Pulling the chair in closer to the bed I sit to talk to her, telling her day-to-day stuff, about work; how I’m settling into my apartment; the new shoes I bought the other day in the mall. But it’s painful watching her struggle to understand what I’m saying. I tell her about Joanna, my brother Danny’s wife, expecting the baby. She has been told this a hundred times but I have to keep talking, anything to dull the awful reality of this silence.

After a few minutes of me babbling on my mother interrupts.

‘Becca,’ she murmurs, through the small gap her lips will allow. Delighted to hear her say my name, I pull the chair in as close as possible to the bed.

‘I better start the supper,’ she says. ‘Your father be home soon.’

This often happens, her mind going back to days long spent, to moments that revisit her as if they are happening now.

‘I’ll help you,’ I say, in my best ‘play along with her’ voice. But I don’t get an answer. Mom is someplace else now, somewhere only she recognizes.

Her hand slowly reaches out trying to grab something from the air. There is nothing there, nothing I can see. Hopelessness surges through my veins; this is desperate. How much more of this can I handle? Tears sting my eyes asking me to cry, but I won’t cry. Not in front of her. Instead I stand up and tuck the sheets in at the side of the bed.

Another few minutes pass with my mother’s slow, swaying hand clearing the air. It’s only when the nurse returns that she stops.

‘Are you staying to feed Nancy?’ the nurse says, placing a tray on a trolley by the end of the bed.

‘Yes, if that’s okay,’ I say, watching the nurse press the bed controller and move Mom, like a robot, into a fully upright position. We have been told how important it is that the food goes straight down. Very important, they said, especially with Mom’s swallow weakening. If particles of food are inhaled into her lungs she could get pneumonia. And that, they said, would be the end of her. We were also told that eventually her brain will forget how to swallow altogether and Mom’s life will be preserved by a plastic tube. I’m dreading it.

‘This looks lovely,’ I lie again, pulling the tray closer to me, opening the napkin while the nurse makes my mother comfortable, fluffing up the pillows at her back.