as I was to them. Seeing them like that was horrible; now they are both gone and that is horrible too.

I have been working on writing this for two days, trying to capture what Renee meant to me; what she and my father meant to each other; writing and deleting too many details of a dementia horror story; struggling with memories that are too complicated to put into sentences. I have tried to come up with some wise words on grieving. At first, writing was cathartic, but now I am exhausted and I have no wise words.