Morning Light (A Corner View* Post)

Just as my mother began to slip into the morass of forgetfulness and confusion that we later learned was Alzheimer’s Disease, she wrote the following paragraphs, which I saved along with her other computer files that she had hoped one day to craft into a memoir. These paragraphs (which I’ve left exactly as she typed them) describe her early morning routine:

I am an early riser and so over the years I’ve worked out a morning routine. I pull on my workout clothes – my favorite washed out gray tee shirt, my shabby running sneakers; my worn-out blue cap that says the “Open— However, before I run out, I sit on the carpeted floor to meditate for about fifteen minutes and do some yoga positions. I sit so I can see the large window in front of me. There is a row of old brick tenements. Fire escapes…

Finally, I go down on the elevator and out the door to the busy street. Before I start to run, I stand on the top of the stairs and look up and down the street. A few years ago, my youngest daughter saw the block as Sesame Street.

People sit on the steps – men and women walked briskly to work; gray old men walk slowly to pick up the newspaper; a few women gather together to chat; children carry —

(Jane, January 14, 2009, 3:47 p.m.)

My mother’s words fade, mid-sentence, into unnamed possibility—which is how (or so it feels to me) her life ended at the close of clear-light day this spring.

Photo by Joanne G. Yoshida

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*Corner View* is a weekly appointment – each Wednesday, where bloggers from all corners of the world share their view on a pre-arranged theme. This week’s theme is “Morning Light.”