For three years I kept a spiral notebook on the arm of the recliner beside my mother\u2019s bed. The morning after her funeral, my sister Colleen told me that notebook was worthless, that I had been wasting my time, that I had always been Mom\u2019s least favorite anyway. She said it the way you\u2019d mention the weather. \u201cYou were the maid, Bridget. Maids don\u2019t inherit.\u201d<\/p>\n
I had moved into our mother\u2019s house when Eileen\u2019s memory began to fail. For three years I measured medication, changed sheets, held her hand through the nights when she didn\u2019t know me. I kept the notebook because a hospice nurse said dates matter. I wrote what she ate, which medications she took, when she no longer knew the season, when she called me by her dead sister\u2019s name, and the good days too \u2014 the afternoon she suddenly hummed every word of a Patsy Cline song even though she couldn\u2019t tell me my name.
\nI dated every entry. I kept four notebooks by the end.<\/p>\n
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